The he or she peacock

Peahens (girl peacocks) are supposed to lay eggs and be mommies of peachicks. But this peahen is doing something weird, she is growing beautiful peacock feathers only seen on male peacocks. We have no idea why this is going on and have seen this happen to 4 peahens in 10 years. In addition, our web site http://www.peafowl.com has had at least a dozen inquiries on this same issue. Many of the questions have been like this, "I had a male and a female peafowl and now we have 2 male peacocks. How could this be?" We have no idea why but this is happening more and more. We have a web site devoted to our he or she peahens at: http://www.peafowl.com/heshe.htm We would be happy to hear your theory as we have no idea. For more information contact dennisfett@yahoo.com

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• peacocks
• peacock
• peafowl
• peahen
• dennis
• fett
• nbc
• sex
• reversal
• heshe
• change

[dmfett]

@Torwyn11 knew of the web site long after it happened to me..info on the web page was nothing new to us...

[dmfett]

@mixturebeatz no reports on anything other than peahens...

[dmfett]

@mixturebeatz Not really...he/she acts more like a she...the new one is now getting eye feathers and in 3 years will look like a male in color only...lost a good egg layer...

[mixturebeatz]

do they still mount and display like males or do they just get the plumage

[mixturebeatz]

@Torwyn11 :( would this ever happen to say chicken or a turkey?)

[Torwyn11]

This phenomenon is documented. If the ovary is removed, they will default to the male plumage. Since you obviously didn't do this deliberately, there is another explanation which may apply. There is a documented infection that will kill the ovary. Since Peafowl are like most birds in that they have only one ovary that develops, when that one is gone, they have no back up. So, if this bird had some kind of ailment, even if you didn't notice it, the ovary may have been destroyed or compromised.