Contrite

Um. Yeah.

So I'm just bad at blogging.

I meant to write weekly, but this summer's gotten away from me. And now I head back to college on Thursday, and I certainly won't be writing then.

Alas, maybe next year.

But I thought I would check in with a quick update, in case anyone in cyber space is reading my silly little blog.

Hatching picked up since June, and I'm currently at 124 chicks and counting, although the counting's liable to come to an end soon. There are 9 fertile eggs in the hatcher due any day now. After that there are just two more batches of eggs in the bator, and most of those were laid after my boys dropped their feathers, so who knows if they're any good. Not the 200 my father was hoping for, but honestly I have no idea where 200 birds would go, so I'm not so depressed. We did better than last year, and this still leaves us plenty of room for improvement in the future.

High points of the season:

• Chick diversity: Instead of just the mutt blue and spalding birds of the past two summers, this year I hatched Opals, Purples, Purple Blackshoulders, Cameos, Silver Pieds, Blue Pieds, Blackshoulder, Blues, Whites, White Eyeds, Emerald Spaldings--and Spalding and Spalding White Eyed mutt birds.





• My new Opal breeders from Mississippi: Claire and Charlie, the Opals I had shipped in from Mississippi last November in my stress induced internet bird buying binge, did spectacularly for me this summer, especially in June and July. From just one hen I got 11 healthy chicks--and there would have been more if we hadn't lost so many eggs during our incubation crisis.

My Spalding mutts: Jack, the Spalding mutt boy with a few white eyes, and the two Spalding hens I saved from my 2004 hatch were the only ones with a higher hatch percentage than my Opals... and boy do I have lots of second generation Spalding mutts! My white eyeds, including one mature white eyed hen I had shipped in from Brad Legg during said buying binge, shared a pen with Jack and co for half the summer, so the white eyed hen was adding some extra interest to Jack's already murky blood (I'm reasonably sure he's the offspring of my emerald boy Beo and my silver pied hen Diana, in one of those unplanned crosses back when I didn't have enough pens). Not only do a lot of Jack's chicks have some white on their wings and faces, but I got two silver pieds and a pied from him as well. For awhile, I almost had more silver pieds from Jack than my two silver pied pairs. Which leads me to

Disappointments of the season:

• I got one baby out of my eldest silver pied trio, and it was a white eyed. I'm not sure what was up with Zues. I didn't get a single fertile egg out of his pen until the hatch two weeks ago--there was 3 or 4. And 1 hatched. And it pretty much looks like that is that. I dunno what he was doing all summer.


• Beo (my emerald) had screwy fertility as well. Emmie (his emerald gal) had a fertile first clutch, but in our chilled incubator mess we were only able to hatch one. She laid blanks for about two months, and then had a 4 or 5 egg fertile clutch, from which one egg hatched. So we only got two emeralds. And Zues may never have been that fertile, but I know Beo has been. That's how I got so many Spalding mutts in the first place!



• The pair of whites and the one eyed blue pied boy I bought locally last fall didn't give me any chicks. Fertility was low, but occasional--we could just never get those eggs to hatch. The white hen did not lay much, and she liked to crack them when she did. I also had a tramautic bee sting incident while feeding them right after vacation that left me with a swollen face for almost two days. The blue pied, Mikhail (after the one-eyed Russian Other on Lost) is a gorgeous boy, kinda gross empty eye-socket aside. I plan on selling the white male so Mik can be alone with the girls next year. We had to take the white pair, but I really only wanted the girl. I had a buyer for the boy, but in all my being away at college and my dad's business hecticness we've seemed to have lost the woman's phone number, so I guess I'll have to look for someone else--shouldn't be hard. But I'd love to sell him before his train makes him too hard to move. I've also moved one of my yearling pied hens into that pen. She's a beauty, and not at all related to this boy, and I'm hoping once she's old enough she'll lay better than that white.

There's been plenty more going on here this summer: pen building episodes, cleaning meltdowns, smelly houses and angry siblings, hatching joys and woes, the miraculous recovery of a chick with a curved neck (I will have to write about that sometime, either here or on my main site), a futile war against flies, and preperations to start shipping. It's been a good summer overall, and I have tons of birds to sell, and I shall miss them all dearly once I depart for the land of academia. But not gonna lie. I'm not going to miss cleaning up peachick feces.

But my parents are going to miss me.

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!

Herding Peas and Gathering Eggs

Lots of developments in the past few days. Yesterday my father and I put up a temporary shelter in one of the new pens and finally got all our colors separated. We moved Zephyrus, my white peacock, and his two blue pied hens to their new outdoor pen. They'd previously been in with Pete, my old blue peacock, and a blue hen. We then moved Spaz, my younger blue peacock, in with his father Pete so he would leave Dusty, my cameo male, alone. Instead of going through all the stress of catching the birds, we herded them. This was my father's brilliant idea, and it's worked marvelously. The back door of our aviary actually opens up to the eighth outdoor pen. Outside the main door of that pen we created a temporary walkway out of goat panels and covered it with the excess netting from the outdoor runs. We ended the hallway at the last pen we wanted to put birds into, and temporarily covered the doorways of the other pens. Then we just separated out the birds we wanted to move, opened the door, herded them out and walked them all the way to their new pen. It worked really well both times we did it, and proved to be more successful then herding many of our other animals (the goats, for example). The only difficult part was getting just the birds we wanted out the door and not the ones we wanted to stay put. Spaz ended up causing the most trouble. He just did not want to leave his pen, even though he eyes the door every time I go in to feed him. Dad ended up just grabbing him and carrying halfway to his new pen. He didn't much appreciate that, but Spaz is far tamer than any of my other peas so he didn't freak out too badly.

Spaz and his papa seem to be getting along just fine. I was worried, because Spaz can be a mean old bugger to other males. He was the first peachick we were ever able to keep alive, and he hatched without any siblings. Therefore he spent the first six months of his life by himself, and now he thinks he ought to be king of man and bird. Even as a two year old he would dominate my blackshoulder male who was fully mature. We then moved him in a pen with some random birds approximately his age we'd purchased at a sale, including my emerald. He was constantly harassing the emerald, chasing him around the pen. I spent countless nights in the aviary, yelling at him to leave Beo alone. But there was no pen of his own to move him to, so the poor emerald had to deal. The next summer Spaz started out on the top of the pecking order, but part way through the season Beo snapped. He fought back, and suddenly Spaz was in the rafters, absolutely refusing to come down. We didn't think he was eating, so we moved him into another pen with my cameos. He flew right up in the rafters and stayed there. We put little food and water cups up there and fed him specially. For about seven months we never saw him on the ground, even though the cameo male never went after him. Then he just got over it. Soon he was king again. And I came back from college one day to find the emerald male moved into the pen with Spaz and the cameo! I was not pleased. For the first few months of summer there was a tentative peace, Spaz not being too wretched unless one of the other boys dared to come down when they weren't supposed to. Then I finally got my emerald pair moved out into their own new pen on Father's day, and yesterday Dusty was given his reprieve. I haven't seem Spaz fighting with his dad yet, which is great, and it was actually Pete displaying today and not Spaz so hopefully they can get along until we get another pen done so we can move Spaz out on his own. If ever there was a peacock who shouldn't be in with other boys, it's him! But space is always a problem.

Today was an exciting egg day. It started to thunderstorm about the time I normally collect eggs, so I ran up with a flashlight and an egg carton. I almost stepped on an egg in the blue pen that the hen had laid right in front of the door, and I also found a turkey egg (My mom is intent on getting a peacock turkey cross, so I let her keep a Royal Palm hen that hatched with the peas last year in with my birds). There was a cameo egg in pen two and then surprise--an egg in my pen of two year olds, now reduced to one hen and five peacocks. This was the first egg I'd gotten out of my two year olds, although one man I sold a hen to months ago told me that she had started laying. I doubt it's fertile, but it would be fun if it was, since most of those two year olds have white flights and throat patches, so their offspring might be something fun. I then went to the outside pens and got another silver pied egg (my 17th since they were moved on Father's Day--boy I love those gals!) and an emerald egg, even though she had laid yesterday. My brothers made fun of me, but I really think the storm scared it out of her. She wasn't supposed to lay again until tomorrow.

And yesterday, joy of joys, my father found a purple egg! Hope she lays me six or eight and they are all fertile. I'm still looking into getting another purple hen to put in with my purple blackshoulder boy for next year.

Ten more chicks have hatched in the past two days. Mostly blues with a few blackshoulders. I've got chicks all over the house. The cage I bought on ebay to move the oldest ones out to the aviary (as soon as it gets hooked up with electric) got appropriated for the new babies because there was no where else to put them. Oi vei! But there are certainly worse troubles in life.

Cousins

Happy 4th of July to any readers out there!

It's been a fun day on the farm, thanks to four darling cousins of all my peababies. About three and a half weeks ago my little brother, best friend, and I rescued nine wild turkey eggs my dad's employee had found while mowing one of our hay fields. The unfortunate mother had gotten caught in the mower and lost a leg, but Landis stopped before he crushed most of the eggs. The three of us drove up in my mom's gator, collected the eggs and stuck them in the incubator with my peas. Yesterday, four of the eggs hatched. They are just the most darling things ever! I love peachicks, of course, but these things are just so cute! So much smaller than the peachicks, and they have these gorgeous black stripes running down their brown faces. I don't know why I'm so excited--I normally have no love for turkeys. My mother likes them, and always ends up letting them out to roam the farm. The hens try to nest and fall prey to the unfortunate mess of predators we have here (foxes, dogs, coyotes, weasels, hawks, etc) and the boys get mean and chase me and my brothers around. But I've got awhile until these guys are trouble, and right now they are just fun! In peacock news, I sold five this morning. One two year old and four yearlings. That only leaves me with twenty-three yearlings and six two year olds--from which I'm probably going to keep four. So only twenty-five birds to sell (aside from all the new chicks, of course). Not so bad at all! When I first got home this summer I was imagining having fifty plus birds to carry over plus all the chicks. But at this rate I'll find new homes for nearly all of the older birds before I head back to school. I'm glad. I love 'em, but I really need the pen space so I can keep (or get) their parents properly separated.

And great news--the emerald laid an egg and didn't damage it! At my dad's request I went up extra early to check for eggs to snatch it away before she had a chance to decide she wanted another meal. Hopefully I can get five or six eggs from her and at least half will hatch. I'd really like emerald babies! There were also two more silver pied eggs--I love these guys. I really do. My two silver pied hens have been laying for me pretty consistently every other day (although sometimes one of them gets a day off track) since the night we moved them to their new pen--Father's Day. I'm so excited for silver pied babies. Now the eggs better be fertile! Those two boys in there have been showing off like crazy, so they should be. I figure the first few eggs were probably fertilized by the blackshoulder male in their original pen, but I hope by now these eggs have to be purely silver pied.
Consensus on the peafowl email list I'm a member of is that my little mystery chick is a white eyed! I've very excited about that!

On a less exciting note, Dusty, my cameo male, is starting to lose his feathers. I found a few last night, and found some more today, so I can't deny it anymore. It always makes me sad when the feathers start coming out. I'm hoping most of the birds will hold out for another month or so though. My purple hen still hasn't laid me an egg, and I really want purples this year!

But overall, a great day in peacock land! Not a particularly eventful holiday, but all is well with my birds. Hope all is well with you and your families.

Happy Independence Day!

Peababies and random thoughts

We had five more chicks hatch out a few days ago. A blackshoulder, three blues and a little mystery guy who I think is a white eyed (the lighter one stepping in its food dish). Slightly less exciting when I consider the 10 eggs in the incubator due to hatch that didn't. When dad checked them to see if any more were hatching, he said at least six of the weren't fertile. Usually our first batch or two of eggs have pretty awful fertility, but it goes up as the season progresses. This year we only had one or two infertile eggs in the beginning but seem to be having a bout of it now. Frustrating, but that's how these things go. The weather has been crazy, and that could certainly be the cause. It's less heartbreaking than having 10 dead in shell chicks, which we've had in previous years. But realistically, if we hatched every egg I collected we'd have peacocks coming out of our ears, and I'm always complaining the hens aren't laying as much as they're supposed to. I have to work on that perspective thing sometimes. But I just hate when eggs don't hatch!

Speaking of excess peas, I have been selling some of my yearlings and two year olds lately. Someone's coming tomorrow morning to take 5, so that'll put a dent in the 35+ I still have left. Now that there's the potential to have pen space to keep a few youngins, I've been studying the flock to see who I'd want to keep. There's a pretty spalding two year old boy with a nice white throat patch, some white wing feathers and tiny white specks in the scattered scraggly eyes he's developed. Not a glorious white eyed like some I've seen pictures of, but I'd like to keep him and see what his full train looks like. Plus, it gives me an excuse to keep a couple yearling spalding hens. These gals are gorgeous. I just love their brown chests and green necks. Hopefully I can find one or two with a few white feathers and maybe they'll throw something fun by the end of next summer. There's also a yearling white eyed male who I want to keep. This boy is really going to be white eyed, I think. He's already got completely white eye feathers coming out of his tail, and he's only a yearling. I think I remember him when he was a chick, and I think he looked like the little light chick who just hatched, so that gives me more evidence that's what he is (besides being the only thing that makes sense genetically). But I'll have to buy a hen for him. None of my hens seem obviously white eyed.

One major gripe--after waiting years for emerald chicks (got Beo, my male at an animal sale about four years ago but didn't find him a girl until last January, and didn't get them separated until Father's Day) my emerald hen seems to have developed a taste for her own eggs! We've had a problem in the main aviary with hens laying eggs off roosts, but the roosts are really high and we realized there were mice in the straw scaring the hens away from where they were supposed to be nesting. But in the new pens where the emeralds are the roost is only three feet off the ground and there's plenty of rodent free places for the hens to lay. My silver pieds started laying the day they were moved and have still be giving me eggs almost regularly since, all laid in the dirt in a corner of the pen. The emerald and purple hens had not been laying. Three nights ago my dad found pieces of egg shell under the emerald roost. Last night I went out to collect eggs and saw one as soon as I approached the pen, but it didn't look right. And it wasn't--the duller end of the egg was completed gone and there was still a little yoke in the shell. It didn't look like she laid this one off the roost, it looked like she picked at it and ate it! Boy was I angry. Tomorrow will be the moment of truth to see if she does it again. This will probably be her last clutch of the year, and I really would love a few emerald chicks. Beo's half emerald, half blue babies from the last two years have been so cute, I'd love some with more spalding in them.
Oh well.

This has to be something peafowl developed in captivity. You're never going to propagate your species if you eat your own potential offspring. Geez!

Can Anyone Build Me an Ark?

I hope anyone reading this isn't having such awful weather as we are here in PA. It's rained buckets in the past three days, and everything is a flooded, muddy, raging river mess! To top it off, every day I pick the worse time to go out and feed the peacocks. I don't mind getting wet (I do Relay for Life, which involves rain every year without fail, so I'm used to being wet for 24 hours) but now that I have three outdoor pens as well as my five indoor ones in the aviary, getting grain outside to be fed without ruining any excess in the downpours has been a challenge I've been losing.

I don't think the peas we moved outside are appreciating their new pens so much now. They have a water proof shelter, but far more of their pen is exposed to the elements than their previous home: the above ground aviary pens which are half inside and three quarters covered by the roof. The peacocks' tails look pretty pitiful soaked in mud. And three days ago one of my silver pied hens laid me an egg in a puddle. (She does have dry straw available under the shelter, but of course she didn't want to lay there!)

And then, when I was going back inside this afternoon after being thoroughly drenched, the path I normally take was so flooded by a raging stream that I had to detour through the garden, walking through inches of water just so I could get to the house.

Here's to drier weather and happier birds (and people)!