Saturday, May 27, 2017

and the name is..... Rio!!!!!

Today began with breakfast out at one of my favorite places... "I hop". I just love their sweet crepes with lots of strawberries. Yummy as usual. Then...it was onto our adventure.

About a month ago I was told about a peacock who might be in need of a new home. He had lost his mate and hasn't been a very nice guy since. The farm he was living on has kids and the owner was a little worried about him around the children. I said if they decided to re-home I would take him.  I have thought for a while it might be fun to have some pea fowl, but after seeing the price of them...decided they weren't at the top of my list. 
But turned out I didn't need to buy any...because the family said this guy needed to go.  We had cleaned the coop out last weekend and put our new guineas in on one side...so I had an empty side for this guy.

I was told he was big...his tail about five feet...but when we walked into their barn and saw him perched like this...I thought ..goodness, how will we ever get him home.








I brought the biggest dog crate we had..and chose a wire crate thinking he might like it better than a closed crate. Then we brought a cloth tarp to cover it because he had to ride in the back of the truck. Now "all" we had to do was catch him and get him in the crate....
Actually it went smoother than I thought. Ed and the owner got him off the roost and once he was on the floor..ed grabbed him like he does our turkeys.. and pushed him in the crate.
I'm glad we brought this crate..he seemed ok in it but it was a tight fit with that tail. All in all he seemed fairly calm and comfortable.
Then we wrapped him up with the tarp and headed for home.
Livy was very excited watching us packing up our new friend. She's bird crazy and since she rode most of the way home like this...I'm going to have to watch her. If she gets out on her own she'll be flying down to the coop....
The ride home went really well. Back  on our farm we just held the crate near the coop door, Rio ( that's his name) poked his head out..took a look at the coop and walked in as nice as could be.
He hopped up on the shelf..called out to the guineas a few times..and seemed to feel quite at home.
His tail goes all the way to the floor.....


It didn't take him long to figure out he can go outside too but I have already decided we'll need to add onto his pen. Because he has a reputation of not being nice I'm going to keep him penned for a while anyways. I'm also looking into a friend for him, I've been talking with a breeder about how to keep him properly and have done quite a bit of research on them.  They're interesting creatures.


And so....a new resident of the farm....sir Rio..the indigo blue peacock.....