Well, it’s official. As you may have read in earlier posts, we were hoping Sweet Pea was a peahen (female) but we posted “her” pics on a Facebook group last name and commenters unanimously identified Sweet Pea as a he. That’s going to take some getting used to as we have been referring to him as a her for the past six months.

And today we captured this video of him displaying his tail feathers for one of or possibly the first time.

Sexing a peafowl is difficult when they’re young, around a couple of weeks to two months old. There are some behavioral clues that aren’t a guarantee, like the males tend to be more active than the females. Also, males often have longer legs.

We picked Trent, the turquoise male shown above, and were pretty sure he was a male. Sweet Pea was smaller and more calm with shorter legs, so we were relatively sure she (oops, he) was a female. Well, we had a 50/50 shot.

This is what they looked like when they were young. Forgive my voice in the video. I think I had a cold.

So, while there is advice out there on how to sex a peacock chick including at this link, waiting it out for telltale clues and then asking the advice of peacock experts and those who have raised peacocks for years is usually the best way to go in our opinion. That’s why we recommend doing what we did and joining a Facebook group and posting pictures to ask the male/female question. People are usually happy to volunteer responses and, as long as your pictures are clear and your peafowl has matured enough to show telltale signs of sex (probably around six months), you’re likely to get helpful answers.