You might wonder why would you need or want to catch a peacock? In this particular instance Farmer Mary wants to catch her young male peacock who has been freely roaming the farm since he hatched about three years ago. He is mature enough to “get married” and she would like to have him visit the peahens for a few weeks. This just happens to be the time of year that peacocks mate and lay eggs. That is why, when you visit Winterpast Farm, you may hear the males odd noise (some describe it as a dying cat sound)
Today Farmer Mary tried luring the male (named JUSTIN BEIBER) with scratch feed (a combination of corn and wheat grains) on top of the peacock pen where JOSEPH and RACHEL and SELENA live now.
No luck, but he wasn’t really hungry. Will continue then story tomorrow…..
UPDATE the next day
Had a chance to grab him this morning but would have had to drop eggs I had just gathered…next time I would choose to drop the eggs!
UPDATE the next day…SUCCESS!!!!
Early in the morning I tried to lure J.B. with food and came close to grabbing him. An hour or so later, CHESTER the goose grabbed the peacock and held on. I had never seen CHESTER even near the peacock ever. CHARLIE the farm dog joined in the chase and the goose let go, then J.B. unwisely wedged himself behind a fence where Farmer Mary and daughter, Elizabeth, could grab him. Next was getting JOSEPH the peacock out of the pen which was harder than we expected. A few really lovely tail feathers were lost in that process.
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JOSEPH has never been out of the pen in all the four or so years he has lived at the farm. JUSTIN has never been in a pen since he hatched here in an incubator three years ago. When we put JUSTIN in the pen the two peahens went right up to him, so we are hopeful for fertile eggs and babies this Spring.
