Runaway peas, ravenous chicks, and hatching (maybe) looking up

It's been a busy week here in PA! I've gotten a few emails answered, the aviary partially cleaned, and my father and I have spent much time in consultation over why our hatches have been so crappy thus far. The last one of over 18 eggs resulted in four chicks, and two of them died within their first three days; one of them had hatched with a broken leg and couldn't walk. My dad went out to radio shack and I spent $80 on new thermometers. Turns out, our old thermometer must have gotten miscalibrated or something, or is just getting old and buggy, because the incubator, especially at the bottom, was a few degrees colder than it should have been! That could certianly explain why my chicks were hatching late (if at all) and dying throughout the process. The last two years, we've had most of our chicks hatch at 26 days. These weren't starting until day 28 or 29, and were not making it out on their own. We've hopefully got the incubator and the hatcher turned up now, so we'll see if things start going better for us. We have almost 200 eggs, but out of the first 50 we only got around 9 chicks. Incubating peacock eggs is hard, but our hatch rate shouldn't be that low!

We've got another set in the hatcher right day, and it's day 26. I came back from my brother's high school state baseball championship game to find two chicks hatched out (a spalding and a pied) and a bunch more pipped, including two opals. If all goes well, these will be my first opal chicks ever. I got my Opal pair (newly name Claire and Charlie; this week I went nuts and named all my yet unnamed peafowl after LOST characters) shipped in from the Nelsons in Louisianna last November.

Of course, Claire thought it would be exciting to escape and fly off into a strip of woods a few days ago. My dad's employees were working on putting up dividers between the new breeding pens so the males (particularly Charlie and my Spalding split to white eye boy, Jack) wouldn't fight each other and oggle unobtainable women. I was scrubbing mats from the brooder, and my little brother, Bradley, told me the guys said one of the peacocks had gotten out. Brad likes to joke with Tom, one of the workmen, so I told him Tom better be pulling his leg. No such luck! Claire had managed to sneak out of the pen while no one was looking, and off she flew. Luckily one of the men saw the direction she went. So off my father and I went with his trusty net. Somehow, from what the men told us we thought we were looking for my white male, Zephyrus. My father was certainly surprised when instead of a white bird with a huge tale he found a small brown hen. But Claire was retreived, safe and sound, and now Charlie has to mind her because he can't see the spalding and white eyed hens in the next pen.

The two surviving chicks from our last disasterous hatch are adorable little monsters. For awhile I wasn't sure that they knew how to eat on their own, and I'm still not certain on this point, but they're still alive, so they have to! Everytime I would stick my fingers in their box covered with grain they would pick at them so violently it seemed like they were starving. And as much as my dad and I watch them, we really don't see them eat off the floor or out of their dish. But they are sweet little things, a blackshoulder and a white out of one of my silver pied pens. Their appetite for my flesh seems to have decreased, so hopefully this means they are eating on their own!

Two yearling hens also found new homes this week. Someone has an appointment to come on Monday for one or two more, and a few arrangements are in the works. I'm glad to see them go. I still have far too many yearlings and two year olds to sell. Once again, it looks like I've going to end up with an excess of yearling males, because most people I talk to want hens. Right now I have so many gorgeous pied boys. I wish I could keep a bunch for myself. I love pieds! But I already have two breeding pens producing 'em, and two pens of silver pieds, so I really don't need any more! I am going to keep a pied hen to put in with my new adult pied male. Since all last year's pieds came out of my white male and two pied white eyed hens, this gal won't be related the the boy I plan to put her with. And there's no use going out and buying a hen when I have so many already!

But really, if there's anyone in the Pennsylvania area looking for peafowl, especially pied yearlings or two year old blue males, email peacockgirl@verizon.net. I have some gorgeous birds who would love to grace you with their prescence.

And hopefully, in a few weeks, I'll have lots of chicks I can beg people to take! :)

Blogging, take 2

I'd like to apologize for dropping off the face of the net. For the past nine months I've been finishing my junior year at Amherst College, and as much as I love my darling birds they become my parents' responsibility while I'm away, and I have to sacrifice web-design and responding to peacock-related email to my academic and extracurricular responsibilities. Of course, I looked at this blog and realized my last post was in the beginning of July when I didn't leave for Massachusetts until the end of August and... what can I say. I'm bad at blogging. But I'm going to attempt to post weekly this summer, and see how it goes.

Lots of good things have been happening since last July. Eight new exterior pens were built and finished, so now I'm only two pens short of happy. Dear old Spaz, my India Blue terror, still has to share space with his dad Pete, but they are getting along. I didn't expect the two year old white eyed male I saved to be ready to breed this summer, but he has more eyes on him than any two year old I've ever seen, and I'm sure he'd breed the white eyed hen I had shipped in for him if only they had their own space. Unfortunately, they're sharing with the trio of three year old spaldings I saved from my emerald's dalliances in a mixed pen back in the days when I was chaffing under too many birds and not nearly enough pens to keep them seperated. Since I'm almost 90% sure the spalding boy has a silver pied mother I was sort of hoping for spalding white eyeds anyway... this may help that along, even though it'll dilute the spalding blood. Once again I'll end up with a bunch of crazy mutts. Of course, of all the birds, the spalding and white eyed hens are laying like gangbusters while my three cameo hens barely throw me an egg every few days. But that aside, it's so nice to have all my colors seperated, and minimal male fighting, except for the opal and spalding who like to glare at each other through the fence.

I did discover something during the long months of academic stress. When I have a thousand things to do and not nearly enough time to do half of them, I like to cope by buying peafowl online. Thanks to the UPA classified ads, I bought a mature pair of Opals and had them shipped home from Louisianna. Later, I bought a young pair of purple silver pieds from the same breeder, and three mature hens from Brad Legge (the aforementioned white eyed hen, a purple blackshoulder pied hen, to figure out the cause of my purple BS's white wing feathers, and an extra silver pied hen, since I have two darling silver pied boys.) I also ended up getting two white hens and a pied male from someone local, and swapped some young birds for a pair of BS split to midnight and white eyed. None of my friends quite understood this maddness, but I did have some pretty funny conversations about my little "problem." There was lots of eye rolling, and "Amy, you didn't..." It didn't really get my work done. But giving in to the peacock bug did give me something more fun to think about. And shipping in birds for the first time gave me confidence that I'll be able to ship birds out, which I'm going to need to do if our hatch is anywhere as successful as last year's (not looking good at the moment though).

If you need yearling peafowl, particuarly blue pieds, or two year old blue males that you don't mind might have a little spalding or white blood in them, please get in touch with me. I have a lot of darling birds I really need to find new homes for so I have room for some new ones.

Unfortunately, hatching has not been going too well thus far. I have a handfull of adorable chicks, most from my mutt spalding/white eyed pen, but our hatching percentage is way down, and at the moment I have a hatcher filled with 15 or so eggs due today and only two are cracked, and not getting very far at that! When my father opened up the last two bunches of eggs he saw that we've been losing chicks at various stages of development, which is not usually a problem we have. We messed with humidity and air and hoped we were doing better but... not looking up yet.

And that's pretty much life at the moment for this young peafowl farmer. I'm still behind on email, still quite a ways away from updating my website properly. The aviary isn't cleaned yet, and I have to clean and band chicks tomorrow morning. But it's good to be back on the farm, and there's so many eggs in the incubator I can't be too disheartened about hatch rate just yet. This is probably what I get for bugging my father for months about where all the chicks we were going to have were going to go. I am still absent a chick barn, although there is a trailer parked behind the aviary and plans to outfit it better than it was last year. Only time will tell, but I'll keep you posted!