We Finally Released Birds Into the Aviary!

So Becky, it's a big moment. Our first bird released into the finished aviary. How are you feeling? Excited. Yeah. It's about time. It's about time. All right, ready? Three, two, one. I know this is the part you're waiting for, but we've got to show you where our exotic birds first came from, so we truly appreciate this moment. In January 2019, we brought Fire and Ember home, our first red golden pheasants. And boy, did we have trouble keeping them in. But first, I want to start with our peafowl. We hatched Blue and Bell in fall 2018, and they've been in a chicken tractor because we didn't want to lose them to predators and eventually move them into a larger coop. But it's nowhere near the size of the aviary they're moving into today. So let's start with two weeks ago, when we moved the peafowl into the aviary coop. So we just finished the aviary, and we already have two peafowl that are in the coop inside the aviary. They're not released into the bigger aviary yet, but we're going to get two more peafowl. A white peacock and a white peahen. Move them out there so they can get adjusted for a few days in the coop. Get to know that that's where they go when there's bad weather, and then we're going to let them out. The first animals that will be in the aviary that we've been working on for five years. Get one. Oh gosh, that was sharp. Get spurs? We've got little short spurs, but they're sharp. I think we hatched these guys out two years ago. So this is our white peacock that we're going to take out there. You ready, buddy? I'm sure some people will ask, why aren't we taking all of them? We just don't want it to be too full, too loaded up with tons of birds. So we want our Indian blue pair, and we want a white It'll be really hard to catch them once we get into the aviary. Do you want him to flip around? Hold him with his back? Yeah. So you can see their coop right here. This is where the white peafowl been their entire time. Blue and Belle, before she passed away, they were in a little chicken tractor for a number of years. We've always had people saying, why aren't you getting them a bigger space? And for the past five years, we've been working on an aviary that is just massive. Basically a big decagon, 10 sided, 100 feet of cross. So just really big, 25 feet tall in the middle. They'll have a coop to retreat to, they'll have a pond, should have everything they'll need. But the biggest thing is a lot of space, a lot of space to move around, a lot of space to fly. So today we're going to put them into the aviary coop, let them adjust, get used to blue and jazz. They hadn't met jazz yet. And then later in the week, we'll let them all out and they'll be free to roam the rest of their days in our aviary. Yeah, we haven't named our white peafowl pair here, but we've got blue and jazz in here. Maybe something with like snow and white or... So Becky thinks snow flake, so snow for the male and flake for the hen. All right, I'm going to try to let her down here. There we go. All right, so we put flake in, now it's time for snow to come in here. They might all come over to that corner, we'll see. You want to go in that corner or you want to put him over here? Here, I'll sit him down here. He's going to fly as soon as I... Okay, so we're trying to figure out what to do next. Do we let out the peafowl or do we put the pheasants in? Because the plan was let the peafowl out, move the pheasants into the house, let them get adjusted for a week and then let them out and then move in the mandarin ducks into the pond. Problem is, it's just too cold out here. And so if we move the peafowl out and move the pheasants in, peafowl won't be able to come in for a couple days to a week. So we're thinking we're going to move the pheasants in here with the peafowl. I think they'll all get along. There's five pheasants, there's one male, Blaze, and then there's four females. So there'd be four peafowl and there'd be five pheasants in here and hopefully there's enough space for them all to go to their own areas, go to their own roost until we let them out here in a few days from now. So we made some nesting boxes. I was going to make some different roosts for them. I don't know, I may just put a couple of these up here on either side of the door. Will they fly up? They're used to like this level, right? I mean, they'll go to any height, but yeah, I'm thinking somewhere about this square is probably about the right level. They can obviously fly, that's not an issue, but will they actually think to go up there? That's what we're trying to figure out. So we've got two different heights there. So now we can go get the pheasants and I'll try moving them in here. Put the birds in, okay? You want to control that door right there? All right, so we've got the pheasants here. The first time in their lives they're going to get to move out to a bigger space, but first they've got to get adjusted to the coop. So I'm going to go ahead and catch them here. I got to be really careful so I don't pull any of his tail feathers. We're going to move a couple into one container and a couple into the other container. So there's one of our hens. A lot of times when we hold them, they start gasping or playing dead. So there's hen number two there, and there is female number four. All right, so all we have left is Blaze right here. Got to do this real carefully. Look at that long tail. It just goes and goes and goes. There's Blaze, our red golden pheasant male. So I'm just going to go ahead and hold him as we go down to the aviary. I don't want to get his tail damaged in a container. All right, we've got Blaze here at the aviary. We're getting ready to take him into the coop with the ladies. So let's go take him in there. He's been really calm on the way out here, which is good. It's always a little dangerous and scary when we have to put this beautiful bird outside of his cage, but he could easily just flap away from me if he really wanted to. His colors are so pretty and it's going to be really cool to see him out here in the in the open sunlight. Wow, that is so cool. All right, so everything should be secure in here. We've got some two by four fencing over here. They shouldn't be able to... I wanted to make sure it was something that none of them could get through. All right, go ahead and open that door. Oh, they're going to roost on the light. All right, should I let him go? Yeah. Yeah. So something I didn't even think about was how high up they'd go. They usually like to, you know, I thought they like to stay either at the roosting bar or down on the ground and they immediately flew up here to the top. That's really cool. So something I wasn't sure that they do when they get out is if they go up on our our little poles that we put all around, up on the outer poles, we put some sticks on there. And so I'm hoping that we'll get to see them fly around and roost up really high. I think this is, I think they'll definitely do that. Here we have two lights on this side, one light on that side, and then there's this divider right here that we put in so we can keep all of our space separate from the birds. So they can go up above the lights up there, but everything in here is secure. So we've got their water right here. It's got a little heater in it and then some food for them. Hopefully they'll come down and get that sometime, but and then all of our peafowl are staying away over here. How long do you think we need to leave them in here to get adjusted before going outside? Oh man, usually we would say, what, a week, but it's gonna be nice weather in the next couple days. I'd say we'd love to be out before it gets real bad weather. So, I don't know, I'd say at least a couple days. Well, this is the biggest day in our channel's history, in our farm's history, in our... It's a big moment for us where we've been able to put something together over the past five years, this aviary, and now let birds out in it. We let some guineas, we let some guineas out here maybe three years ago, but we didn't have any of the the outer fencing in and they all got attacked and eaten by hawks and owls. And so now with all this that we've built, we're gonna release the peafowl and the pheasants out here into the aviary today. Sorry I'm a little under the weather so I'm not feeling great, but weather was too nice today to pass this up. So we're gonna go in here and I'm gonna try to catch Blaze if I can. I'd like to at least release him and then we'll open the door and let everybody else here, but I just can't tell you how excited I am to see them out in the space and hope everything goes well. Hope we, you know, I've double and triple checked every spot of fencing and netting and gate. I hope we're, I hope we're all set and everything goes smoothly here. The fish are all pretty much hibernating. I found out that they don't, it's cold enough here that we don't, aren't supposed to feed them in the winter. They just can't digest it well so they won't be out much when we make these videos. We've got this door here. We'll lift that from the inside and that is pretty tight. It stays up and that'll be their access in and out of the coop. So Becky, it's a big moment. Our first bird released into the finished aviary. How are you feeling? Excited. Yeah. It's about time. It's about time. All right, well here we go. Everybody come here and count. All right, you guys ready? Yeah. Say three, two, one, go. All right, ready? Three, two, one. So we have this one door right here. Haven't opened it in a long time so we'll try to crack it open, pull that up. And that's probably good. Oh, the first bird in the aviary. The second crazy bird. Last bird. Come on, Blue. You're all going around the edge of the fence. Are you gonna pet it? All right, what's this like to pet a peacock? Is it pretty cool? Never really gotten to do that before, have you? No. We've had them for a long time. Well, this has been a surreal experience. We'll come out and I'll try to get a little more footage of them before I post this video. But so far, success. We've got the white peacock, Blue out. We've got Blaze and a couple of red golden pheasants. There's only a couple pea hens and a couple other pheasant hens still inside the coop. So hopefully they all make it out and they all can live safely out here. Nothing happens. We'll keep an eye on the predators, try to figure out a way to get cameras out here and make sure nothing is trying to get to them. This is pretty amazing. That night we came out to check on them and found some of the pheasants roosting on a wooden board laying against the fence with the white pea fowl still nearby. And another pheasant was hiding close to the rocks. I like to see that so she's got a wind block at least. But the other pea fowl, they all went back inside for the night. So Blue's in here and then the two pea hens. What do you think? They're finally using one of our holes. About time. I was hoping they would use those. Maybe once it's warmer outside they'll roost up here at night or something because they used to roost up on top of the houses at an old house on the barns and stuff. So I've been out here every night to check on them. So I've noticed the pheasants don't go in at all. They haven't been in. The peacocks go in every night. I'm wondering if we're gonna need to build a shelter outside for them because they like to hide in the grass. They've been sticking to the edges of the fence. I don't know why but it seems like we're gonna have to solve that problem if it's too cold for them or it's snowy. Give them some shelter. So what a special day. Seeing the space put to use by our birds after working on this for five years. I was even excited to see Blue finally come up to the water to see what he would do. Can he figure out how to fly over it? Looks like he already knows a path through the middle. Now the final step is to move the mandarin ducks into the pond.