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[> Subject: Re: White Peafowl....harder to raise?
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Author:
Kevin
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Date Posted: 21:48:08 08/15/06 Tue
I agree with the comments they aren't any more difficult to raise/keep. I have heard comments from others claiming they are weaker or more fragile though. I feed all of my chicks and the birds the same and they all do equally well plus the whites did well irregardless of how they were raised- various brooder setups, raised by chickens or by peahens. The only problem I can think of is related to breeding, some peafowl apparently reject whites or consider them less desirable mating partners. Three of my cocks do not like whites, two will tolerate and breed with them but otherwise they will give them a harsh peck if a white hen gets too close.. they are perfect gentlemen with any other colored hens. However the eggs from the white hens with those two are perfectly fertile.. go figure. The third one actually will try to kill anything solid white. It's like he sees them as the enemy or something.. suspect they fail to realize the white birds are normal peafowl.. like some wild animals reject their albino members of the same species. I wonder if the infertility with the other hens is they just don't like the white male.. because he's white. That can sound odd as they are whites but I have known of white cocks that absolutely refused to breed with whites but bred blue hens with no problems.. apparently they don't realize that they themselves are "white".. I see the same behavior with peachicks, if there was a group of colored with just one white peachick and I eventually add another white, the coloreds take no notice of the new white but the "old" white can act all spooked out or extremely interested in the new white chick as if they never saw such a thing before.
The mention of inbreeding is probably a very good suggestion. Several people wanting white peafowl from me have specificially asked if they were from "long lines of pure white peafowl" or something along those lines.. apparently there is some belief that white peafowl must be bred only to whites for several generations in order to have peafowl that will throw ONLY "pure white" peafowl. Explaining white was simply a recessive gene and that any white peafowl bred to any other white peafowl, even if their parents were "colored", would produce only whites did not go over too well for some.. Anyways the point of this, perhaps some people do have some trouble from severely restricting their white genepool.. so the perceived weakness is due to inbreeding not the color.
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Re: OBSERVATIONS