you lead such and INTERESTING life. i am jealous, i would love to have the time for more animals. i see the pictures and can only imagine the time when i retire and can have animals and a big garden with lots of trees, veggies and can stay home and take of everyone. howdo you manage all this? do you work? where do you get all your animals? i love peacocks, they are beautiful and so regal. right now all i have is 6 dogs, 1 cat and 4 horses. used to have a parrot but he hated my husband and we had to get rid of a year after he moved in with us. i just hated having him caged all the time because he would attack my huby any chance he got. took a chunk out of his ear once. then if he was caged he squawked the whole tim my husband was in the house, even at night, also threw every cuss word in spanish that he knew. so now he lives with my sister that is living alone right now because her husband is in iraq. hated to see him go but he seems to like my brother in law ok. i guess it was just my husband he didint like. hope thins are gong well for you.

Actually, I do very little managing of anything. My guy does most of the work, as well as working at his job. He is one of the most working people I know.

Most of the horses are rescues. Most of the dogs, as well. The three cats came from Wayne and Rhy Oki, both rescues (Wayne was precocious; he was only four months old when he bred their mom. They are ALL fixed). The birds, on the other hand, are purchased; getting birds without NPIP is a hassle and can cause a flock to be quarantined. The heifer we bought at the cattle auction. The frogs and the water snake and the turtles and the whistling ducks and the grey herons all just show up at our pond whenever they decide to drop by for a visit. :)

My husband, who works 50 or more hours per week, actually takes care of the animals more than I do. He gets aggravated at me every once in awhile when I get something new, but takes care of them just the same. He does most of the yard work as well.

While he was training in Houston, I took care of everything during the week. It was very hard on me to carry the buckets and such, but I managed (barely). He is much stronger than I am, and is as healthy as ox. (I never say as healthy as a horse--damn horses are like me, they find every gopher hole in a field if they can. ;) ) I would drag the buckets around, and it took me two or three hours to feed twice in the day. It takes him about half and hour in the morning and at night...and he doesn't have to take nitro after.

As for the type of birds we have, we have Indian Blue peacocks, a Java peachick, Bourbon Red turkeys, BBWhite turkeys, BBBronze turkeys, Mille Fleur D'Uccle, Mottled D'Uccle, and White D'Uccle bantams, Black Japanese and BTBuff Japanese bantams, Speckled Sussex standards, several varieties of Guineas, and several varieties of Pharoah Quail.

I also have in the incubators at least two other varieties of standard chickens and other varieties of quail, pheasants, and chukars. I buy eggs from eBay.com, Eggbid.com, and Ovabid.com.

I haven't had a parrot since I was a kid (an African Grey), and I don't think Ron has ever had anything more than some parrokeets that we had when we first got married. I would be worried to have any kind of cage bird in the house with my cats.