Does the peacock lay eggs
The peacock is the proudest of birds and the proudest peacocks in the world live in the wonderful zoo at San Francisco. These big birds perch themselves on the red tiled roofs of the houses where they keep the lions, the monkeys and other zoo animals. Up there they can be seen by all the human visitors and the vain birds squawk and spread their splendid tails to attract attention.
When he unfolds his tail into a giant fan, the peacock may remind you of rainbows and sunny, summer gardens. You wonder if this gorgeous fellow is an animal or some imaginary fairy creature. Don't let him fool you. The proud fellow is an animal and if you look closely you will see from his beak and his feathers, his legs and his wings that he is a bird. And, like every other bird in the world, he was hatched from an egg.
In Ceylon, Burma and Java, these beautiful birds live in the wild state. They live in herds with one father bird, several mother birds and their broods of growing chicks. The parents and chicks are called peafowl. The father bird is the peacock and the show off of the family. However, he does not get his colorful feathers until he is two years old, Mrs. Peafowl is the peahen and both she and the children wear drab, plain colored plumage.
When nesting time comes around, the peahen scratches a shallow basin on the ground. There she lays ten or more brownish colored eggs and settles down to hatch them under her warm feathers. In their native home, where peafowl live in the wild state, the climate is warm and sunny all through the year. The growing young peafowl need this kind of weather.
In ancient days, wild peafowl were taken from their homes to ornament the gardens in far distant lands. Some of their new homes had changing seasons with cold winters, when springtime with a few warm days followed by a spell of chilly winds and rain. Many of the peacock chicks could not survive this changeable weather.
A grown peacock and his wives may live twenty or even thirty years in a region of cool winters and warm summers, But we still find it difficult to bring up the peafowl chicks in such a climate. The young birds must be sheltered carefully or they become sick and die in the tricky spring weather. As they grow, the peahen teaches them to scratch for a living. The young ones learn to use their clawed feet to dig up snails and insects, tender plant shoots and juicy roots. Sometimes the little fellows catch a frog and fight with each other for the best pieces of meat.
There are several kinds of peacock, each more splendid than his splendid cousins. But these birds of such rare beauty are classed as galliforme or chicken type birds. The pheasants and turkeys are also galliforme birds and they too scratch for a living. The barnyard chicken is also a galliforme bird, which makes her a lowly cousin of the lordly peacock.