Peacocks: Post 7 - New birds
New chicks.
Peacocks mate around June and lay a couple of clutches each year in July and August. I was keen to ensure that I got the peacocks as chicks this time to maximise their chances of being re-homed successfully.
Pot-luck purchase.
I agreed with Alex that I would purchase 2 chicks from different clutches - hoping that I would get one male and one female. If they turned out to be identical then I would swap one in a month or so when we realised. This meant I could get them as young as possible and there was a small chance that no swap would be required.
Telling male from female. It is impossible to determine the sex of the chick until they are quite a few weeks old. The only difference between male and female chicks is the feather patterning. They start off identical with variegated black and brown flight feathers. After a month or two they begin to grow green, iridescent feathers around their necks and the variegated black and brown patterning on their feathers begins to change. For females the contrast begins to lessen until the variegation is very subtle and they are essentially a uniform brown. For males the contrast begins to heighten and they remain very variegated.
Self-feeding.
I wanted the peafowl to be self-feeding and self-watering with a system that would provide sufficient quantity so that I could go on holiday for a week or two without worrying that they would run out.
I'd seen the use of drainage pipes at Belfast Zoo for this purpose. It works very well.
The amount of feed stored in a drain-pipe this size will feed two adults for a couple of months. I like this arrangement because it has a minimal footprint.
Risk with water.
The water is the one to be careful about as it can go wrong. The top has an air-tight screw top so that as the peafowl drink the water the level drops but a vacuum is formed in the top of the pipe that prevents the water from flowing out.
This works well but it is vulnerable to a failure of the screw-top lid. If the lid is not tight enough, a very slight air-leak could jeopardise the vacuum and the water would gradually trickle out the bottom as air seeps in the top. A slight leak might not be noticeable but over a week this could lead to a dry water pipe and no water for the peafowl whilst I am away. That would be catastrophic.
For this reason I have a second water feeder that is of a different design so that they are unlikely to both fail by the same mechanism at the same time. The second feeder is out in the run and is a purchased dedicated water feeder.
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