Should you add peacocks to your homestead?
Jul. 28—This story was originally published in 2019.
With its dazzling fan of colorful feathers, the peacock is the prima donna of domestic birds. Strutting about the yard, it demands attention, its iridescent feathers shining in the sun.
"It's like having a walking flower garden," Bill Benner, a peafowl breeder from Massachusetts whose experience with the bird stretches back to the late '60s, said.
The majority of peafowl bred in the U.S. are India blue peafowl, which come from India. This species of peafowl is extremely hardy, making it well-suited for even the northernmost reaches of the country.
The typical India blue peafowl has a long vibrant blue neck and head, with an elaborate tail of greens, gold and blue. However, over the years, the species has been selectively bred to produce a variety of other colors, including an all-white variety, a brown and tan variety, several pied varieties and a black-shouldered variety. These are all just mutations of the same species.
"I think there's somewhere around 200 different color variations now," Benner said. "In the last 30 years, people have come up with many more mutations."
In addition, an entirely different species of peafowl called the green peafowl is also bred in the U.S., though it's not as common. This species, originating from southeast Asia, are not as tolerant of the cold, so they require heated shelters in northern states.
The birds' beauty, Benner said, is one the primary reason people raise them in the United States. Yet some farmers have discovered that peafowl — for which "peacock" is the term for male and "peahen" is the term for female — can fill a few other roles on their property.
"The peafowl are tremendous watch dogs," said Scott DeMoranville, who raises peafowl and a variety of poultry on his farm, 4Ds Farm, in Bradford, Maine. "Nothing can move in that yard at night without the peafowl knowing it, and when they get alarmed, they scream."
