General Updates

Well, the end of 2025 kind of sucked. We lost Aurora (cancer) and Arcana (aspergillosis) one after the other. Aurora was one of my founding birds, purchased the first year I ever owned peafowl, and she's been a real cornerstone of our farm for its entire existence.

On the brighter side of things, we did welcome Jasper and Beryl to the farm from Irish Springs Peafowl. They've been our sister farm for years, and these two are from a collaboration of our breeders- Their Indie and my Eclipse and Arcana. I like to think that one of them is Arcana's kid. They are also siblings to the two ladies I brought home in 2024, who are simply gorgeous and have great personalities.

The downscaling of the mousery finally wrapped up, leaving me with just a couple maintenance cages. I'm looking forward to taking this break, and I already feel the relief from having most of the mousery off my plate. I kept just my two favorite lines- the self blacks and the blue tricolors. I did keep a couple of blue tricolor texels, so I am hoping to combine that with my SH and better both into one line.

The lucorum snails got a major upgrade, moving from a 29g tall to a 36g long. They have a big display tank in my front room so I get to see them more often, and I've added some Mourning Geckos to their cage to help control the isopod population a little. This does mean I'm making flightless fruit fly cultures now! But that's kind of fun, too!

As of writing this, I just yesterday fully cleaned and turned on the cabinet incubator for the year, and placed the first hatching eggs in from our RE quail line. I only need one single roux male from that cage, so I've got my fingers and toes crossed I get at least a little development and a few chicks. With this bitter cold weather, there's every possibility that the eggs get too cold to develop at all, despite that the birds are certainly going at it now that I've turned their lights back up!

All in all, I am looking forward to a good 2026!