Peafowl Care 101

We get asked a lot of questions about peafowl and their care, so I've tried to answer a few of them here. If you have questions that aren't answered here, please feel free to ask via our Facebook, or through e-mail at [email protected].

Please be aware that as I am not a veterinarian, I will not answer medical questions beyond what is already here. If your bird needs veterinary care, you should seek a trained professional- a LOT of the "common" knowledge medical care found online is outdated, and some of it is actually dangerous to your birds.

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Peafowl Care

Housing

Peafowl should be penned, like any pet. While some people choose to free range them, this is extremely dangerous for the birds, and runs a high risk that the bird will just leave, even if nothing bad happens to it. Free range birds are more likely to be injured, catch illnesses, pick up parasites, get lost, get eaten by predators or killed by cars, or eat toxic/inedible items and die. Hens are likely to be killed on nests, and chicks often don't make it. You cannot properly medicate or otherwise treat a free range peafowl. These are not wild animals anymore; they are domestic game fowl, and are legally considered livestock/poultry the same as chickens, turkeys, and ducks. It is your responsibility as an owner to properly contain your animals.

The minimum housing requirement for peafowl is 500 square feet. The minimum housing density is 1 bird per 150 square feet. This means you can keep up to three birds in the minimum enclosure size, but 4 birds would need 600 square feet. This amount of space allows the pen to maintain grass/clover as a cover crop, and reduces the amount of bare-earth exposure the birds get. This is important because bare earth often carries bacteria and parasites that peafowl are sensitive to, and dusty soil especially is at risk of getting into their nasal passages and causing upper respiratory infections. URIs are difficult and expensive to treat, so avoiding them is the best course of action.

A standard breeding flight pen is 10x50x8 (500 square feet) to accommodate 1 male and 1-2 hens, or 15x40x8 (600sq/ft), to accommodate 1 male and 1-3 hens. That said, the bigger a pen, the better off the birds will be, so if you have the means, build bigger; bear in mind that a hen raising chicks is subject to the same housing density rules, so if you want a male, two hens, and three chicks, you would want a pen that's 900 square feet, and so on. Pens are typically built to protect against the kind of predators you have in your area. I would recommend a hardware cloth skirt, with hardware cloth that comes above ground for the first 3 feet or so. This will help prevent birds from sticking their heads out, and prevent grabby little racoon paws from sticking in. Wire above that can be bigger, unless you have reason to believe you will have to deal with weasels, mink, or rats- then I would advise 1/2" hardware cloth for the whole enclosure.

Enclosures should also be at least 8 feet tall. This space allows for one 5-6ft perch that males can use to preen their trains, and gives them space to display their trains without touching the roof. Enclosures should not be shorter than 12 feet on any side, and preferably not be less than 15ft on any side, in order to give the male room to move. Additionally, perches should be placed so that the birds have 3-5ft of horizontal clearance (called glide space) per foot of height, in order to get down. Insufficient glide space can result in bruising, bumblefoot infections, tendon damage (including slipped tendons), and arthritis in older birds.

Roofing for flight pens can be wire or solid, but most keepers use netting. I recommend high-density polyethylene (HDPE) knotted 2" netting. This is long-lasting and durable, including tear resistant. The 2" netting holes are wide enough that most snow will fall through, and it's easy to knock it off when it builds up- this stuff ripped off a part of my barn's roof, part of the 1/2" hardware cloth stapled to my 4x4's, and bowed the metal wire rather than tear, itself, so I know it's strong enough to keep out birds of prey, and to keep in my birds should they flush into it. Netting also has enough give that they're unlikely to break their necks if they try to fly up into it. Netting MUST be strung as fairly taut, with as little slack as you can make; this prevents "soft spots" in the netting where birds may flush up into the netting and get their head/foot stuck in a hole and strangle or hang themselves.

Peafowl also need shelter, typically provided in the form of a coop. Personally, I would recommend no smaller than 8x8, and I would recommend the shelter be fully enclosable, that is, you can shut the door and have a predator-proof coop to lock the birds in overnight. This also provides a place for emergency shelter- in case of storms or other bad weather, in case of illnesses like HPAI sweeping through your area, in case of predator attacks/alerts (for instance, one year we got alerted someone's pen mountain lion escaped and was spotted near my farm... I had coops I was able to close everyone into) to allow you time to deal with them.

Feed

As adults, peafowl require a high-protein diet, in the range of 24-30% for their base feed. After a lot of testing with my vet, I settled on Belstra brand 28% turkey starter feed. You will need to research to see which feed mills near you will carry similar items, as everywhere is slightly different. I can say, avoid Purina like the plague, and that includes the TSC name brand, Dumor, as that is produced by Purina and is somehow even lower quality than normal Purina. Your birds will thank you.

Water can be provided in any typical poultry waterer, but you should also offer a bowl of some sort with water deep enough they can submerge their beak past their nostrils. This will allow them to clean their nares out, and help in the prevention of sinus infections from soil/dust. I use no-tip plastic pig bowls, like this. As a bonus in the summer, they will use these to cool down by standing in them.

As chicks, what you feed depends on how you are raising the birds. Ideally, you are raising them in a space where they have room to run around use their wings, which aids in their musculoskeletal development and results in bigger, lankier birds that more closely resemble the wild type (ideal). In this case, they can eat the same as the adults, although if they are not being hen-raised, I would recommend offering a plate of damp feed (their normal feed with water in it) once a day, as it encourages them to eat enough. Brooder raised chicks, or chicks raised in more cramped environments, should be given a lower-protein feed (18-20%), because the higher protein + smaller space combo can result in growth differences between muscles, bones, and tendons. This can lead to twisted legs in juveniles.

As for treats, pretty much anything a chicken can eat, a pea can eat- fresh fruits, fresh veggies, leafy greens (limited, since they tend to be high in oxalates, which inhibit calcium uptake), scrambled eggs. Ours tend to prefer "sweet" treats like fruits, and high-energy treats like suet nuggets, live insects/feeder fish/mouse pinkies, raw shrimp and fish. As a neat trick, if you add water to any processed chow until it is wet but not soupy, it instantly becomes a "treat" they will gobble down. I give feeder fish 1-2 times a month by placing a 5-gallon bucket lid on the ground, filling it with water, and putting the fish in. The fish have just enough water to move around, but not enough to get away from the birds too deep, making them a little easier to catch. Once your birds know they are treats, you can add them to a more challenging bowl, like the black waterer bowls linked above.

Veterinary Care

My very best advice concerning veterinary care of peafowl is to familiarize yourself with the avian vets in your area, as well as the emergency veterinary centers closest to you. Call them in advance of a problem and ask if they will see peafowl; offer to bring healthy birds for wellness checks/new arrival intake checks, if they want to learn, and then follow through where possible. Be prepared to have to drive up to two hours for veterinary care- my own vet is an hour away. Building a relationship with your nearest avian vet through wellness visits when you aren't in desperate need can help you to get care down the road when you are in need. It also helps familiarize your nearby vets with peafowl, making them more likely to see you and others more readily in the future, which helps the community as a whole. Think of a wellness visit the way yearly vaccinations are for dogs and cats; a regular part of their normal care. You don't have to take every bird every year, but having a vet give even just one bird a year a once over can help you, your vet, and your birds stay healthy. If you need an excuse, you can say you'd like a mycoplasma test done- this is a cheap test for a bacterial infection that causes respiratory issues in peafowl, so it's always nice to have a negative test within the last year.

If you suspect your peafowl is ill, you should take it to a vet. That said, there are some things you should learn to do at home, including a body condition score test (you can web search "bird body condition score chart" for information), and running your own fecal exams. There are PLENTY of guides online explaining how to do a fecal exam, with visuals, to instruct you how to do a fecal direct or a fecal float test and read the results, and the materials can be found for less than $150. Monthly or even weekly fecal exams of the droppings of at least one bird will help you catch parasites early, and doing frequent, quick body condition score tests can inform you when a bird is losing weight. Due to their feathers, weight loss can be extremely difficult to see, and by the time a bird is acting ill, it's usually too late without expensive vet intervention and a LOT of time for recovery. While you cannot treat everything on your own, regularly appraising your peafowl's health can help you to catch problems early, and hopefully save them (and yourself a lot of money treating a worse case).

I would also highly suggest learning how to gavage feed (put food directly into the crop) a bird. It's very easy, and it's easily one of the best supportive care techniques you can have in your repertoire. You need an 18FR RUBBER catheter (NOT latex), a 35-60ml catheter-tipped syringe, vaseline, and some liquid diet feed (either something like Kaytee brand parrot formula, pigeon hand feeding formula, Emeraid omnivore, OR you can soak their normal feed thoroughly enough it's VERY thin). This method of feeding can get nutrition into a bird easily, quickly, and during times they don't want to eat, without the risk of trying to syringe feed into their mouth, where they can aspirate it.

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Peafowl Care FAQ

 Q: Can I keep my peafowl with other birds?
The answer is... maybe, but you shouldn't if you can help it. While peafowl will rarely outright attack other birds, they can catch illnesses that other birds can carry without symptoms, such as blackhead disease, and pick up parasites like worms and coccidia that other birds are a lot more resistant to, but which can kill peafowl very quickly. Additionally, other birds may cause problems for peafowl- chickens and pheasants are more prone to destroying/eating eggs than peafowl, and turkey males often attack peafowl males. Young birds are not at all pushy, and can easily be prevented from eating by more dominant species. Peafowl are susceptible to picking up bacterial and fungal infections as well as parasitic infestations when exposed to bare earth with waste on it. Keeping grass or other low cover crop in their enclosure can help alleviate this, but chickens are typically highly destructive and will take any enclosure they're in down to bare earth. If you can guard against all of these things and don't mind shelling out to pay for antibiotics/parasites in the event of a problem, then you may be able to keep peafowl with other birds without incident, but it's often cheaper, easier, and less stressful for the peafowl to give them their own space.

Q: Can I hand-raise chicks to get friendlier birds, like with chickens/ducks/emus etc?
Unfortunately, no. While you can hand-raise a hen for a friendlier bird, she is likely to have major trouble adjusting socially, and may entirely reject a peacock mate, resulting in infertile eggs from her for the rest of her life. It may also mean she cannot be housed with a flock, which will be highly stressful on her, as peafowl are very social birds. With males, the answer is "never" because with almost no exception, hand-raised males become dangerously aggressive once they hit maturity between 2 and 4 years of age. They may attack hens in with them, relentlessly stalk and attack any humans in their territory, and have sent many folks to the hospital for stitches due to their sharp spurs and ability to reach your face. This aggression cannot be cured- the only solution is to pen the bird by himself during at least breeding season and possibly all year, or to euthanize him. This is NOT a desirable outcome for you or the bird, and we HIGHLY advise folks not to hand raise peafowl. Responsible breeders usually will not sell eggs or chicks younger than 3 months, except to folks that understand this/have raised peafowl previously so they know to avoid this.

Q: Are peafowl really as loud as people say?
The answer is... it's complicated. While the peafowl call is very loud on your own, and their call carries a longer distance than a chicken rooster's crow, by decibel they are "quieter" than a rooster call, and an individual peafowl will call far fewer times per day than a chicken rooster, and mainly in the summer months between April and August. Ours typically start calling in late April, and are done by the beginning of July. They will all do a "locator" call in the morning, when they first come down from their overnight roosts, in order to collect their flock together again, and when they see predators.

Q: Do peafowl make good guard birds?
Absolutely not. They make decent watch birds, but they will not defend a flock or even another bird, with the exception being a hen with chicks. A mama hen can, and will if she is able, kill birds of prey that stoop on her chicks, so it's advisable to pen hens during breeding season, both for their own protection and to protect local birds of prey.

Q: Can you eat peafowl eggs?
Yep! They're delicious. We do sometimes offer edible eggs for $5/ea at local reptile expos. These are from a pen or pens without males, or whose males are only chicks/yearlings that are unlikely to be breeding, and thus cannot be hatched.

Q: Can you eat peafowl?
Yep! We have released several aggressive or otherwise unsuitable young peafowl to folks for eating over the last 15 years, and they report back that peafowl largely look and taste like chicken after processing.

Q: If I breed this color to-
I'm gonna stop you there. If you want to learn about genetics, you can visit my Peafowl Genetics page. I will be working on transferring all of that info over to this site in a more readable format soon, so keep an eye out!

Q: Do peafowl make good house pets?
Nope! Peafowl are agricultural animals not pets, and should not be kept in houses, or in suburban environments. Your residence should be agriculturally zoned or otherwise in an area whose local ordinances allow for poultry.

Q: What do you do with all the feathers?
I usually make vases full of feathers, or send them to a friend of mine for her kitty cats. I often give slightly-damaged big wing feathers to children visiting the farm. Undamaged eyes and wing feathers will be available for purchase to artists, soon.