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Rocking B-A-B Ranch

Rows and rows of breeding pens, two large flight pens, and many many peafowl varieties makes the Rocking B-A-B Ranch one of the most impressive peafowl breeders. So far as of 2013 this is the largest peafowl breeder I have visited and this ranch does not disappoint!

The B-A-B's manager, Joshua Nelson (Josh), is very informative and also he is willing to share his knowledge. The small peafowl breeders I have gotten my peafowl from were either not much into talking to you, or they don't know as much as someone who deals with a whole lot of peafowl would know.

I have been looking at the Rocking B-A-B Ranch's website (http://rockingbabranch.com/) for a few years and wanted to see all three subspecies of green peafowl since on their website it shows that they have all three subspecies, which is rare in the US. Once I saw their green peafowl, which by the way they have an abundance of them, I knew that I wanted to buy some from them! I was going to get the greens sooner, but later I decided I needed to wait and build a new, secure aviary for them.


On the phone when I talked to Josh about the green peafowl he told me some very important things. Not many people have so many green peafowl, so Josh is probably one of the few people you can get such good information from. Here are some very important things Josh told me:

1. The feather picking in green peafowl is an overcrowding issue. When you keep them with too many birds and not enough space, they can get stressed and will start to pick each other's feathers. You fix this problem by reducing the amount of birds you have in a pen or by giving them more space.

2. Green peafowl need a dim light so that if they spook during the night they won't fly up and break their neck especially if they are in an indoor area.

3. Sometimes you might have to provide something for the green peahen(s) to hide behind because green peacocks can be aggressive to their hen(s).

4. Have a very secure pen so that the green peafowl cannot escape. Be careful about making sure you close the door also. Unlike India Blues, normally if a green peafowl gets out they may walk out slowly and wander around a bit, but anything could easily spook them and they will take off flying and they might not ever come back.

5. Green peafowl are very hardy once they are adults. They hardly ever get sick. Josh said out of all of the green peafowl, he has only had 1 peacock get sick and after giving him medicine he got better. Josh said the only way they normally die is due to a freak accident like getting spooked and flying too hard into something and thus breaking their neck.

6. I asked Josh about taming green peafowl. He told me that before he separated all of the green peafowl into their own breeder pens and they were all in one big pen together, he said they would all eat out of his hand.


Rocking B-A-B Ranch has many peafowl varieties. One of the nicest birds they have is a high % Spalding Pied peacock. He was a very tall bird! I saw some very beautiful Spalding Black Shoulder peahens. There were several Opal peafowl.

The large flight pens were my favorite. One has a very large satellite dish on a pole that helps hold up the netting. This pole with the satellite dish has a large wrap around roost that is very high up. It was fun watching a black shoulder peacock fly up to the roost. All of the netting looked like some very sturdy stuff. Josh doesn't remember the exact brand the netting is, but he said it was some sort of synthetic plastic. Netting is very important to use for peafowl pens for the bird's safety when they get spooked.

Along with peafowl, the Rocking B-A-B Ranch has camels, sulcata tortoises, mini donkeys (very friendly ones), horses, at least one good outside dog (they might have more guard dogs but I am not sure), chickens (I think they were mainly Rhode Island Red Chickens), at least one cow, and I think that is it. I was surprised that the only birds they have are peafowl and chickens. Many large scale peafowl breeders (and even small scale ones) have a menagerie of birds from small song birds to all sorts of exotic pheasants, ducks, and sometimes even large birds like ostriches, emus and rheas. If I were them I would probably be the same way. Right now I am only really interested in keeping peafowl.

Other than the fauna, there was lots of great flora! Around several pens were some very huge clumps of elephant ears. They might be the Thailand giant strain of elephant ear. They were way taller than 6ft. at least 10ft I would say. Also they had even larger bananas. The bananas were literally banana trees they were so massive! These plants might have been so large because they were right next to the pens and were probably getting all of the animal waste, which could have been contributing to their giant size. Also the soil there could just be really good. I definitely would love to have some giant elephant ears and bananas.

In conclusion The Rocking B-A-B Ranch is an amazing place! It was quite a treat to visit and see the setup and get ideas for future pens and also it was fun drooling over the peafowl. Josh was very helpful and I am looking forward to getting birds from him hopefully soon!