NaBloPoMo - Day 19 - Another Day, Another Peacock

From this:

To this:

This is Petey... he is a peacock...

He is the one egg that was laid this year out of about a dozen that actually hatched.

They talk about how hard it is to raise peacocks, but he made it...

He's now definitely a young male peacock...

For a while there, we thought Petey might be a girl,

but within the last couple of weeks, his neck feathers brightened up

and he started tail flapping which will help get those muscles ready

when he is full grown and has his train...

I'm hoping I'll get to see it in three years when he fully matures...

kinda like I waited for Prince's train to come in...

If you remember, I wrote about back in April.

Unfortunately, about 3 weeks ago, he didn't show up in the barn

and a couple of days later I found a clump of white feathers.

Another loss to the bobcat...

I was to the point of crying over this loss...

To raise a pet patiently waiting for that final display 

and then losing it so suddenly was too much to handle.

Not to mention that my mother hand-raised him

it really hit me hard.

Now we're doing everything we can to protect Petey...

But, if there's one thing I've learned being on this property,

you can do everything right and all it takes is a single

moment for everything to suddenly go wrong...

Here's to hoping...

P is for Patience

This is my white peacock Prince.

He'll turn two years old this year.

 I got him as a 1 week old chick

along with three other peachicks.

He was the only one who made it.

I kept hoping for a white male.

It was a dream bird for me.

So when he made it to a year old and started showing

signs of being a male, I was so happy.

That first year he didn't have much of a display.

This year, though, he's got a lot of Y-feathers.

Next year, he'll finally have his first rows of eye feathers;

you know the ones... the ones peacocks are famous for.

Three years waiting for his display to finally be complete.

Three years of keeping him well fed and safe from predators.

Three years of hoping he doesn't get ill or decide to wander away.

I'll let you know if we make it to next year...