Time to say goodbye to the peafowl...

YES, they are beautiful creatures but, when they are in breeding season they go crazy and because we have them housed with the chickens the male started attacking the hens.
We decided that they needed their own house . At this time we want to put our energy into our own living situation, so the peafowl must go.....

The peahen started laying eggs and she has been dropping them from the roosting pole in the yard, a 5 foot drop! And they don't break! This is a picture of two of her eggs with one chicken egg.

The cycle of life...and death......

The peacock is beginning to grow his traditional tail feathers at 15 1/2 months of age.

I have found the best way to clean the chicken coop is to use a screen constructed of a frame of 2X4s with 1/4 inch hardware cloth. I first rake the poop in a pile and then shovel it onto the screen. The sand falls through and the
poop stays on the screen

which I dump into a wheel borrow and use in my compost pile.

I constructed the chickens feed box with wood. The top is at a steep slant so they will not sit on the top and poop all over it. I put hinges on the top so I could easily put the feed in and the opening in front is just large enough for the roosters comb to fit . I have been very happy with this design.

We had to put a top over the end nest because when the hens would roost on the top of the nesting boxes at night they would poop into that far right open box. It is now very private and roomy!

Underneath the nesting boxes I have an old cat litter container with large holes cut in the sides for water, old gallon containers with holes cut in the sides for oyster shells (for calcium) and grit (this helps them to digest whole grains) and the layer mash box I built. I do have them raised up so they keep a lot cleaner.

I am trying cedar flakes as the bedding for the floor, I know I cannot sift the poop out but when we went to get the cedar saw dust, this was all they had, we will see what works. It sure smells a lot better!

Two of the Aracana chickens disappeared last week. We know it was not during the night. The only thing we can think of is a fox or chicken hawk got them as they wandered off by themselves. We are beginning to believe that the Aracana's have a mind of their own and are very suborn at times, like not coming

with the others at night when we call for they to return to the coop. Maybe they are getting deaf!

Richard is improving the pigeon coop by redoing the nesting boxes so they have a plywood bottom attached to a 2X4 that is a perch and that slides out for easy cleaning.
It is important to have a place that each pair can roost together and not be bothered by other jealous males.

We oriented the coop east/ west so the sun would come in in the winter to keep them warm and not come in in the summer so they would be cooler, so far this has worked very well. This building was built from recycled materials as well.

The best book to read about pigeon care is "the Pigeon " By Wendell Levi. He was/is the foremost authority of pigeons and has written the most complete information which has been the standard for the past 40 years!

These are the babies and will be the ones that will be trained to fly from a distance because they were born in this coop.
The parents will always be captive , for if they were let out , they would fly to where they were born.



Here is the example of the before and after nesting box upgrade.











A Cut ant update: I could never quite get rid of all the colonies with the soap and it was taking me hours of search , mix and pours in the dark. So I have come across a powerful chemical that we are using to get rid of the termites call "Termidor"(Fipronil) It is actually low on the list for toxicity, here is a link to the information: http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/fiptech.pdf THIS really works! The way I use it is very conservative. I mix 1/2 teaspoon into 2 cups and pour about 2Tablespoons into the hole of each and hill, that way no other animal will be affected. The way it works is that the ants do not detect its presents and continue on as normal. They spread the chemical from one ant to another and the whole colony is infected by the time the chemical starts affecting their nervous system and by then it is too late. The cheapest place I found to order Termidor is www.domyownpestcontrol.com . They were very prompt as well. I will keep you posted...




This is the sad part. We built an 8 ft fence so the dear would stay out and would not even try to jump the fence. For some reason this dear jumped through the 8" opening ,she made it through except for the last hoof which got caught between the wires. It is hard to witness this happening when we thought we were preventing it . We have seen this happen with a 4'foot fence, but NEVER thought this would happen with a much taller fence.

Waiting for materials and help.

Since we are building with recycled materials there are times when we are ready to start the next project we have not connected with our supplier to get started. We do always have other things to do, so this month was finishing the gate so it too was at an eight foot height. Since we went to so much trouble to have an eight foot fence we did not want the deer to just hop over the 4 foot gate and be trapped INSIDE our property.
We used 1/2 inch metal tubing , cut to 8 foot lengths and wired it to each vertical bar on the gate. We then took 3/8 inch(#3) rebar , cut to the width of the gate and wired them to the upright tubes. This was the framework that we attached 4 foot woven wire fencing to the original gate. This way the small animals will be prevented from coming in and the deer will not jump the 8 foot high fence.

I would suggest only using woven wire ,even though it is more expensive, not welded wire fencing because the welds on the welded wire come apart so easily and cannot be easily fixed, if at all.

The welcome rain has arrived and the plant and animal life is rejoicing

We even have these mushrooms that are appearing everywhere !

We found this sleeping elf at "The Great Outdoors Nursery " in Austin, TX . We have been very happy with their wide selection of garden items. I just really like this arrangement in our closet/guestroom with an antique lamp from our Grandmother.

Here are the 3 month old baby peafowl, we are not able to tell the difference between the males and the females yet, but the supplier assures us we will within the month.

This is our oldest peacock, he is about 15 months old, don't you just love that color blue!

Here are the teenagers (4 months old)

They are the same bred as the older male and there is a distinct difference between the male and female. The girls are lighter, the boys have dark barring on their feathers with a green color showing up on the nape of their necks.




We happened to see this baby copperhead snake cross the path up by the garden. See how the pattern is very distinct, orange and black bands, they are very poisonous. This is the first one we have seen since working the land.

Usually the Copperheads don’t bite. However, if you grasp one or get very close to one it will and can bite you. A bite will be used as a last defense against you. The Copperhead was responsible for approximately 37 percent of venomous snake bites in the US in 2001 (Lavonas E.J. et al., 2004)1

The venom is toxic and a bite from a Copperhead Snake is extremely painful, requires immediate medical treatment, but is very, very seldom fatal. Its one of the least venomous snakes of the venomous snakes in the USA
It may however cause serious damage to your tissue and leave scars. Also there’s always a risk of a secondary infection caused by bacteria from the snakes mouth parts.For this reason there’s no point in trying to handle these snakes unless you have some formal training handling's snakes.

It wasn't until we have chickens and pigeons did we see the chicken snake AKA Rat snake. Texas Rat Snakes are an ill-tempered snake if encountered in the wild,and will readily defend themselves. This usually involves coiling up, raising the head, striking out repeatedly at anything that gets too close and vibrating the tail. This vibrating of the tail often causes them to be mistaken for a rattlesnake; however, they do not have rattles on the tail and are NOT rattlesnakes. They are not venous and will eat rodents, we have only killed the ones that enter the coop and eat the eggs.

We do have other good snakes which we completely leave alone, like the black snake that dashes away as fast as he can.

Baby Peafowls!!!

We decided to get more peafowl because they are so beautiful ! Our first batch was received on June 3. They are the yellow babies that look like baby chicks ( the last pictures in this post). When baby fowl are ordered they are flown out the day they are hatched. The babies have a 3 day window before they have to eat and they keep each other warm in the transport.
Here to the left is a picture of the second batch of peafowl that we got,they are more gamey and very dark compared to the first batch. The rest of the story follows:


We ordered the first batch months ago. The breeders need to wait to ship when the weather gets warm enough. Peafowl love the heat and will die if it gets too cold. When they are young they only have down feathers. As soon as these are replaced with real feathers then they can take cooler temperatures. The babies have to be ordered in batches of 8 so they survive the journey by keeping each other warm.
So we got the call that they would be shipped on Tuesday ( the place we ordered them from cannot ship on Monday because that is the day a dry ice Company ships out and that would keep the chicks too cold) and arrive on Thursday
They all arrived alive and well. The brooder box was clean and stocked with water and chick starter food, From the breeders advise I boiled chicken eggs , mashed them up and feed that to them for the first two weeks. They LOVED that and it is a very good source of protein!
Then One of them started to have problems within a few days and died. Then another one was starting to look weak , sleep all the time and did not eat. This one died as well. So then there was 6.

I called the breeders and told them what had happened and asked them what I did wrong. She said I did just what I was suppose to do. She volunteered to send another batch if we covered the shipping, I was impressed with that gesture and accepted the offer. They were shipped out and arrived On July 6Th. One of them did not survive the journey for what ever reason.

The older peafowl soon out grew their cage and we had to move them so the 2ND batch could occupy the brooder box.
I would highly recommend The breeders we bought our pea fowl from, they proved to be honest and very helpful people, here is their name:
Mouse Creek Feather Farm
N5005 Cty Rd B
New London, WI 54961
Diana: 920-570-0314
www.mousecreekfeatherfarm.com

Peafoul exchange

We knew that one of our neighbors had received a pair of peacocks from the same batch as us, so we called them to see if we could see what their birds looked like. It turns out that they had 2 males and we had two females. We each were trying to figure out if ours were male or female by looking at the difference ,but we never could because we each had the same sex. So we exchanged a female for a male and now each of us has a pair. AND WOW they are very different as you can see! This is what we love about the county and our great neighbors!!!

The Peafowl are about 10 months old.