Peafowl live for about twenty-five years, breed about the third
year, and at the same time take on their spangled plumage. They
hatch their eggs within thirty days or rather more. The peahen lays
but once a year, and lays twelve eggs, or may be a slightly lesser
number: she does not lay all the eggs there and then one after the
other, but at intervals of two or three days. Such as lay for the
first time lay about eight eggs. The peahen lays wind-eggs. They
pair in the spring; and laying begins immediately after pairing. The
bird moults when the earliest trees are shedding their leaves, and
recovers its plumage when the same trees are recovering their foliage.
People that rear peafowl put the eggs under the barn-door hen, owing
to the fact that when the peahen is brooding over them the peacock
attacks her and tries to trample on them; owing to this circumstance
some birds of wild varieties run away from the males and lay their
eggs and brood in solitude. Only two eggs are put under a barn-door
hen, for she could not brood over and hatch a large number. They
take every precaution, by supplying her with food, to prevent her
going off the eggs and discontinuing the brooding.

With male birds about pairing time the testicles are obviously
larger than at other times, and this is conspicuously the case with
the more salacious birds, such as the barn-door cock and the cock
partridge; the peculiarity is less conspicuous in such birds as are
intermittent in regard to pairing.