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Through the years they have learned that peacocks, despite their exotic, tropical appearance, are hardy birds that pretty well take care of themselves. They seldom suffer from disease, and are bothered by only one predator. They live largely on grasshoppers and other insects, supplemented with weed seeds and a limited amount of grain from the owners' bins. They require shelter only in "falling weather"—that is, when rain or mist is freezing as it falls. Then they need a roof overhead, so their long feathers will not be overloaded with ice.

The Fowlers at first raised turkeys on their hillside and bottomland farm, three miles south of Mount Vernon, Missouri. That remains their chief business, but supplemented now with purebred Angus cattle and the growing of dahlia and iris roots. Their peacocks live on friendly terms with the turkey flocks, which total more than 2,500 birds at the summer peak. In fact, turkey hens hatch a large share of the peacocks eggs each spring, as they hatched the first five peafowl from a setting of ten eggs which the Fowlers obtained from California in 1930. From these first five have come all the present flock, as well as the thousands of peafowl that have been sold as day-old chicks and 4-month-old pairs.

MOST OF the young birds now go to other farms and country estates. Time was when zoos provided the chief market. But with the farmers prosperous, many are decorating their home grounds with peacocks. Owners of large estates like them, too; but they are not popular on small suburban tracts. In the suburbs their chief obnoxious trait makes anyone harboring them unpopular with the neighbors. This is a scream, sounding like that of a frightened woman which they emit at times.

In the open spaces, this is not objectionable and the market for chicks remains stable at $5 each, or six for $25. Most buyers take six, to be sure of getting a pair. It is not possible to distinguish males from females until they are about four months old, when distinctive brown feathers appear in the wings of the cocks. By that time the sale price has risen to $25 a pair, and transportation is a problem. Shipping day-old peafowl is as simple as shipping day-old chicks; they can go forty-eight hours without food or water at that age, and thus can reach almost any part of the United States by parcel post, or even foreign buyers by air express.

The importance of getting a cock, to a buyer of peafowl, is that only the cocks have the spectacular fan. Mr and Mrs. Fowler point out, incidentally, that it is an error, widely accepted, to call the long feathers of the cock its tail. The fan grows from the center of the back. The tail feathers, stiff and relatively short, are hidden until the fan is raised; and then they rise to help in supporting it.

In contrast, the hens are drab. They are quite ingenious in stealing out nests in the spring, a trait that does not endear them to the Fowlers. Since they roam widely over the wooded hillsides of the Fowler farm, finding and collecting the eggs is something of a task. But the Fowlers have not found it practical to keep them penned.

IN THE spring egg-laying season, the Fowlers spend considerable time looking for peafowl nests. The hens lay six or eight eggs, usually in a clutch, then go broody. But if the eggs are found and gathered regularly, a hen may lay fifteen to twenty eggs. Hatching requires twenty-eight days.

Once collected, the eggs are placed under turkey hens for hatching. Not many are sold; they do not hatch well after being shipped any great distance, and not many buyers have turkey hens to do the hatching. The turkeys accept the eggs—about the size of their own—readily enough; but in one particular the Fowlers have found it necessary to follow the nesting practice of the peafowl. The nests are made directly on the ground; it seems that humidity from the earth is needed to soften the egg's shell, which is almost porcelain-like in its hardness.

Recently the Fowlers have experimented, in collaboration with a commercial hatchery, in the use of incubators to hatch peafowl. Results have been satisfactory when high humidity was maintained in the hatching chamber.

The young birds are reared like young turkeys, in wire mesh cages that keep them off the ground and prevent earth-borne infections. The Fowlers have had little trouble in selling each year's crop, either as chicks or as four-month-old pairs. A little advertising, chiefly in farm papers and magazines, brings all the orders they can fill.

Young peafowl are fed a starting mash, such as that sold commercially for baby chicks or turkeys. They are slow to learn to eat. The Fowlers usually dampen a bit of mash and sprinkle it on white paper, where it is easily seen and attracts the young peafowl's attention. Sometimes the young are fed by hand and they like it.

As the birds get older, fine mixed scratch grain is added to the menu. The coarseness of the grain is gradually increased until whole-grain oats and corn is fed. Adult fowls like a little shelled corn, but for the most part live on insects and weed seeds, foraging for themselves.

THE FOWLERS keep few of the youngsters for replacements; for the peafowl are both long-lived and hardy. Their life span is comparable to that of human beings, the Fowlers have been told; they have not been in the business long enough themselves to know. They suffer from few diseases, and are seldom bothered by predators. Roosting high in the trees, they are beyond the reach of wolves and other ground animals. In fact, they are attacked only by one type of owl—the type that the late Huey Long called the "scrooch," not the screech, owl.

"He scrooches up to a bird on a limb," Long explained, "and slits his throat."

Actually, the owl slits the bird's gullet, merely to get the half-digested grain in the craw. In twenty years, the Fowlers have lost only one peafowl in this way, however.

Are peafowl good to eat?" I asked.

Mrs. Fowler laughed.

"I'll have to tell you a story," she said. "We did try to eat one. It was a hen, which had been killed by a road grader, out in front of our place. The man on the grader stopped and told me about it—the hen and the two young peafowl had been watching him and the youngsters, apparently crowding up to see better, had pushed the hen in front of the blade.

"We thought that peafowl, since they looked so elegant, should be good to eat. I dressed it promptly and put it in the oven to bake. After two hours it still was tough, so I put it in the pressure cooker. Two hours later it still was tough. I ground it and cooked it some more, and it came out tasting like sawdust. So we offered it to the dogs—and they wouldn't touch it."

THE DEATH of the hen demonstrated two traits of peafowl character—curiosity and fearlessness. In the winter, after the males have lost their brilliant plumage, they are shy and difficult to approach. But in the spring, when they start strutting, they yield to nothing. In fact, each male has a favorite strutting spot to which he returns year after year. One of the Fowlers' cocks has chosen a section of the public road in front of their mail box. The road is not heavily used, and the neighbors all know about the cock's habit and humor him. So he keeps the right of way, and struts there spring after spring.

Come autumn, and the long, brilliant feathers begin to fall. Collecting them is somewhat easier than hunting for eggs in the springs; most of them are found under the tall trees in which the birds habitually roost. They are bundled by the hundreds according to size, and are sent to eastern wholesale dealers at prices ranging from $2.50 to $5 a hundred. Each cock yields from 160 to 180 feathers a year.

Most valuable are the "eyes," iridescent feathers four feet long or more, with eye designs in green and bronze and bright blue and other shades. Even the brown wing feathers which are the first identifying marks of the males—a very rich, velvety brown, about a foot long—go to market. Some of the feathers are used in making women's hats; but in these days, more of them go into the manufacture of lures for fishermen. The feathers have a lasting iridescent sheen not matched by any artificial material.