Oh, the $500 was for 8 of them in a ‘rare peafowl’ selection with all the pretty pretty colors like buff and cameo and stuff.
My great aunt used to have 2 peahens and a peacock. The peacock would hang out in a tree in her front yard with its tail just draping off a branch. My aunt had 80 acres and her neighbors had 80 and 160 acres respectively. Lots of room for peafowl to hang out in. And no coyotes or foxes that I’m aware of.
They’d scream like a girl. My great aunt didn’t have chickens though. Just guineas. There were NO ticks or chiggers in her front yard either. Just small discrete piles of guinea poop.
We only have 3 acres and live on the corner of a busy country intersection so there’s no question of us not having one right now. It would die a sad horrible death.
One thing that I learned is that pea fowl don’t understand boundaries. They go where they want to go. My neighbor had one on 25 acres, but (occasionally) he’d wander off and she’d have to go pick him up.
The leader of my flock was stalked and killed by a fox and 3 kits. (We got a tracker in to detrmine this fact.) Those viscious foxes just pulled his tail feathers out and discarded them in a ditch. I grieved for months over his death because I considered it my fault. That was the one evening that I failed to lock them in their barn because I had a meeting and they refused to go in.
The interesting thing is that they woke me up at 3 AM with their screaming. I looked out and saw a whole line of them heading for the barn in the moonlight. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that the big male was missing. He had led the foxes in the opposte direction (we found their footprints) and saved the flock.
The problem was that he’d led them down the driveway which had evergreen trees on both sides — no place to perch! You have to provide open trees with places for them to perch, or they won’t survive in a yard. Mine were good at perching in a horse stall, but didn’t seem to understand how to get up in a tree, even though we built perches for them. They never seemed to learn to use them.
I looked for that bird for 2 days before we found his remains (the tail feathers were all that was left.) I remember standing on my front porch and saying to the dog, “Where’s the bird. Go find the bird.” My dog put her nose to the ground and led me down the drive, stopping near the road with her nose in the grass. I scoffed and said, “That’s not a bird, you silly dog.” Then I looked closer and spotted some tiny neck feathers in the grass. My husband found the tail feathers across the road in the ditch when he got home. So sad.