Peacocks are what are called polygynous birds. They mate with several peahens every season, and once they are finished mating with one bird, it’s onto the next.
It’s good news when you want to grow a peacock flock, but some owners worry about keeping peacocks with other types of birds like geese, chickens, guinea fowl, etc.
For the most part, peacocks get along perfectly well with chickens and other birds. Chickens are typically the bird animal owners worry about the most because they are fragile and they are the most commonly owned outdoor bird.
However, peacocks generally don’t get too involved with what’s going on with chickens. They will mill about happily and share the same space without too many dust-ups.
Here’s some information on peacocks and their mating habits, as well as some things you should know about keeping peacocks close to other birds that you already have. Learning a bit will help you make the right decision for your flock before adding new birds to the mix.
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Peacock Mating Basics
A lot of myth and intrigue is built into the peacock’s mating habits. People see the male birds flaring out their beautiful tail feathers in what looks like an intricate dance to, they assume, attract females.
However, for all the pomp and circumstance, the fact is that peahens don’t, according to researchers, care that much.
Researchers noticed that peahens don’t look up at the peacocks when their feathers are flared, and they don’t react strongly with attraction.
Usually, the peacocks are showing off for other males. If the peahen is inclined to mate, they’ll typically crouch down on the ground in a sign that it’s ok for the peacock to approach. Then, you probably know the rest.
What happens when peacocks mate with peacocks of different colors? For example, if a peacock that is green mates with a white peahen, what happens? Usually, genetics sorts these types of things out, but you usually either get a mixture of the colors or one or the other.
Sometimes interesting mixes happen where the offspring takes on the color of one and the pattern of the other parent. It’s certainly interesting to see!
Do Peacocks Mate with Other Birds?
The short answer is that, yes, peacocks will mate with other birds.
You see this type of behavior a lot in nature. Different animals will mate with others. Who knows why it happens, but the results are usually mixed.
Most of the time, for birds to create eggs or any sort of hybrid bird together, they need to hail from the same genus.
Peacocks belong to a genus called Pavo and chickens are part of the Gallus genus. These two, obviously, don’t match, so they are too different to make any little birds that are some strange mix of chicken and peacock to run around your yard.
That doesn’t mean, however, that they won’t try. A lot of chicken owners fret the first time they see a peacock trying to mate with their hens. It probably fills them with plenty of questions about what will happen to their hen or any eggs that they produce.
Most people likely have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. The only thing you should be worried about, though, is whether the peacock’s advances pose any sort of danger to the hens. They are, after all, larger birds and may become aggressive to the point where a hen gets hurt or is even killed.
The same goes for other smaller birds like pheasants, ducks, guineas, etc.
Raising Peacocks and Other Birds Together
For the most part, you don’t need to worry all that much about raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other birds around peacocks. They will mate with and produce offspring with any peahens in the area, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll have generations of beautiful peacocks roaming the property.
Raising them together is quite convenient because peacocks eat a lot of the same foods and live in the same types of pens, so you don’t have to make that many special accommodations when you introduce peacocks into your flock.
Both birds enjoy having the space to spread out and walk around looking for insects and other snacks, so keeping them together perhaps isn’t the best idea for people with small lawns.
A lot of chicken owners keep peacocks as a sort of early warning system against predators or anything else that may be amiss. Peafowl are very adept at noticing when something’s wrong, and you can count on them to cry quickly and loudly to ward anything off or get your attention.
It’s certainly something to consider if you live somewhere with predators like foxes, coyotes, or aggressive neighborhood dogs that get loose.
Raising chickens, geese, ducks, etc. alongside peacocks is usually best done from an early age. When they are around each other when they are chicks, growing up in the same pen or grazing in the same yard won’t be unnatural at all. If you wait too long, though, peacocks tend to be territorial.