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SHOW NOTES
Join Nicole and Douglas Buffington as they talk about raising peafowl, today’s education system, and tips for a fulfilling life.
Doug’s book, Peacocks Only: A Survival Guide for Peacocks*- https://amzn.to/3gQQf49
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
• Nutritional requirements for peafowl
• Breeding and genetics
• Egg Incubation
• Common illnesses and treatments
• Medications to have on hand
• Housing and free ranging birds
• Worming recommendations
• Douglas’s thoughts on today’s education system and tips for a fulfilling life
OUR GUEST
In Episode 15 of Backyard Bounty, we are joined by the incredible Douglas Buffington. Douglas is a retired schoolteacher and peafowl expert who created the popular Facebook group Peacocks Only.
Douglas is very knowledgeable in all things peafowl and has helped thousands of peafowl owners with is Facebook group. With 80 birds and several decades of experience raising peafowl, Douglas is quick to help those in need.
In addition to peafowl. Douglas has an amazing outlook on life, one that everyone should hear.
RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED
• Peacocks Only Facebook Group
• Earl Nightingale- The Strangest Secret
• 5 in 1 Medication
• Grant Cardone
• Email us! Ask@HeritageAcresMarket.com
SUPPORT THE SHOW
Your support helps us continue to provide the best possible episodes!
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#heritageacresmarket #backyardbountypodcast
Welcome to the backyard bounty podcast from heritage acres market calm where we talk about all things backyard poultry beekeeping gardening sustainable living and more and now here's your host Nicole hello everybody thank you for joining us for another episode of backyard bounty today we're talking with Douglas Buffington the creator of the Facebook.
Page peacocks only and Douglas is an amazing gentleman that has many years of experience raising peafowl he has answers to every question that you could possibly have about them and his Facebook page is a wonderful resource for experienced and new peafowl owners there's a bunch of great people on there.
That can answer a number of questions I know that I've used them several times for questions that I've had with my people throughout the years and today I recorded with Douglas via skype so this episode is going to be a little bit different and that after this introduction I'm basically just going to play for you the own conversation.
Effectively that we had together so I love Doug he it was so much fun talking to him and I learned so much and this episode is going to be wonderful for anybody that is thinking about getting started with peafowl or has already maybe started this season it's gonna address a lot of the questions that people have and some of the things that.
You need to have on hand for them treating some illnesses that are really common and this was an episode that I was really excited to record and I hope that you all enjoy learning all there is to know about befell it's nichole how are you okay well first of all I wanted to thank you again I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and.
Everything you have been such a vital resource I know for me and my pee foul and you I just have so much information and and I think it's so kind of you to share with everybody and your Facebook group is the best I just absolutely love it and everybody there is great and anytime I have any question about my peafowl I know that I can find the.
Answer there and it has made things a lot easier because they're not quite as easy as sometimes well you know I tell people I'm an old man with too little to do and too much time yeah I did I just put it into the group said your compliment oh of course I was a school teacher for 31 years.
So I'm afraid all my files look like lessons oh well I think I I'm pretty analytical so that works great for me I think it's yeah I can find what I need and it's there and and there's not a whole lot of fluffing it just gets down to it and and I like it yeah yeah well can't think of CS you know I actually just have one pair I've got an India.
Blue male and a black shoulder female mm-hm yeah let's go good together yeah but the peacocks they all are carrying so many recessive genes that you can be pretty sure what you're going to get but you get a surprise kind of regular oh really yeah so there are 125 different colors and color patterns the peacocks a lot of.
People just amazed to know that because all he's saying is blue and maybe white but there's that many and none of us have seen of all people in the group keep asking what do you get across this with that yeah but who knows you know we've never even seen them and and we don't know what kind of genes are carrying so I said you'd love to get.
Just about anything sir on a real expensive colors though they don't mix them up too much with the other birds they want to keep them to where the mating results are predictable because they you know the birds have a better value mm-hmm yeah I know that my male I actually hatched him out of some eggs that I was gifted from a family friend.
And then I got my female last year and I'm not sure how old she is but she has some decent sized Spurs so I'm assuming she's at least AB laying age but she ended up getting a little hurt this year and scratched up her face pretty good and we've been working on getting that healed and I'm not sure if maybe that was why but she she hasn't laid any eggs.
This year well that's kind of common complaint did here and especially last year people waiting for their eggs all summer long so it's always something with these peacocks you know one year the Seas it's too early the next year they didn't get any eggs the next year they didn't hatch and tell me something with them.
You know that's why we become next year people it says what I say that next year is always going to be better the units are bad year and then we start talking about next year he thought gags don't incubate very well on top of everything else if you put them under a turkey hen or a chicken in you gonna do a lot better but the the the peacock cans are.
Just not real reliable sitters sometimes it'll stay on the nest and sometimes we get halfway through and then abandon it and sometimes they never said so they're not if you have an alternative you know you got something else you can put them under you probably ought to go with it yeah I hatched out some last year just in my incubator and I only set I think.
It was yeah I sent three eggs and I had to hatch so I was pretty happy with that yeah you you you about as good as anybody gets 2/3 2/3 sets of everything you pick up because you know when I count man fertilis and those that don't hatch and and all of that you know if I got 2/3 2/3 and it results in chicks I'm pretty happy it's not like chicken eggs.
The chicken eggs hatch a lot better yeah I shook and eggs it seems like it doesn't take a whole lot and you know it's pretty easy to get pretty close to a hundred percent of fertile hatch on the chicken eggs they take wide swings and temperatures and humidity pretty well too you know you have a fluctuating temperature of a couple of degrees or so.
Humidity that's not exactly right you'll still get a decent hatch but because you got to do everything right and still you know it often is disappointing sure what kind of incubator do you use I usually take UF but I'ma tell you I'm pretty disgusted with all of them gqf I just can't speak ill enough about their incubators they repeat about $1,000 for.
One of them now by the time you buy the trees and the egg the egg crate it's that you know the part that the egg rest on and then you gotta buy the metal trays and so I bought one it took me a whole year to figure out that the they got digital readouts now you can't just get the old-fashioned one then it was under.
Reporting humidity by 10 points oh my gosh and then the other one yeah when they had some kind of I finally wormed it out of this sport guy there was some kind of defect in the electrical system on the fans and blew my fans out and he shut the holy committee I found it and and switch the eggs to another incubator and they same job that's like they.
Hadn't been cooled down for very long but you know I could have lost the whole incubator of AIDS I just don't know why somebody doesn't make a plain old-fashioned iike better eating work with double wafers and a fan in it and no digital stuff that digital stuff on top of it on top of everything else the digital readings are never accurate you.
Have to take your own temperature reading for example on one of mine to get 99.5 I have to set it on 100 and 1.5 set the digital control and the humidity also knows how far off it is the only way you can actually know what's going on inside your incubator to take what's called a wet ball test and everybody treats a wet ball test like.
It's some kind of rocket science and it's the easiest thing in the world to do but you never going to know exactly what your humidity is without taking a wet bulb reading and how do you do a wet bulb reading then we have to buy a special for monster with a spike on it and you get those from gisu gqf and you have to drill a hole in the side.
Because they don't send a chemical thermometer with you know the needle they don't send those with them anymore because if they sent those with them they would never agree with a digital so the amount of a 6-inch spike on it and they've got a wicking like a sock he at that wicking you put it on about two-thirds of the way up and you let the.
Other part sit in the water reservoir and when the temperature is like 99.5 in the incubator the wet-bulb reading depending on who should be 86 86 degrees that's 60% humidity for a peacock gauge and you take your reading and you're just the humidity by opening and closing the vents you you want your intake port to be wide open but your exhaust fan.
Either restricted or open it up to just to get the right humidity and it's important to know the incubator has the place where the ambient temperatures and humidity are stable like I keep mine in the water will the humidity and temperature and they're never ever changes because if you have wild.
Fluctuations and the temperature and the humidity then you're gonna have trouble controlling humidity inside the incubator – and if the temperature outside swings enough you'll have trouble controlling the temperature also I think that's one thing that a lot of people struggle with is you know they usually want to have their incubators.
Out somewhere that they can look at it and it's usually in the you know maybe in the living room and then they have their central air run and on during the day or maybe not at night and so yeah those temperature fluctuations those are hard for those incubators to keep up with them it's worse if you if you amount Dafydd somewhere because once the.
Temperature outside the incubator reaches 90 degrees I wish I had a technical explanation for you but the incubator centers it doesn't function for anymore and your eggs are gonna go bad you get 90 degrees are better and it's not gonna build it it's just a little heavier incubator had to like you want and it's frequently high that high.
You know what I may be here out here my barns sometimes it 95 to 100 degrees and it's inside the barn Oh sir but when you had your chase it's important that you leave them in the incubator a lot of them have these desktop incubators and they don't have room for it once the cash is you got to get them out but if you have a cabinet.
Incubator where you've got room down in the hatching down in the bottom gadgetry it's important then there until third days they're not like chickens or guinea or well they're not going to jump up and start running they it takes about 24 hours just to unfurl their feet and then they're just not going to be strong enough and active enough to get out of.
The incubator – the third day and people ask about what beautiful how do they eat drink while they're in there and put some revised this is that a check will not eat or drink typically for the first three days because they've got that yolk in them and it's what their that's what they're living on so if you offer little water they won't take it yeah I know.
That with the yolk I see that question also all the time and obviously when mama bird is sitting on eggs not all of the eggs hatch at exactly the same time and there can be a natural variation of several days so if they kind of have that built-in buffer and then the yoke so that everybody can make it through three.
Days without dying of starvation or dehydration get your hands out and they're laying out and feel somewhere you never see people say oh you know my took their heads and they're doing just fine you never see that they can't walk can't keep up or the ones that just don't make it in with him so you really don't know how you're doing exactly yeah.
That's a good point I've actually never really thought about that just because I'm so used to chickens that are in a nest box and so it's you know if some of them don't make it you don't you don't see them but yeah that's a really great point let's talk about free free ranging quote free ranging it's it's I'm not a fan of that because whenever you just.
Turn a bird out and you set some feed and water out they're pretty much on their own especially handle the nest you never know what's coming in the night and I've seen nest 2 where the chicks start to hatch and like I said some hatch before others and the hansel find them and an answer go if there's a if there's a hole in the egg where they're.
Started to break out dance they'll go down in that hole in the egg and start feeding on that chicken next thing you know the hen can't set on the nest when it's full ants and she gets up with two or three chicks and takes off and there's dogs possums Coons you name it they're gonna come in and he's gonna loose he's gonna.
Lose hands I don't know how they stay head out there for thirty days to catch anything yeah I'm not a huge fan of free-ranging just for those similar issues the Predators and it seems like it's just inevitable to lose a bird and especially with the peafowl that are you know it would just devastate me if I lost one somebody made the point one.
Can't do that because they and fins do things get in the pen and kill them and and another thing about keeping peacocks in opinion you can't have a big ten you know Lee otherwise they they keep reinfecting themselves with parasites and protozoans like coccidiosis and black kids and you have to keep up a good worm regimen and singles off their.
Health and and a peacocks immune system is never going to be as strong as a chicken which is kept in tivity for at least the last 10,000 years and you know all your strongest I made it this far they're kinda like a Turkey's mean system you know turkeys they get blackhead that's a kiss of death they used to put things like.
Metronidazole in the feed up until of the early nineties used to put it in the feed and then they decided that medication wasn't any good for people you know their residuals that come forward in eggs there's a whole class of those drugs that are very similarly related it's not just the metronidazole but they come forward in the in the eggs.
And then chickens like to get at Walmart they'll feed on that medication right at the slaughter and there are certain fine residuals in humans that wasn't doing them any good and it's coming at you from every direction because you're using those same medication to treat livestock with so you sit down to eat in the morning it's in the milk it's and.
The bacon it's in the egg and then here you go again it's in the beef and then the hotdogs and whatever else is you know you're you're constantly exposed to this stuff on a daily basis so when they took the medications out of the feet we everybody could kept on it you know why did my turkeys and Peake officer day and so I finally figured out what we needed.
To do to get them to live and the medications you need and they took everything off the shelf two or three years ago but you can still get medications at the pigeon sites and sometimes the sites that sell medications for fish tropical fish and the reason why you can get the medications there and not anywhere else.
If you know what to ask for and you know where to look you can still get some medications and keep your birds of life but the the reason why you can still get them at those places the pigeon sites and the pet stores is because the Federal Drug Administration identified only five birds as poultry they listed birds out geese ducks.
Chickens turkeys and guineas and so you couldn't put anything in the feed for any of those but they did not mention pigeons I don't think pigeons are a significant part of the food supply you think or they up north maybe I'm not here well they used to sell them in the stores all the time I remember one time reading.
About this book that was written back in the 40s about pigeons maybe early 50s and as a guy in Arizona he said he had some kind of mites you know they take those squab right out of the nest just before they leave the nest and then that's when they send them to market never supported market once unborn and.
He said he had some might sit there and he he couldn't get rid of them so you gotta hold some DDT powder and he said we put powder right in the nest and he said put it on some of the chicks we just dusted the squab with them and he said that might last and it never came back and I thought what about those poor people who's sticking a hand down in.
That powder and you know putting it all over a worm breathing it and sniffing it getting it on their hands and then the people eating the swab what about them yeah yeah we don't have that DDT anymore and it's good thing too yeah that was some nasty stuff what what they discovered was one of the bad things about it was that he calls eggshells to.
Get thin and then those birds which eat like vultures and eagles and hawks those that fed on mice you know what you have was the mice would feed on the corn they've been treated with the DDT and you get a buildup in them whatever ate the mice would get another buildup and and they discovered that the the the AIDS of the eagle for example were.
Breaking in the nest because they were too thin and they simply had to get the DDT for that and other reasons out of the environment are we were going to have any more I'm gonna have any more Eagles for sure yeah that would have been a tragedy yeah Condor vultures and any number of other birds and and I said just kept.
Building up you get fox that eat so many mice and an owl and then some something eats the Fox and it just keeps concentrating as it goes up the food chain but hey at least we would have corn to eat corn is a an interesting product there some products that you wonder how civilization can exist without them because they're so very.
Distant one of them is corn rice soybeans the pages and just beans in general you ever think of sometimes what we do is you one of those like rice was subtracted from the food supply you know how many million people depend on rice you thought about that yeah probably half of half the world I'm sure Oh India China s.
Two-thirds of the world's population alone yeah and then they put it in everything – yeah yeah my dad made the observation one time and when you think about it you don't it's true he said every animal including people he said every animal will eat corn and it's true I see most squirrels come into the feeder but I see rabbits coming up here.
Woodpeckers even come up everything eats corn I can't think of anything that would not eat for ya I can't think of anything either that's that's an interesting thought it's a vital ingredient of all livestock feed mm-hmm Cornish and it goes into cat food and it goes into everything during the u.s. 80 to 90 percent of all of our corn we have.
Perfect corn growing conditions that and of course the equipment and land to grow it 18 and 90% is exported the rest of the world just doesn't just not even grow corn of course well not even grow a whole lot of rice either yeah that's that's a challenge to grow rice you know in the middle of Texas I'm sure yeah we do something down here in Southeast.
Texas where it's closer to the Louisiana border in Louisiana grows a pretty bitter I think there's some there's some over maybe in southern there's way down south in California I don't know there's another place over there and West West there that diamond down toward Mexico that grows and of course Mexico grows a fair bit of it he.
Can't seem to be a bird of increasing popularity he started about 2005 interest in them started poking up and maybe it was the Internet and the access but also people are learning how to keep alive they just don't tolerate coccidiosis and and what's called black yet it's a histone myiasis and it's it's a pro zoo and also that attacks the.
Liver and birds it actually hijacks a ride into the bird system by being on seeker worms and it does a parasite on seeker worms of course the birds develop seeker worms and then the protozoans find their way to the liver and it it will kill them we first noticed like in in this country about 18 81 or 82 it came in from China with some.
Pheasants that were imported and the pheasants are pretty well it meaning to blackhead but it's devastating to turkeys especially turkeys just don't have immunity to it well after a hundred and forty years that and coccidiosis was first identified he knows how long it's been here but first identified about 1903 and after 100 120 30 40 years with.
Those experience with those in this country we have to assume that every bird in the United States and maybe in the whole world I'm sure has some amount of coccidiosis and blackhead protozoa in them but their immune systems can handle a low level of it it's just whenever the birds get old or stressed or sick with something else like a respiratory.
Infection there their insistence can't hold it and kick anymore and that's why some of the birds will get sick and so long respiratory infections are another big problem with sinus infections their eyes swelling up and then it gets down into their lungs and you treat that with antibiotics you have to give metabiotic injections for that this is not hard to.
Do but you gotta stay on top of treating the sick bird because they go down fast if you not careful I know online I see you often post the five and one purchased from the pigeon supply store like you talked about earlier do you use the five and one if they have a respiratory infection as well or do you just do injections of I'm.
Assuming tilen or something like that well let me tell you about five of one and all in one hectare five and that same product is sold under three or four different names but it's the same thing it has a it has medications in it for the protozoans that your bird will get it which is tanker you know as pigeon tanker sometimes makes its way into.
Peacocks and blackhead coccidiosis and hexa Maya has medications for that and it also has a what they call a combo pack there's an amount of probiotics amino acids and proteins and definitely that will speed your recovery and but and it also has some tile and powder for antibiotic but what I found is that the amount of antibiotic.
The all-in-one or five and one it's not strong enough to kick a IRISA thinks about itself so what I recommend is you give an injection and then you give the five and one or the all in one along with it it's got a worm medication in the – it's a it'll start Berta start expelling worms and old less than 12 hours but but here's the thing about.
Those medications you put in the drinking water your bird has to be drinking normally in order for them to do you any good and you can syringe that medicated water down their throat which is another another story on how to do it but the best thing to do is if they're not drinking is to give them a shot of antibody usually 3/4 CC for a grown pika.
3/4 CC of la 200 or one terry form some tractor supply give them an injection and and give them metronidazole tablets you had to search around if you look at my group i can give you some sources you know for four metros in a zone where he's only a vet's prescription and songs are they they're very okay because you know you pick talks about and be part of.
The food supply but it will kick a respiratory infection the five and one and all along they won't kick it by itself completely you give him a five-day treatment money and you gave him an injection of antibiotics on the front of it there if they're not breathing normally I didn't hear your was in the vendor here yes yeah what was.
It did your bird had you had a sick bird at Vashem once um I know that I talked to you I think it was last year oh gosh I don't even remember what the issue with them was oh my chickens I reached out to you because my chickens had expelled some tapeworms and their feces and I knew that you know the pee foul was different but I knew that you would.
Have the answer and that was that was probably one of the most disgusting experiences I've ever had with poultry yes awful you know there's a number of good worm medications and some of them are easier to get than others but the one that is the absolutely the worst pausing and it's so obsolete it shouldn't be on the Shelf it only.
Controls round worms and there's about four different worms that attack Birds roundworms is only one of them so if you believe you have worms and you give them was me you may not be hit the right worm and certainly not all of but there's panic here albaicin safeguard one of my favorites is ivermectin because i ever met them again.
You can get one of its glucose generic subtractor supply but you mix three streets three feces to a gallon of water and for three days and it will take care of absolutely every kind of worm plus if you have lice or ticks or mites or anything else it gets the external parasites too it just wipes what's just a little plain it's it's a good one.
And it's easy to deliver but again your bird has to be drinking normally to benefit from it so with your worming regimen do you recommend the infirm Ekta nor doing the five and one and just kind of knocking anything else out that they might have well i tell you what i do i because i don't have chickens or any other poultry and and my birds have a.
You know an area was a they're not tightly controlled tightly confined they stay healthier so i only have to give them medications twice a year so about a month before the laying season starts again a treatment out of the five in one or in my case all in one I give them a five day treatment of it and this cleans out the worms and you level it knocks.
Down the levels of affections protozoans and and the Thailand take care of any residual infection that they might have which is what they call subclinical you know not exhibiting symptoms but they they may have it may have some level of it because you don't want to go into laying season with any kind of bacteria in your hands because it's transmitted.
To the egg some of it and vertically to the egg and then to the embryo and sometimes the eggs don't hatch and if they do have died within two three days after hatching because they're they're infected so I give it to them a month before and I give it to them when the season is over in September clean them out again for the winter well I want to.
Tell you that when you use that all in one five and one it has levamisole worm medication in it but you always worm your bird twice because when you give them the worm medication once yeah you haven't killed the eggs so about 10 days later you're gonna have a lot of juvenile worms that are hatching and you.
Want to come back and you want to kill those too so you're supposed to give them when you give me anything with a worm medication 10 to 12 days later you give them another worm medication preferably of different kind so you're not building resistance and you you know you catch what's hatched since the first time and then they'll slowly reinfect.
Over the year but dates at low levels so after your first five day five and one treatment do you follow up then with something else and another five days ten days Oh ten to twelve days yeah you give them I said one of those ones that I mentioned a safeguard our vase and ivermectin ox fenders all any number of.
Them but uh I using the ones you put in the water because it's there they're easier to give him even for like three days and then you're and you're okay you follow up the the all-in-one treatment of ten to twelve days later you give that other medication for three days and you roll off and then these medications I assume would be more appropriate for.
Peafowl again like we talked because they're not a bird that's going to end up being consumed later by humans so some of these medications as you talked about probably shouldn't be used for other other poultry some don't have what they call an egg withdrawal were a period of time medication was to reduce in the chicken.
In the egg so I don't have one I remain in safeguard is one of them and some of them nitrone it is all men turn it is all if you're concerned about that you can wait five days and roll it is all I know especially I've read that in fact they'd speed the levels of Rizzo or reduce to where they're undetectable so if you're if you're worried about.
Residuals and other and other poultry five daily withdrawal is okay you can hardball the eggs and feed emptied yes or just fit him with their their feed so is it safe to say that if you have a bird that's sick within reason it doesn't really matter and that might not be the best phrase to put it but that if your Birds sick that.
They should just get the five on one right off the bat if they're drinking normally yeah if they're drinking normally enough to to take it up now one thing you can do if they're not drinking normally you can mix an eighth of a teaspoon of powder with five cc's of water and mix that up and in and use a syringe of without a needle of course.
And inject it down the throat and you can there's some syringes really that are very suitable for that but you just do it without a needle and go off to the side of the trachea you wanna make sure you don't shoot it in the trachea and that's gonna be the opening in the middle of the flap on it you want to go off to the side make sure you get it.
Down the throat one treatment of that that's usually enough to get them if they're still eating you can also mix you can dust the scrambled egg with some of that five have it one long along with whatever else you're doing and bird can hardly resist a scrambled egg elite that when they don't eat anything else but where the real trouble comes this your.
Bird has stopped eating and drinking they're harder to treat you can inject that medication like I told you with the Syrians or you can start shoving that mentor nettles all down them if they're stopped eating and drinking because of a wrist or infection then you give them some anti-vice right away at la 200 3/4 CC.
A lot of people use Thailand 200 and I've recommended that in the past two CCS 2200 by recommend three CCS 3/4 CC of la 200 because it stays at a therapeutic level in the blood for three days just like you give one injection and it's working for three days where the Thailand maybe 24 hours unless for those that haven't given a burden.
Injection that therapeutic level for three days is is uh sounds much better than trying to do every 24 hours because it's such a pain it's better than trying to catch them and get three shots you know that's for sure let me say something about peacock seed if you ask hungry people what they see they'll come up with a hundred cockamamie home blends.
You know and it drives me nuts and they have some time they think what they're blending up this and that at home is somehow better nutritionally then what you get to feed mill although they don't have a clue what the nutritional makeup of their blend is and face is superior to what the PhD has formulated for the feed meal you know.
Somehow they think they're better than the nutritional experts it's feed mills and I'm sure that places like Purina they play they pay plenty to have to do a lot of research they're just not mixing business that together and see how it works so people will do just fine on laying pellets and a lot of people say oh you know it's a lot of calcium.
For those birds and it's hard on the kidneys well you can feed them something in the offseason and just feeding the leigh.m pellets during the layin months you get it started about a month before you expect the first aid but there's a protein driven they want to give high-protein gamebird feeds 30% 28% there's some protein driven and what.
None of them understand is protein is hard on the kidneys if counseling them is protein is equally hard on the kidneys because your kidneys have to work to expel the excess protein it's in their system those gamebird fees let me tell you what they're for and Purina makes about four of them because it four different stages of a pheasants a life.
Cycle there for the release and shoot pheasants you know up north they get probably five six thousand ringneck pheasant so that they're raising and they throw them out and then then people come with their dogs and shotguns and shoot them and so they naturally want to rush them through as fast as possible so they have something called flight.
Conditioner some people say yeah I give my bird because I've got them on flight conditioner or flight conditioner is is it's what you give a pheasant just before you about to release them it improves a feathers make sure they got all their feathers right but it also Slim's them down and reduces their weight so that they can.
Get off the ground fast enough so is this is this what you're after with the peacock you know you have to ask yourself you know the peacock is not a turkey that you rush into the Thanksgiving table you want that bird to go off at a normal rate and you don't want them to over growth and lathes and go lame and you just don't want to puff.
Them up like a turkey so you just you really don't need you really don't need that turkey feed and that high-protein game bird feed I've never had anybody explain to me exactly why you need the protein a lot of people will say though that well you have to grow out those feathers thattagirl and it's true you know because it's got.
A job growing out feathers but at the same time I switched my birds to a maintenance pellet every September at the end of August and September beginning of September I switch them to a twelve sometimes 14 percent maintenance pellet and they grow that tail out just fine they do it without you know 28 30 percent protein and I see.
A lot of people also ask about feeding them at cat food I think for the higher protein as well you know I I'm gonna tell you that I'm one of those people who do that during the lighting season okay I go down to Tractor Supply and they have a really cheap cat food called multi cats twenty-eight percent protein.
And and I buy you know hundreds of pounds of that stuff and bring it home and I fed its grain-based because it's a cheap guess it's kind of grainy it's a grain based cat food and I found that it will boost the a production by about 20% you know and i i've got about 35 hands out here so i'm naturally interested in maximizing the egg production it's not.
Like you have two or three hands and you're worried about mini eggs i i've got to have a volume of them to recover my cost got hatch out of volume i do use that but what you have to be careful is eventually possums and Coons and cats and the next we're going to find out what you're doing and they're gonna find their way to your houses they start.
Coming up broad daylight after a while and they don't care whose season so what kind of cages I guess since we are like I said recording this I kind of know what you have going on at home because of the Facebook group that I'm on and from talking to you in the past but can you maybe tell us more about what kind of.
Birds you have and then what like how do you how do you protect your birds from the from the possums and stuff that come in to pick up the cat food well this year I fed them something different and I'm gonna it didn't get the same results I'm gonna have to go back to the cat solution at two or three the neighborhood cats want to make this or.
Home for I guess I'm gonna have to hope they catch enough mice to pay for it but let me tell you the problem with feeding peacock nobody makes the peacock food and if you call a major food company I mentioned Purina so Austin because they do a lot of research and you can call people and you can get answers you know when you call them whereas you want for.
A lot of feed brands they don't make a peacock food and so you just have to guess at which is going to help your Birds to most I said I do feeling that cheap cat food during the during the late season because they do so well on it I do better than they do I tell you what I said I fed them layin pellets and check the egg count I fed on.
The Purina game bird breeder which is 20% protein and they make all they make the whole pocketful of planes like you've got to get more aged if I'm going to better eight you go chicks more chicks are gonna hatch more chicks are going to live and they go on and on and I fed on that for a year and I couldn't tell the difference between that late.
Pellets and then I went to the cat food and it does the eight count and and the hatch races I do to better with that but only because it's a grain based you know kind of food and you said that was called multicam if they make multi cat yeah it works out to be about fifty cents a pound it's higher than feed and chicken feed but you know if you don't.
If you don't get days and you don't answer chicks that cost money too yeah I got a I got a seat bill it's pretty good-sized and I got a rehearsal I had two months to recover my feed bill yeah I know that struggle yeah well my wife of three Rios this year and for 30 years now all got old and died she kept bugging me about getting.
Another one I said suck I'm 74 years old I'm not I don't have any business out there trying to manhandle this burden and I said you know I messed around out there and get hurt so I put her off like that for a while and then finally I was looking at some Rita have you seen a real bird I have so I told her I said I'm gonna get you some miniature ostrich.
A shoulder a page-long a piece of miniature ostrich now they're nasty enough during the mating season but I had some back in the early 80s kind of kind of sweating how much they're gonna beat I know they're gonna add I'm gonna head to the feed deal a little bit she got her military Austria you know I've never actually seen one in person of.
Course with the internet you see all kinds of stuff but are they pretty popular in your area because I don't know of anybody up here in Colorado that has him I got into Austria kind of by accident in the 80s and they were of breeding age right one two big craze hit in the early nineties you familiar with that breathing craze here in the US.
Yep I earn orders when I was a kid had ostriches oh they got enormous amounts of money yeah and then when people got the prices of ostrich that's where the ordinary person could afford it at all and more than a car and of course when the market just totally collapse on the on the other person Andrea did too.
But he's coming back for the ami Honoria and the Austrian novel I don't know what anybody does with an ostrich any but it's coming back some interest coming back in them but it'll never be like it was the thing about the Korea is is that they're a real Hardy bird and there's a population of them got off a farm in Germany and in two or three spots but.
Particularly in one spot in Germany and they said there was about 16 of them in the year 2000 and now there's like two three hundred of them and they're just multiplying more every year because we survival in their own where I don't think an emu will they survival normally you know how cold it is that there in Germany is kind of up north there you.
Know it's so parallel maybe New York yeah so these these populations are growing and the thing about it is I don't know how or why but the German government it protects them is it well you know they're here and they're indigenous now and you can't go out and kill them so I don't know what's going to happen those populations just.
Grow and grow and grow and grow we've had that happen with peacocks there's a couple of places they've got one right here my little old town 7,000 people there's guy there's a guy who moved off to Canada unless his peacocks behind they were out in the woods around his house you know he didn't have them bend and they're still there today I guess.
He's been gone at least 20 30 years and the Peacocks are still there and some of the neighbors feed him well it's a feral flock and there's a couple of them in Houston and then you worried about more of them in California and so you know what you find in some of these places is that half the people in town are feeding them out the back door the other half.
Wants to shoot them because you know they're noisy and they jump on your cars and they literally I've seen them on TV people on the street and stop traffic so who knows what the who knows what kind of problem the Rio is going to be sir I've seen some people whether they just keep them on a ranch and they're not fit just got them out there and they don't.
If you feed them a little bit over now and then they're not going to go too far from where where you feed them they see them supplement in the winter especially you've seen that sometimes to where you get an animal it's invasive and they just kind of take over but the Peacocks are rather harmless as far as an invasive specie but some other animals.
Are not like the pythons down in Florida you know once they get out of control wing that's walk they'll eat everything in sight yeah I know them yeah so I don't know what's going I don't know what the future the Everglades are because there's no way to keep them from from getting in there and there's lots of trouble in the future mm-hmm I know.
That they've started doing some more eradication but it might be a little too little too late how do you find them you know yeah that's fine those big shopping plates or oh yeah and you're gonna how do you so I don't know what the end of that story is going to be we're just at the beginning of it yeah it'd be an interesting one to watch.
That's for sure well I told you I think earlier that there's 125 different colors and color patterns of peacocks and then there's a java green from India and salon and that part of the world is that the greenest one is the java green that's one that people keep here in the US you mix those a lot of people you know breed those in.
But they don't breed true oh you get a hybrid but and reproduce but you can't reproduce the same thing as the parents it's just like you cross a java green with the Indian blue the chicks will be one thing but then when those chicks are bred they they won't look like it and so you get diluted down each generation let me tell you about the the java green I.
Talk good I have one time Thank You Luke Indonesia send a message the exchange of messages were and he says you can it came up that you could get a job green egg for five dollars I said oh wow I just really wouldn't get that here in this Java green a he said I love her so common up here and then he made the immediate remark that they were.
Protected up there by the government and so you really couldn't keep him in captivity but he said you couldn't hear him calling from all over the hood everybody's got one the good thing about peacocks are they're probably more in captivity than there are in the wild for the simple fact that they reproduce so well in captivity and sadly though you.
Can say the same thing about a cats like the bangle says there's infinitely more of them in captivity than there are in the Wilders we're down to 500 or less in the wild but anybody that wants bangles and you've got an enclosure you can buy some and start raising them yes you can maybe I'm in the wrong line of work with people maybe maybe Bingle's or where.
It's at yeah I dreamed about some kind of helps get those day from Fingaz Indonesia yeah and they got some kind of house get to get $1,000 at these four and you tell is a different kind of cat but the only problem with those kinds and especially with the those what they call bangle bangle to but they're a spotted cat Nate.
They're staying with half the cats you don't want to turn one of them loose in your house oh no because uh that thing will be all over the place and really 100% domesticating you got to run them through about three generations before they settle down and act like a normal you got to keep breeding them with house cats for about three.
Generations before they settle down why people want those things gosh I don't know I knew somebody with one and it was an adventure to say the least well-built I just got a big family keeping saying things and cages and that's what you have to do when you raise those kind of cash you have to build things outside and just find a big.
Fan of pendant animals up for life you know mm-hmm the way I keep peacocks here is I've got a two-acre pin with a 5-foot fence and if you raise you in the barns the barns are inside of it if you raise your peacocks inside of the fence they got little especially if it's a lot of space like a couple of acres they don't have a sense.
Of confinement and they have very little desire to get out and so as a result you know two or three four or five and mine me get out and walk around in the yard during the day but I've got 80 of them out here and they all they all stay inside the fence and so what I'm saying is that they're not really pink and because there's so much space and I'm.
Not just a big fan of just building you know a great big cage and keeping animals in it like I told my wife just don't want to be the warden of a little tiny prison I know I've seen your pictures on the group and I was gonna ask you that but you kind of alluded to it earlier even if they were to get outside of the fence I guess because you.
Take such good care of them and they know that there's food and stuff there they don't they don't just take off and disappear no they used to lay outside the fence a lot but I had to a eating dogs many years ago I found out when they all got old and died that the Peacocks are laying back inside the fence again so they lay in the barns and.
Inside the fence and and they just they just don't go outside the fence delay and and the they stay inside the fence real good for me and and it helps it I don't have any close neighbors they don't get under the wind at night and scream and jump on their cars and I kind of think they they stay here if there's a dog that ever comes in the.
Neighborhood they cool flying back in the bend if they're outside they and if we too far from the family get up on the roof of the house or in the trees they know what to do so do you have 80 birds total or 80 males because I remember you said you had 35 or so females I've got 80 total and I keep adding ins but somehow it it always.
Works out to be a split about 50/50 ends and males and I add I make sure that I had hints walk every year I don't know for whatever reason but him just don't seem to last as long as some males their lifespan doesn't seem to be as long and and I hear people say that's why I long does the Peacocks live and it gets unbelievable what I would I read the.
Responses you know some say hello you know they heard that somebody had 150 years old I'll tell you 20 years is a long time for any kind of barnyard bird it's a goose or chicken or anything else chicken especially but goose goose can't live 20 21 years but I just don't see a peacock you live in 30 40 50 years mm-hmm the longest might have lived has.
Been about 20 to 21 years okay that's a long time for a burden yeah especially like you said an outdoor barnyard bird do you have any issues with the males I mean 2 acres is a large area but at the same time having that many males do they tend to get along pretty well let me tell you this year I really didn't notice some fighting at all well I said.
They did but see in the spring for a couple of weeks some of them will fire up at each other I guess they're testing the order of dominance to see if it changed its last season but some of them will flare up at each other and after a couple of weeks it's all over and they're okay but they don't they don't loose together I notice.
It during the season they'll scatter out and roost they're not really buddies during the season very sometimes they scatter let me tell you another thing it's helped me is that I can't keep a dog back there with them because those birds are just afraid of a dog but I took a hot wire and connected it to a fence charger and I ran that wire about.
Eight inches off the ground all the way around the hole see Leger's and i'm gonna tell you it worked like magic I was gonna have a plague of Coons coming in here and possums and dogs started you never had those troubles in the old days you know I've been right here on this place raising Peikoff for 45 years and I imagine I went thirty of it with.
No trouble at all but I put that wire up there and connect it to a fence charger it worked like magic to keep everything out here and the dogs still mean I live a little short dead-end road and the dogs don't even come down into my down my street anymore I guess one or two of them got into it that wasn't for them yeah but if the.
Fence charger is a they're not expensive to run or expensive to buy and I thought there was going to be a lot of maintenance to it but there's not that's the way I deal with stuff digging in anything digging in since I put it up years ago that's a good idea I live on two acres and so our back it's probably about an acre that I have for for the.
Birds and I keep my chickens and my peafowl and my ducks and everybody separate in their own so I've multiple little pins but we have a big issue with coyotes and stuff and I like that idea of the hot wire because it's so expensive to try to fence you know such a large area in a way that can keep out predators but that sounds like it's a.
Pretty effective and cost-effective method as well yeah I got the five foot chain lis nailed on wooden post it's hard to keep anything from digging under you know but it like said you put that about eight inches off the ground and there's no way you can start digging without getting their face in you know without sticking the nose and that were.
Sure and it'll it'll sure it'll sure make them jump back I'm sure oh yeah so that got into it two three times myself when I was working on it and it made me jump back you know it's a 30 or 40 pound dog I imagine it really goes through I'm pretty good pretty strong yeah not anything that you get into it you.
Let go of it right away oh yeah yep so do you have any advice from your years of experience if somebody wanted to get into peafowl and they don't really have a lot of experience what would you tell somebody that wants to get started well first of all you got to have a good enclosure or at the end.
Don't bring him home you know I used to have people call me and I'd advertise not on Facebook just in a local advertiser and people have the impression me they live up in the city and they're gonna bring the you know it's illegal to keep poultry in a city especially one to scream six months out of the year like a does and they.
Think that they've got a four foot chain-link fence and they think they just bring it home throw it out in the backyard they don't have any shelter for it they don't have adequate fencing a 4-foot fence even a dog can jump over that a good size though so they don't have a good set up to bring one home to and then once they get home they're not.
Well versed in peacock problems like they're they're not well versed in the medications you need to keep on home on hand here's the thing about every animal on the farm has to be medicated I don't care if it's a goat a horse a cow or what it is but somehow they think the Peacocks don't need anything so they don't keep more medications or.
Antibiotics or like the five and one or all in one they don't don't keep medications and then the only a lot of times they only contact me when the bird is laying comatose on the pen for want to know what to do and they don't have any medications and especially some medications some of them have to be ordered online that birds not going to.
Be able to wait on the mail they just not set up for them so if you don't have a coop and you don't have a pen and you don't have a you know you're not versed at all with with medications he did a little research before you bring some home in which medications do you recommend having on hand at a minimum you got to have that all in one pigeon.
Medication that have a good worm medication and you have to have bottle antibodies because when your bird starts going down and you have to treat them right now because the bird is only gonna die about two or three things they're gonna have a respiratory infection they're gonna have a protozoa infection and it's going to be compounded by.
Overload of worms there's only about three different things that'll kill a bird nose that's them so you have to have something for those now let me tell you about chickens chickens are more resistant to coccidiosis and black and can carry a whole lot of worms without any problem so chickens kind of thrive on neglect a.
Lot of people keep chickens do anything for him and the chicken survived so when they get piece doctor very well they not really impress would really need to do four peacocks so they think they can just keep them like chicken but chickens are worm and germ factories when it comes to peacock and Turkey they carry a lot of stuff.
It's very harmful to peacocks and turkeys but they're resistant to it so they go around shedding more herbs carrying protozoans and especially blackhead which is a curse i don't–all worm and they just really not and then they want to leave why my first time at this kinky lovebirds lesson said well you got any worms medication worming.
Yeah or they say well my bird he's just really gardening money breeds I said okay what kind of antibiotic do you have cuz you know you can use different antibiotics penicillin and as well as Thailand and il-8 too hungry then maybe one or two more different densities you can use them and sometimes just say I got penicillin I keep from Otto are you.
Giving this much and sometimes said well no I don't have any on the store Monday I'll go down to the beat store and yellow says Friday night well that bird won't be alive on Monday he comes once a perfect it stick he's buying a little bit every hour you got to turn that clock back a lot of times let me tell you what what i feeding up he thought.
They say you I'll find out there there birdies egg down a bird is egg bound that they can't they have a maid they can't lay their egg bound because they're feeding a calcium a diet was which lacks calcium because believe it or not calcium if your calcium level gets to the muscles of a verbal lose strength.
And they can't expel the egg so they're stuck there with it and the eggs are backing up so you tell them you know she telling me tell me go get some tums break them out and poke a couple of thumbs down their throat and they'll lay that egg in and anywhere from one to two to three hours and it'll all be over because the tongs are loaded with.
Calcium but I say what do you feed well we mostly you come with their feeding scratch grain and scratch grain is just about like as the nutritional value a pea gravel it just doesn't have the vitamins and especially the calcium that a bird needs to function normally so he bring these birds home but they want to feed them thanks scratch brain because.
It's grain you know it seems like it's wholesome and it's natural and it's grain but it's it's depleted pain just don't really have any nutritional value and it tells you on the bag it shouldn't be considered a complete diet for anything so a lot of people just not versed about how to care for a bird and their enclosures are not real good.
Especially keep predators out and and they're not well versed on how to feed them I was kind of in that new person scenario that you kind of described there we have a family friend that has the the peafowl and my husband as an anniversary gift one day came home with some pea fowl eggs and I was not ready for that at all so you know I had about.
A month of however long that they were in the incubator therefore to panic and get everything set up and and I've been through a lot of those challenges that you mentioned because I'm used to chickens and so I figured you know there's they're gonna be pretty Hardy and you know it's pretty easy to take care of them all you need to do is feed.
Them and water them right and and they'll be good to go but fortunately I haven't had too many health concerns because I was able to find your group early and take the proper care of them and and do the homework but yeah I think a lot of people just assume it's just like anything else or you know just like a chicken and they're definitely a.
Little bit more labor intensive but it's certainly worth it anything here's here's I don't care if it's a plant or an animal anything that's beautiful it's not going to reproduce well and it's harder to make it live whether it's a peacock or an orchid or anything else have you ever felt about that anything really you said like when you grow.
Vegetables you know the weeds don't need any help at all anything special if we carve some something it's funny you should say that because I grew orchids I still do grow orchids too and that's a great analogy because they are impossibly difficult sometimes but but again that's very much worth it yeah you have to sit around for a long time and.
Wonder if they're ever going to blend them again and once you get them out of that greenhouse their reluctance put on as many bones of their dead inside the greenhouse of course I should bring them home you really have to coax them to bloom yeah but I don't know how modest this is of me I'm sure it's immodest to say but I swear I don't know how people.
Kept their peacocks alive before I opened the group up and started you know telling people whatever I have to do because you know P cos just again like turkeys are not unique in themselves in this regard that they could just drop dead on you if she's not careful with them and I had to do research that went back way to the darkest corners of the.
Internet get bits and pieces and put it together like you would have mosaic it's kinda like one of those thousand beach puzzles where you know at least 600 of the pieces look the same they all fit another and so I had to go back and get all all the old information from way back and piece it together to figure out what used to be done at one time but but.
Nowadays the internet if you look if you look on the internet and they'll say well you know turkeys get black kids sometimes 90% of the flock died from my kid and if so there's there's no treatment for black yet well that's not true there's no government approved treatment for my kid but there is a treatment.
Metron is all is one of them and Roman is all and a couple of others but they they're vets can I prescribe that for use for an animal it's going to be on the food supply but those same medications they treat dolls and cats with them and even humans take them you know you get protozoans in in there in your system sometimes a doctor will.
Prescribe that room that is all for you but it just built up too much in the food supply and like I told you earlier it's coming at you every day every meal from all directions and they sadly that wasn't the healthiest thing in the world in regards to your previous topic I don't think that that's unmod rest of you at all because I've had my my pee.
Fell now for I guess three years and I've seen it you have saved so many lives of so many birds and and again you have helped me and and I know I'm personally grateful for you and and I know that there's hundreds of people if not more the houses that that you you truly have saved their birds lives and and I think what your group and what you.
Have going on and you're sharing your knowledge and and I don't know how you keep up with all of the people that have questions for you but you have been too much time and too little to do if I didn't have a group I don't know what I'd be doing but you're right you know some of these group members that will contact me and the bird is dying and.
I'll give them something to do and they found they said I'm so relieved that now they can do something you know besides just sit there and stare at their bird that's dying every hour and we don't save all the birds but we save a lot of them and it's it's just hard to figure out if you go on the internet and try to do research you're not you're not going.
To be able to sort it all out like City – you don't know how many hours and hours and hours and hours one time I spent three days straight every all day long you know three days at one one particular City trying to sort out all the information so the ordinary person is not going to be able to you know to find it and to piece it all together but.
At the same time it's keitel people it's like riding a bike once you learn what to do you wonder how it could have been so hard and that delete is with a bike once once you learn how you wonder how it can play so hard and and said we would learn how to take care of a peacock once you find a few basic things you wonderful it's hard.
Yeah you look back and think it's so silly and and all you got to do is this this and this and then they'll be just fine the message that we practice in the group and begin to gain some traction because fewer people are contacting me and saying well you know the birds passed out on the pan for a little I do I don't get so many of those anymore.
Learning to get medications keep medication and birds are not I think peacocks are not sickly they don't say sick all the time but when they do have you can be ready to go mm-hmm what would you say is the most common question that you're asked on the group well a lot of them want to talk to me about sinus infections that their bird's.
Eye is all swelled up or it's they're about this puffy place right you know below the beak and they're swelling up on them and when they get that big swelling that under the eye you know sometimes you let that go that's a real problem because it's hard to describe without seeing a picture or video but you've got to do a little bit of surgery.
And cutting it builds up a master that has to be cut and feed the antibiotics will get rid of the sinus but that lump that's under the eye you gotta take an exacto knife and make you a semicircle under there and and push that lump out it heals up real quick you don't have to stitch it or anything but you just have to get some antibiotics along with it.
The swelling in the face is pretty common especially in the late summer when it's really grinded because one one of the larger breeders it's pretty knowledgeable about this he says that it comes from dust you know the dust bathing and scatter and dust and he thinks the infections get started that way and then and then a lot of them will.
Tell you you know my Birds got diarrhea I said okay does have any red or yellow in it because you're gonna burn with yellow and the diarrhea it's blood and they got coccidiosis and if it's yellow and the diarrhea they've got blackhead so most cases Berio be worms are going to be evidence of a protozoan infections symptomatic of it so the respiratory.
Infections not breathing right this head swelling or the or some treatment for protozoan infections are pretty pretty common ongoing it seems like you we've talked a lot about the protozoan infections how do they become infected you know i mean i believe that they've been here with us for so long way more than a hundred years and who knows how.
How far in the past cops especially who knows how many centuries or thousands of years that has been carried forward but I'm with the thinking that every barnyard burnin Birds America's got some level of coccidiosis and blackened worms because there's just no way to escape it if some people to say well I've got new.
Ground you know my birds are not picking it up you know if Birds whoop on the ground and persist from the black-headed especially in the soil they can save you to a three years in the soil so when the chicken comes along pecking scratch grain or whatever off the ground they'll pick it up so they'll say well you know.
I'm new ground I don't have anything better in my soil well but it's in birds that you're bringing into that new ground so the new crown doesn't stay new very long I'm going to vegan I don't know how any bird you know what chick picks that up so quick when they're born I don't know how any bird could not have so any adult bird could not have some.
Level of protozoans or worms in it so it's mostly from the soil then well there's a meteor host – for blackhead and coccidiosis like yet especially if they poop and then an earthworm gets into it and digest some of it then then these these protozoans stay alive inside the earthworm and then the bird will come.
Along and eat the earthworm it's gets in insects slugs especially and so there's a intermediate host or else they can transfer it directly from one to the other so really I mean the only way to keep them from a protozoa infection one to be keep them in a concrete barn completely secluded from every trace of dirt and any other potentially infected.
Bird it sounds like yeah yeah so like I said that luckily they could tolerate they can tolerate all three of those runs and protozoans blackhead and coccidiosis they can tolerate those at low levels but some birds in the flock will get down with it in someone because some power overwhelmed their systems are overwhelmed with it for one reason or.
Another especially if they get a respiratory infection then actually you know their immune system is compromised and everything has free rein to multiply and increase everything bad in their system but you need to feed medicated feed you know I hear the craziest things people tell me don't feed medicated feeds and.
Some of that I think what that comes from was many years ago some of the feed companies experimented with putting a very trace element of arsenic and the starter feeds to kill some of the protozoans and gut bacteria you know the I'll tell you about the gut bacteria in a minute but some of that would kill they said was especially with.
Arsenic was hard on ducks so they got the idea that starter feeds kill chicks but you need us medicated starter feeding the easiest one to get depends on what for the country yeah but the one that you can get access to everywhere is the Carina medicated they make an unmedicated but you want to medicate it start and grow in the red bag and you've.
Got to feed on that till they're about four months old because it takes it takes 12 to 14 weeks for their immune system to develop to get their full resistance to coccidiosis which which is what they're medicated against in the starter and it takes that long for I can't do that's why I tell them you got to keep them up on wiring a coop they're.
Three to four months old before you let them out and a peacocks resistance it's never going to be as good as it is a is chickens their immune resistance I call it resistance rather than immunity because they're not good they're just every resistance and you so you don't have to keep feeding that medicated keep them also after oh yeah.
Raise mine with chickens and my mama hen raises the P chicks just fine right there on the ground running around the yard but what I found is my personal experience I had other people tell me this whenever you leave a half dozen chicks with the hand one by one you going to find there one missing or once drowned in the water container water.
Bucket or something has happened to them one by one until they're all gone so I never think it's not good just with hands right there on that ground it was just got to be infected with something you know in a barnyard and and with hand among chicken snakes and everything else and inspect to have if you haven't started out with half a.
Dozen six don't expect to have a half a dozen develop birds with me yeah that that absolutely makes sense I was gonna ask you that – that's one thing I've always about is I've heard and when I hatched mine I kept him off the ground but like you talked about you know the pea chicks that hatched under mama there they're.
Out running around but yeah that makes sense yeah they just they just a little do as well and they need to just need protection from predators and parasites and everything else that said they're more delicate than a chicken chicken chicken II uh I had some guinea one here many years ago back in the seventies okay start running I mean you can only.
Get there pretty little slow to come along yep so I'm not sure you totally have the floor and I'm not trying to change the subject at all and if you have more to talk about the peafowl I'm absolutely more than open with that but I know that when we talked earlier you also mentioned the you had some of your thoughts about education and debt and.
Stuff and I didn't know if maybe you wanted to talk about that any oh yeah you know I went to college I went money to do it and coming back in that time to money that I felt like I was the only one doing it everybody else's parents i mal had money to pay and I qualified as it ended get adult I trained in the down here Lamar.
University of Beaumont they have a vocational section where they trade school and I had trained down there to be a decent mechanic and it didn't take me long to figure out that that's not where I needed to because one thing just couldn't make any money you know mm-hmm I'd lived while I was going down there for two years in a two-year program I'm.
Good and the crew quarters of a funeral home and of course you know I make em lapels and work funerals with me and the guy wasn't doing enough business paid me anything but you let me live there for free so I thought that was good so work for work for him for free and so I thought well maybe I don't want to be a mechanic maybe I'll be a mortician so I.
Went to this mortician school there was a guy who was you know well-known reputation he had that privates there and he was also a lawyer and I don't know how those go together but my lawyer it kind of reminds me of a story a man was going through the cemetery with his son and he was just learning how to read the boy was so really.
Tombstones so he asked you daddy said daddy what is this a here he says here lies a lawyer and an honest man the boy very pensively look at that from when he said don't look like there's room enough for two people here so when we showed up and said therefore he was in a wheelchair and he had cancer and so he didn't what natal do any teaching he bad.
Right after that it went too many months later to school burn down there was some suspicious circumstances under which it burnt down they thought it was arson and they thought one of the students did it but who knows so there are ways you know I was decent mechanic I didn't want to be a decent McCain I got I literally got.
Burned out you know of the being partition so I came back and started at the University of Lamar and by that time I was over 21 so I qualified for the loan is the indigent adult and because I had I didn't make hardly any money the year before they didn't use my dad's income so I'm appalled you know all the maximum they loaned me every year and.
And I went to school believe it or not I went to school twelve months out of the year at Lamar University for sixty three months that's you know that's five years and three months so I I had a pretty good build by the time I got out of there it was a six thousand dollars which was my Sony teaching school and that was one years beginning teacher pay.
And this little little area I lived in and now one years beginning teacher pay I'm sure it's better other places about 32,000 and that's about what you'd need to get through college again mm-hmm but here's the thing about it I worked and a life worked and the whole time you know and we borrowed money and we tried to put a limit on our living expenses but.
What happens today is people get those college loans and they get sucked into these for-profit institutions like Kaplan or ITT or some of the others I think they've gone broke since in they get sucked in there and they turns a lot of tuition they think somehow there's a shortcut to education so they roll them up about how they're going to.
Train them and all the money they're going to get when they get out of there and what they find out is that if they do finish they can't get a job in their field and a lot of times they'll drop out and then they find out that they can't get a job and they owe lots of money and others they go off to a four-year institution like like a.
University they don't make any effort to limit their expenses they'll go off they'll stay in the dorms they don't do any work they don't try to work and make any kind of money and they allow them to borrow so much now and so when they get out there they have 5060 thousand and debt and you have to borrow money to go but you have to borrow so much it's.
Crippling and and and not making can't you just let me tell you about community colleges and people may not realize this community colleges you can get a degree at a community college a two-year associate degree and you can go on to a four-year institution where you can't do that with these for-profit companies but IPP and Kaplan and those others I just.
Don't come to mine but but there is a progression when you go to a accredited university and if you community colleges I'd say here's the part I don't think really people understand the tuition is at least 50% you can you can go you can go to those places in two years they'll teach you a skill and put you to work and you can move on or you can go on and.
Finish a four-year degree but the time you're there there is a thousand twelve hundred dollars a semester where it's five thousand for tuition at a state-run university so why everybody doesn't do their first two years at the local community college I don't know I couldn't agree more and like I said you can you can you can go onto the main.
Campus of the university and transfer all the credits a huge slug of them so you have a skill and you go get your degree and you find yourself not only more employable but promotable and you'll be very successful in whatever occupation is but worst thing you could here's the very worst if you do go borrow us love the.
Money don't try to minimize your expenses go borrow slugga money get your degree in English grammar or American history and then go out and try to get a job you know not too many people need a performing arts teacher they don't need to know you play the guitar draw them a picture and they don't need to make a.
Correct their grammar eg somebody they can put their hands on the work and make it go yep the worst thing you can do is get your liberal arts degree you know fifty thousand dollars like a lot of cases that that's the case I'm a paramedic so that's kind of something that I needed to go to school for but you know a lot of those I never realized.
Until recently actually when I started listening and following a gentleman by the name of Grant Cardone and he does some kind of entrepreneurship and finances and just kind of how to get things like that in order and it just never dawned on me that the education system in a lot of cases really is for profit you know it's pushed on you you.
Have to have a degree and your parents say you have to go to school but I'm not so sure that that's really a necessity you can get work but you just won't be promotable mm-hmm and let me tell you something else I told school everyone here so I can tell you about public education only about 20% of the people understand what the students and schools.
Especially high school only about 20% of them understand what they're there for the rest of them are just passing through in like an apricot seat they completely untouched by it when they get through it and they go from kindergarten to the fourth grade my the 12th grade they still can't read and write or multiply single-digit numbers in their.
Head you know they go to be stretchy for the calculator and the school systems just keep pushing them on and this teachers say no this is the student the student can't read and write they didn't do my work they didn't come to school they refused to do the work they slip every day when it comes to graduation time you got to sweep them all out the.
Door mm-hmm or else the parents and the principal is gonna be all over you yep so they graduate a high school diploma is just not does it really mean anything other than you have a pulse you know and these tests that they give like in Texas especially these skills test you have to pass.
In order to graduate they're really based on about an eighth grade education and then a lot of them have a hard time passing math you just can't make students responsible for anything and and in my generation I came up through school in the 50s and early 60s parents expected they did you know my dad never went to high school and at that time.
1960 there was a full 50% of the adult population could not even read and write their education that didn't disrupt another Great Depression and World War two being raised like my dad Outland area where there was a lot there was there was no high school and good gosh what did he learn in that elementary school you know out there stuck in the.
Woods so the parents said to themselves you know I have to work hard I don't read and write so well I can't do this I can't do that but my children are gonna do better and they expected better their children our parents have about 80 percent of no expectation that their child learns anything they just want them to pass and to graduate yeah.
Whether they learn anything I'm on the matter right yeah you know my wife's a registered nurse and everybody at the hospital got training in something and has a license and those people are all licenses they're never unemployed they never they don't get laid off or they don't move to a new town and say gee where I'm going to work they just go to.
The local hospital and go to work yeah there's no more interviews anymore you call the hospital and tell them you're a nurse they'll say okay when can you come to work it's literally like that you know what kind of schedule you want when can you get here so those those people don't have a hard time finding finding jobs anybody has a.
License of any kind of electrician plumber whatever you just don't see the money ploy and you have to get some kind of training in order to get those mm-hmm yeah and the day and age of technology there's a lot of job positions that are gonna go away as technology advances but things like you said the electricians and the plumbers and the nurses it.
Doesn't matter how advanced computers are we're still always going to need those people yeah and and they get a little bit harder to find as time goes by – and your education can wear out you know you you may graduate in u21 2020 Tuesday and but unless you have to learn and kind of.
Train over a lifetime because your education can wear out become obsolete it's like tools in a toolbox you know the education is you want to pack your toolbox real full because you're not sure what tools you gonna need in the future and you have to you have to pack yourself up with plenty of skills and when you go out to look for a job you.
Want to have tools in the box to do every kind of job that you can or as many as you can so you go out with an empty toolbox or kugel boxes half full you start life like that and you're just gonna have problems yeah I have my college debt and I paid it every month for 10 years I don't know if they stretch out longer than 10 years.
Now but that's what the limit they were giving in the old days and it was just about as much as much as my house payment I probably long enough paid it and there's just a whole bunch of it goes unpaid yeah and there's certainly no shortage of people taking out loans currently no and I have some theories about why there's making more use of.
That now people just don't go to college anymore without some kind of dead but they shouldn't be they shouldn't be surprised at the other end you have to pay it yeah I think that's the part they don't think about dead in general I never did like dead and I paid that loan off and I paid my house off and I paid my my truck my truck off I drove that.
Truck for 28 years now I'm still in the same house that I built in 78 so yeah I got rid of the big things that people usually acquire debt over and I just never got debt again just never did like debt but I even got rid of a credit card I went 20 years until I had had to do some internet buying you know you buy from Amazon or something eBay until it.
Needed a new credit card for that I went without a credit card for 20 years a solid 20 years and people don't think anything of just running up just a huge credit card debt and got to have a new car I was 35 years old before my first new car I drove old cars used cars before then and I don't know I don't I don't know how these young people got by.
These brand new cars and they got their college debt and then they've got their rent man next thing you know they're just out of money I feel like it would be great if there was more of an emphasis on young people on you know learning how to budget and and financial control and you know in our area anyways they took away home eck and.
You know basic life skills that everybody needs to know and they're they're totally pushed by the wayside you're a hundred percent right that there's a whole bunch of things that young people need to learn even before they get out of high school but good gosh I wonder sometimes what the heck do they teach at home you know and and and.
Did the parents really know any better do they know something better to teach because they're in effects of they're in effects of their own mm-hmm you know they got their own problems that they've created over time but you know some things they keep teaching well this ought to be taught in school and that ought to be taught in school and I'm.
Thinking good gosh you know I'm I'm just up you're trying to teach my little son because here at high school they teach something at home sure you know what are they teaching at home so you have to wonder that sometimes yeah I think parents are too busy working their multiple jobs and it seems like sometimes parenting falls by the wayside.
And in light of everything else and home life is such a mess these days anyway without going into great detail yeah we all know that we don't know home life is like such a mess and I had a student living in a foreign state at one time living with me for most of the school year and he he was learning English and it real good with English but he didn't.
Read it so fast and so well so he would want me to sit down with him and read the textbooks to it and I didn't mind doing that I didn't have a problem with it because like I said he's struggling with with the text material plus the handicapped book he must be in his second language how I sit down there with him we do homework and I thought oh.
Good gosh you know this is exhausting we're doing this every night and I just don't know what other parents who have a whole bunch of duties they have to do washing and ironing cooking and who knows what else and uh and can they really sit down with her for a couple of hours every night and like they need to yeah though and and I.
Said some of the homes are so chaotic you know you just you just wonder it's been that way since the 70s I believe you know the destructive chaotic comes Austin that you find and and so you just don't really see a lot of homework getting done yeah it's kind of tragic I don't I don't know what the answer is but hopefully you know things can start.
Maybe working their way to a more positive light and and I said I don't know how we get there but but I hope that things start to make the uphill turn at least you have to live life strategically a strategy is a plan to win I don't care if you're running a footrace or you're playing basketball or football everybody's got a plan on how.
To maximize their particular strength and apply it to that sport to get the best result you have to when you're running a race you know some of them hold back and then they race forward at the end some of them get out front and want to stay out front you know you just have to take whatever if you've got that much wind you can do that and so you.
Have to have a strategy and you have to live life strategically you have to know where the landmines are and walk around them and a lot of people just run it violently into the field and then one day they want oh gosh you know I got my label off attack happen I think that is one of the most accurate representations are analogies of life that I've that.
I've heard yeah then when they get over age 50 the world just folds up on them like a house of cards the house else gets bad and they ran out of money and they're at their maximum earning power whatever whatever they're earning at that moment is as good as it's ever going to get and that yeah I said the health goes bad and sometimes the family.
Goes south and it it really can come unwound if you don't have a plan you know if you don't have some kind of plan or goal or objective and work toward it yeah I think that's the big thing is life takes work you can't just put on cruise control and hope it all plays out you got to actually make the effort and put in the time and put in the energy to.
Make it what you want it to be right you got to make it happen and what happens in your life is what you make happen or what you let happen you know life is gonna happen one way or the other you just let it happen to you or you can take some control over it yeah absolutely even on the negative stuff too I mean like you.
Said within reason a lot of times that's what people let happen to them so you can really arrange things to be the way that you want them to be in and you don't always have to be just a victim of fate you know your life is some of all your choices that you made and you have to make good choices every day every day we make choices that influence the.
Future not only the present that influence the future and and we it's the choices that we make in the action that we take every day it determines what our life will be tomorrow now some things are unavoidable you can't eliminate all the suffering in your life because sometimes you just have to have what's called the natural friction of life you.
Know you can't happen to somebody really in your car or you have death of relatives in their bag that you thought a lot of or or that you had some accident or maybe you got laid off from your job some things they're just unavoidable but you're gonna do better if you have a plan and you live life with a plan and you live life.
Strategically yeah absolutely thank you not agree more yeah if you ask people you ask anyone what they're going to be doing three years from now their life be like three years from now if you can't tell you maybe some of them can't tell you three months from now but people just don't they just don't think and and it's like a Earl Nightingale says people.
Become what they think about most of the time mm-hmm you know for better for worse people become what they think about most of the time and a lot of Gunners they just don't think yeah so he just seems just happening and you spend your time instead of acting you spend your time reacting yeah I cost a moment of some.
Internal self-reflection there I guess but yeah yeah those are incredibly wise words you know we really have to go back over that and really visit that again that people become what they think about of the time so it comes incumbent on you to have good thoughts constructive thoughts healthy thoughts if you don't your life is not going to be any of.
Those three it's amazing how your mind sets even just subconsciously will change the outcome of your life your subconscious is something that Americans don't really I'm not sure if we're so well versed in it but your subconscious is something that's working all the time to help you solve problems and always working to you're good lot sometimes.
Intention to it and sometimes you don't and sometimes we feed it positive thoughts desires and ultimately feed it the wrong things but your subconscious is always working to help you it's like a huge filter filters unnecessary things and takes you toward your goals yeah well I feel like I need to sit down and do some self-reflection now take a yeah.
Think more about where I want my life to be yeah I want you to go on YouTube and look up Earl Nightingale spelling it in Earl Nightingale and several recordings he made the first record ever this sold a million all he does is talk on these records but you what you need to do is to listen to this recording called the strangest secret and you need to listen.
To it four or five six times and I just want and then listen to everything he's got to say but start with the strangest secret and gives you a lot to think about I will do that well we covered all your bases we covered everything and more and I really from the bottom of my heart I appreciate you taking the time to again.
To talk and share not only about the peafowl but you know just about life I love talking to people and getting other people's perspective and there's a lot of lessons that you can take back not only for your birds but for your own self there and I really appreciate your time get about a real Nightingale the strangest secret okay I will absolutely.
Look that up and I'll put a link in this for anybody else that would like to look at it too all right very good pleasure talking to you I very much enjoyed it thank you Douglas already without being again someday maybe yes sir I hope so all right bye now thank you for listening to backyard bounty a podcast by heritage Acres.
Market.com don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review if you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show please email us at ask at heritage acres market calm also find us on Instagram Facebook and YouTube at heritage acres market all the links mentioned in this podcast will be included in the description see you again next week.
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