This is always such an exciting time of the year. When the peachicks hatch! This year the first hatch are a little later than usual. The weather plays an enormous part of when the peahens start laying and when the peachicks hatch.

Our first chicks were some White split with Silver Pied. Every year I am very keen to introduce some new genes into the gene pool. Particularly with the rare breeds such as Silver Pied, Burford Bronze and Purple. So this year we have some white peahens in the breeding pen with the Silver Pied. These peachicks present as white chicks, however they carry the Silver Pied gene. When these peachicks grow up andy peahens will be placed in the pen with our other Silver Pied breeding group introducing new blood lines into the breeding programme.

With the Silver Pied Peacocks we have two breeds, Dark Silver Pied and Light Silver Pied. Both the peachicks and adults look very different. The Dark Silver Pied Chicks have much darker markings than the Light Silver Pied peachicks. Also the area of colour is significantly larger for the Dark Silver Pied birds.

The next chicks to hatch were 100% silver Pied and Opal Black Shouldered. This is another new breed to the UK and we are currently building up our breeding stock of these unusual peacocks. Like traditional Black Shouldered Peacocks there is a marked difference between the peacocks and peahens. The peacocks develop their beautiful Opal colouring. The peahens are very similar to a Black Shouldered peahen. However instead of brown tail feathers they have pale grey markings on their back and grey tail feathers.

We have also hatched a beautiful Burford Bronze chick. It is still early days in the peachick hatching season, so there will be many more peachicks to hatch before the season is over.