Do peahens lay eggs daily? The answer is NO. Peahens are not as prolific as your backyard laying hens. But they lay eggs daily for a short periods of time, not throughout the year round.
Do Peahens Lay Eggs Daily?
The peahens lay a certain number of eggs each year for the purpose of producing chicks. Before discussing more about ‘do peahens lay eggs daily’, you have to know something important. Here we are trying to describing more about this.
Peafowl
Peafowl are related to pheasants and they are originally from India and some other Southeast Asian countries. The most common color varieties are of two types.
They are the green variety and the blue (Pavo muticus & Pavo cristatus). Peafowl are very hardy and long-lived birds. Having right conditions, proper care and management, domestic peafowl can survive fro about 40 to 50 years.
Peafowl are very noisy and make loud sounds. If you live in rural areas, they can also be good watch-birds.
Breeding
Generally peahens gain maturity at the age of 2 years. Some peahens start laying fertile eggs after their first birthday. Peacocks take more time to become mature than the peahens.
Usually it takes about 3 years to gain maturity of a peacock. After three years their tail also matures. For impressing the peahens to potential mates, a peacock shows off and preens his splendid tail feathers. But in most cases peahens ignore him.
A peahen accept this impression for a short period of time when they are ready to breed. For every four to five peahens allow one peacock, for best breeding results.
The feathers of a peacock’s tail fall out because of molting during the late summer. As a result no breeding occurs during this season. Early spring is the perfect breeding period of peafowl.
Laying Eggs
After breeding in early spring, peahens start laying eggs. Usually peahens start laying eggs daily for about 6 to 10 days and then sit on the eggs to hatch.
If you want more egg production, remove the eggs from their nest regularly. Doing this can continue egg laying for about a month. Some people love to eat the eggs, because most part of a peahen’s egg are highly nutritious, valuable and relatively secure for consumption.
Incubate some eggs according to the number of birds you want to keep. Artificial incubation usually take about a month.
Peafowl Chicks
After a month of incubation period, probably you will see new cute chicks. You can let your peahens to raise them. Keep the peahens and their babies in a separate pen until the chicks grow enough for avoiding common and harmful predators.
If you let your peahen set on her eggs to hatch, it will take approximately 28 days to produce chicks.
My peahens lay an egg ever other day this is the information that I have read from others that have raised peacocks.