Morrill couple learns a lot raising peafowl
When Bob Foster arrived home around midnight after a long drive back from Louisiana a few weeks ago, a shrill squawking greeted him from the trees surrounding his modest farmhouse outside Morrill.
The repetitive cry was something he was used to though; after all, peacocks have always made great guard dogs.
“Hundreds of years ago, that’s what they were,” Diane Foster said. “They guarded the castles and stuff like that, making noise when people came. It warned them that somebody was coming.”
Bob said, “They know nobody drives up at this hour of midnight, and they start raising (heck).”
The Fosters have been raising around a dozen peafowl on their property for the past 15 years. It all started when a coworker friend of Bob’s was looking for a place to rehome his son’s two peacocks he showed at the county fair.
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“He took them back home and then they were always flying over to the neighbors, and the neighbors were getting mad at him,” Bob said. “He said, ‘Hey, you want these peacocks? They probably won’t stay, but you know,’ so I took them.”
Bob housed them in the former chicken coop for about a week and then let them wander the property as they pleased. They never flew off despite his coworker’s warning.
Not long after, a lady who lived near the fairgrounds had peacocks all over, and she offered to Bob as many as he wanted if he could catch them.
“Wild peacocks are impossible to catch,” Bob said. “…I had a great big net and you got to get them pinned in somewhere, and then if you’re lucky — and they’re fast. If they don’t want to get caught, you’re not going to catch them. So anyway, I got two or three of them.”
From there, he bought a few more babies, including two rare white peahens he bought from a man in Bayard about three years ago, to make his current flock of peafowl that roams about his land.
Bob, who has raised all kinds of different animals at his farm place from chickens to piglets, said the peafowl are one of his favorites because they are fairly easy to manage and they’re beautiful creatures.
“That’s why we have peacocks,” he said. “We like birds, (and) the coons can’t get the peacocks because they go up in the trees at night.”
The peafowl are easy to take care of because they pretty much take care of themselves, and the Fosters just feed the exactly what they feed their farm cats: Kit and Kaboodle and chicken bones.
“They love chicken,” Bob said, “and they’ll scare cats away (to get them).”
Diane said, “It’s kind of they’re eating their relative.”
The Fosters don’t necessarily raise the peafowl for any one purpose or another, aside from just enjoying them as animals. But they do serve a few unintentional purposes like acting as “watch dogs” and providing beautiful feathers for various projects, which they share with just about anyone.
“Some guy from a year ago — or was it two years ago? — from Wyoming came up here and grabbed a bunch of them (feathers) for fly fishing,” Bob said. “They were making flies. He took a bunch of them. … It was for the veterans; he taught a class.”
Diane said, “My cousin who is in Montana — I gave her a bunch, a big huge bunch, of them because they have a special needs (program), and they have a flower shop there, and they wanted some peacock feathers. So, I said to her, ‘Oh, we have plenty of those.’”
The feathers can often be found strewn across their lawn, driveway and around the farm place, particularly during the fall when they shed their feathers. Then they begin to grow them back in the spring, just in time to show off for the peahens.
The Fosters said that despite raising the peafowl, they don’t know a ton about them apart from what they’ve learned just by observing them. One of their biggest observations? There’s a reason for the saying “proud as a peacock.”
“One day … I was walking in with groceries, and there’s that peacock,” Diane said. “He’s right in front of the screen doors just with all his feathers opened up … because he’s looking at himself in the reflection because ‘proud as a peacock.’”
One day, Bob found an old mirror while cleaning out the barn. He set it off to the side to toss away later, but when the birds discovered it, they couldn’t get enough. So, he decided to leave it out for them.
“They just stand there for hours looking at themselves,” Bob said. “…I just laid if off to the side — it was a great big mirror; I mean, it was probably four by four. Next thing I knew all those peacocks were up there.”
Even with cars, they’ll pick out the shiniest ones to look at their reflections in.
“Those birds love the shininess of the cars,” Diane said.
Bob chimed in, “They just love that corvette.”
“Oh yeah,” Diane said. “I mean that’s their favorite car. Mine too.”
With each peafowl’s vain and unique personality, there has never been a dull moment for the Fosters in the last 15 years.
“I just think they’re neat birds,” Bob said.
Diane added, “They’re pretty. They’re fun to watch. They’ve got interesting personalities.”
olivia.wieseler@starherald.com
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