Female displaying

[joyeux]

Well this morning I was taking care of all the critters and one of my juvenile peacocks was displaying. He's only a year and a half, so it's not much of a show without his tail feathers. A few minutes later when I came back, one of my peahens was displaying.
I have two peacocks and three peahens. They are all a year and a half old. I'm used to seeing my peacocks display, but is it normal for the females to do so?
I've heard of peafowl going through sex changes when the female loses use of her ovaries, but I hope this isn't what it is, as I'd like her to remain a functioning female.
Do peahens just do this sometimes?

 

[Emzyyy]

no clue someone else can answer you though

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

Yes the hens do from time to time.

Steve in NC

 

[joyeux]

Quote:
Thanks! That's such a relief..

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

Quote:
Thanks! That's such a relief..

If you watch them do it for awhile you see they can't hold it like the cock does. The cock uses those stuff "under feathers" to hold up the tail feathers. Ours don't do it very often, usually when a new bird is added or when they are working on the pecking order.

Steve in NC

 

[deerman]

even peachicks, just a few days old will also.

Depend on the hens I have one she will display as long as any peacock. Note its the tail feathers that hold the train feathers up, which are back feathers. not tail feathers.

 

[Kev]

Yep, normal and many peahens can do it for quite a long time too. Some hens will display very frequently, others only occasionally or rarely.

Very often people say it's a dominance or hen in breeding mood etc but honestly all hens of all ages during any time of the year can and will just suddenly raise that tail.. either for no apparent reason or yes, excited at something. To me they seem to do it "just because they can" most of the time.

There are some differences, hens tend to vibrate the tail much more often and intensely and also might make a lot of sudden jerking around. Rarely flutter the primaries like the adult males like to do- they can do that too though, usually when they are sort of running backwards and stopping it as soon as they stop moving.

p.s. high blood spaldings and pure greens never flutter their wings.. they do hold the wings out and lower to show off the eye-looking rows on their wings below the spread tail. "Middle of the road" spaldings can show a confused variation between fluttering and no fluttering like this- flutter a little bit, stop fluttering, flutter once/twice, stop, twitch, stop, back and forth like that.

 

[BluegrassSeramas]

Neat!

 

[LilbitChicken]

Amazing....love reading the thread....

We have a pair of India Blues. (1 yr old)
CAN'T WAIT for the tail and the showing off!