You must know the habits of peacocks if you want to raise some in your farm. Peacocks are very beautiful than any other poultry birds and well known for their beautiful tail feathers.
Their feathers are prized and used in art throughout the world. Peacock feathers are also used for decoration purposes. Peacocks are beautiful mainly for these feathers, and peahens are not so good to look at as compared to them.
Peacocks are the most exotic looking member in the pheasant family. However, most of the people have seen a peacock’s feather in their life, but a few people know much about them.
Habits of Peacocks
Here we are describing some habits of peacocks. Such as eating, sleeping, mating etc.
Eating Habit
Peacocks are not picky eaters, like some other poultry birds. They are omnivores and eat almost all types of food. They eat plants, seeds, insects etc. Peacocks need high percentage of protein in their diet for staying healthy.
And they get most of the required protein from insects. That’s why wild peacocks prefer insects more than plants, seeds, leaves or any other green feeds. But the domestic and farm birds consume commercial feeds which is especially designed for their dietary needs.
These commercial feeds are also good for them (just like chicken feeds, which is designed specially for chickens). In case of raising chicks, you can feed them Game bird’s starter mix and keep them supplied with adequate greens regularly.
Crumbled hardboiled eggs are good for the chicks for the first few days. And for the first 3 months of their life, the chicks should get a high protein enriched diet. You can purchase Game bird feed crumble from
market of about 25 to 30 percent protein and feed to your birds. You should begin to wean them off the crumble as they get older. Because excessive protein in growing peafowl can cause serious leg deformities.
Mating Habits
Peacocks have huge feathers with beautiful and brilliant coloring, with an ‘eye’ in the center of each feather. Peacocks with a long, colorful and gorgeous tail are preferred by the peahens.
The more eyespots on their tail, the better the peacock usually does with the peahens. During the mating season, the peacocks spread out their feathers and display them in a prominent fashion to try and attract peahens for potential mates.
They also try to attract numerous peahens into a breeding harem. In the nature, each peacock accommodates up to six peahens as mates, with each peahen laying three to five eggs annually.
Peacocks have a sort of ritual for attracting the interest of the peahens that they do (which involves shaking feathers and acting as if there is food on the ground).
Sleeping Habits
Sleeping habits of peacocks is much like other Game birds. They typically do not stay on the ground during night. In nature, they fly up into the trees in the forest and roost there.
But the farm peacocks need a higher place inside their house for roosting at night. Basket, bench, roosting boxes etc. will be suitable for this purpose. Although peacocks are large birds with huge feathers, but they don’t have any trouble for easily flying up into the tree tops.
Calling Habits
Peacocks are noisy birds and they make several distinctive noises. Before starting mating dance, a peacock uses his mating call for attracting peahens to his region. Such mating calls are penetrating and heard very far away in the wild and also in farms.
The peacocks have 11 calls, each of which is distinct. Another call is used as a type of alarm system. They will start making loud call when they spot any predator.
Such loud call is for warning other animals in the region of a predator. Farm peacocks are also great guard birds. They will let you know if anyone is on your property with a series of loud, distance carrying calls.
Relation With Other Birds
You need to house the peacocks separately if you keep various types of poultry birds in your farm. This is a must follow rule for peacock farming in farms.
Because peacocks don’t like mixing with other common poultry birds. Such as chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese etc. Peacocks also don’t like mixing with other members of the pheasant family. These are the common habits of peacocks.
