If you are a first-time peacock owner, or you are struggling with keeping your birds grounded, then this article is for you!
Today, we are giving you a straightforward guide on how to prevent the feathers from flying away.
How to Keep Peacocks from Flying Away
To prevent your peacocks from flying away, you should:
- You should provide them with a safe, comfortable living environment where they can roam free, ideally a large pen.
- It is best to train them to stay at home. Young peafowl (yearlings) are easier to train than older peafowl, but older peafowl can be trained, if you are patient.
- Reduce or eliminate any peacock predators in the vicinity (buzzards, eagles, hawks, feral cats) of your birds.
Reasons that Could Cause Peacocks to Fly Away
Before diving into the still-very-important section of how to reduce flying in your peacocks, let’s look first at some of the more common things that encourage people to take out a peacocks care..
In the list below, you’ll get to see a few of the most common things that cause peacocks to fly away in the first place, and how to reduce the risk of your peacocks to having any of these encounters.
1. Your Peacocks are Feeling Lost
When you change the environment for peacocks, for example moving them to a new home, they can feel lost. The same can be true for new fowl.
This feeling of “loss” and “misplacement” creates a type of stress which causes them to want to go back to the place they came from, even if they do not actually know where that is.
Generally speaking, this behavior will change when your peacocks have had enough time to adjust to their new environment. However, as long as your peacocks continue to feel lost, the desire to fly away might persist.
For this reason, you should always make sure that new peacocks stay in the pen for at least 2 months after you bring them home.
Good idea: to spend quality time with your peacocks to help them build trust, and to get use to their new home more quickly.
2. Your Pen Is Overcrowded
Also, your peacocks are at risk of flying away from your pen if there are too many of them, all trying to find a better home.
Peacocks do need some personal space to feel comfortable, and it’s something they value highly.
To avoid such a problem, you will want to not over-populate your peacock’s pen with the same breed or with other birds and poultry like chickens.
If you’re constructing your own pen, you will want to be sure to make it quite large as peacocks will enjoy jumping around and spreading out their tails freely.
3. There are Predators Nearby
Peacocks do indeed possess a behavioral temperament, but they largely like to live a life of comfort.
If for some reason they perceive or see that the predators are close to them and/or in an unsafe habitat, they will generally fly away in a way to escape their new” unsafe” home.
4 Methods to Keep Peacocks from Flying Away
Regardless of whether you own peacocks for the first time, or are just suffering from the struggle of ownership, we have created an article covering 4 tips to help you not have to deal with the birds flying away.
1. Provide a Large Pen
The very first thing you should do to ensure you do not drive your peacocks away is to give them an adequate enough area of pen to live in.
Remember, these birds need ample space to hop around and stretch comfortably.
If you provide enough room, peacocks will not feel pinched or wedged in the pen, as they will have room to move around (even if it’s just a little). This way they will not be inclined to jump up and escape every time the pen door is opened.
Peacocks can grow to heights of 8 feet or more, so remember that they need space to hop around and fan out their tails without feeling wedged into the pen.
If you happen to have multiple peacocks living together, it is advisable to give each bird their own pen since they are fairly territorial birds.
You can buy a create pen or make your own pen. It is entirely up to you.
However, if you decide to make your own pen, and I suggest you should, utilize sturdy mesh when building the pen walls and roof. Also, include a strong fence to keep predators out.
The Correct Thing to Do: The location of roosts should be literally as up in the air as possible since peacocks like to sit up high with unobstructed views of their surrounding area.
2. Offer Proper Training
While you may not realize it, peacocks are capable of being trained.
In fact, the most effective way of keeping the birds at home is to train them.
The best and quickest results will come from training young peacocks. So, if you are intending to adopt new peacocks, choose a young adult around 1 years old.
Training young peacocks is much easier and preferable for people who want to have free-range peacocks and do not want to worry that they will fly away at the first opportunity.
Your training of peacocks will need to be consistent for several weeks so the birds have enough time to slowly learn what you want them to do.
To train young peacocks, many people clip their wings before they let them out of their pens.
The clipping provides a minor barrier to flying, and they will soon think they cannot fly that high or that long and just stop trying it altogether.
3. Give them Extra Care
Not everyone can take in juvenile peacocks, and if you find yourself in that situation, don’t fret!
It is still possible to train your older peacocks to stay around – it will just take longer and more work (compared to a yearling) to communicate your intent.
If you are adopting an adult peacock, we recommend adopting one that is pre-trained, or one who has lived in a closed pen.
Be sure to give your new birds, an extra amount of love and care to help them adjust to the new surroundings.
This way, you peacocks will have no reason to leave, and after some time, you don’t have to worry about them flying away when they are allowed out of the pen.
Tip: Be sure to provide all your peacocks ample food and fresh water, with a treat once in a while, to keep them grounded.
4. Drive Predators Away
Lastly, if there is any predator in the area, you should move them away because a peacock will attempt to leave when they feel threatened.
Predators that scare peacocks include snakes, foxes, and even some dogs in your home.
So keeping predators from your peacocks not only helps keep them from flying away but they will stay alive!
If you own dogs, establish boundaries to teach your peacocks and dogs where to go and where not to go, and fences will create boundaries from predators to your peacocks.
This is all important, so your peacocks learn to relax and feel secure on your property, even from light-hearted puppies they are just playing with.
If you want your dogs and peacocks to get along without the peacocks flying away, you may need to fence in your pens and train your dogs not to pursue after your peacocks.
Wrap Up
So there you have it: your complete guide to preventing peacocks from flying away.
Accomplishing this mission can be as easy as providing a safe and spacious environment for your birds, as well as giving your birds lots of attention and love.