Can You Eat Peacock Eggs? An Office Rabbit Hole

Some of the best questions at work have nothing to do with work. Someone says something offhand, someone else hears it wrong, and twenty minutes later the whole team is reading about bird biology. I'm calling these Office Rabbit Holes. I might write up more of them when a good one comes along.

This one started with a misunderstanding and ended with the question: can you eat peacock eggs?

Someone came into the office and said something about how she gets Peacock for free. She meant the streaming service.

A coworker misheard her and thought she'd gotten a free peacock, as in the bird. He took it seriously: "I don't know what I would do with a free peacock, like where do I take it?"

I had an answer ready: "Eat its eggs."

The person who came in said, "Eww."

That felt unfair. I pointed out that we all eat chicken eggs, and nobody says eww to an omelet. So we looked it up.

The first thing we learned was the punchline. A peacock is a male, so a peacock doesn't lay eggs at all. Only peahens do. My plan was doomed from the start. You'd need a free peahen.

Strictly speaking, no, because there's no such thing. A peahen's egg is another story, and the answer there is yes. People do eat peafowl eggs. A 2014 study in the Journal of Food and Nutrition Research notes that farmed Indian (blue) peafowl in China can legally be raised for food, and it compared their eggs with ordinary hen eggs.

The researchers found that peafowl eggs:

• Are about twice as big. They averaged about 94 grams, compared with about 49 grams for the hen eggs in the study.
• Have thicker shells and bigger yolks. The yolk made up about 43% of the egg.
• Hold up nutritionally. They had more protein and less fat. The authors concluded that most measures of quality and nutrition were "not inferior" to hen eggs.

A separate study of free-ranging peahens in India, in the Indian Journal of Poultry Science, measured an average egg weight of 91.9 grams. Same story: big egg.

What about taste? The 2014 study found more aroma compounds in peafowl eggs than hen eggs, both raw and cooked. The researchers stopped short of saying what that does to the flavor, and I couldn't find a zoo or university source that describes the taste either. So I'm not going to make one up. If you've had one, I want to hear about it.

Not many, and that's the real reason you've never seen peafowl eggs at the store.

The San Diego Zoo says a peahen lays three to eight eggs in a nest she scrapes into the ground. Animal Diversity Web, the University of Michigan's species database, gives a range of 3 to 12 eggs per season, with an average of five. A peahen lays one egg every other day, and in the wild she usually raises one clutch a year.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln's extension guide on peafowl adds that most peahens don't lay at all in their first year. In their second and third years they lay a few eggs, and a mature hen of four or older can be expected to lay five to nine a year. If the eggs are taken as they're laid, she may lay a second or even a third clutch.

Compare that to a backyard chicken, and you see the problem.

Because a peahen egg is worth more as a future peafowl than as breakfast. Breeders sell them as hatching eggs. Two U.S. sellers I checked list India Blue peafowl hatching eggs at $150 for six, which works out to $25 an egg. Another lists $51 per egg with shipping included, or a six-egg special for $99.99. That's an expensive omelet, and they come one at a time, every other day, a few months a year.

So yes, you can eat a peahen's egg. It's just a bit like using a collector's coin to pay for parking.

The rabbit hole kept going after we got our answer. Here's what we picked up.

Peacock isn't the name of the bird. The species is called peafowl. Males are peacocks, females are peahens and babies are peachicks, says the San Diego Zoo. A group of peafowl is called an ostentation or a pride.

The famous tail isn't the tail. That long train is made of upper tail coverts, the feathers that cover the base of the real tail. When a peacock fans it out, his shorter, stiffer tail feathers prop it up into a semicircle 6 to 7 feet wide.

They grow a new one every year. Peacocks shed the train once a year and grow it back. Animal Diversity Web notes that over a hundred feathers can be collected from a single molting peacock without harming the bird. A male doesn't grow his first train until his second year, and the zoo says it reaches its peak at about five or six years old.

There are three species. The San Diego Zoo covers the Indian (blue) peafowl and the green peafowl, which are both in the genus Pavo. The third is the Congo peafowl, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which gets its own genus. The green peafowl is endangered, and the Indian peafowl is India's national bird.

They live a long time. The zoo lists a lifespan of 15 to 20 years.

They are loud. Peafowl have 11 different calls. The zoo says the males' far-carrying "may-AWE" call sounds like a person crying for help, which explains some of the noise complaints from people who live near them.

Yes, they can fly. They roost overnight in tall trees, and the Nebraska extension guide says they "fly readily." Animal Diversity Web says they won't fly fast or far, though. Peachicks can flap up into a tree about two weeks after hatching.

They eat snakes. According to Animal Diversity Web, the Indian peafowl's Sanskrit name means "killer of snakes," because the birds eat young cobras.

I went in to win an argument about eggs and came out knowing what a tail covert is. That's a fair trade.

For the record, I was half right. You could eat the eggs. You'd just need a peahen, a few years of patience and a willingness to eat something a breeder would sell for $25 or more. My coworker's original question still stands, though. Where would you even take a free peacock?

Do peacocks lay eggs?

No. Peacocks are male peafowl. Only peahens, the females, lay eggs.

Are peahen eggs safe to eat?

Yes. Peafowl eggs are edible, and a 2014 food science study found their quality and nutrition comparable to hen eggs. They're rarely sold for eating, because breeders sell them as hatching eggs.

How big is a peahen egg?

Studies of Indian peafowl eggs measured average weights of about 92 to 94 grams, roughly twice the hen eggs they were compared with. The shells are thicker too.

How many eggs does a peahen lay a year?

In the wild, usually one clutch of three to eight. Animal Diversity Web gives a range of 3 to 12 per season. In captivity, a mature hen lays about five to nine a year, and more if the eggs are taken as she lays them.

• San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, "Peafowl"
• Animal Diversity Web, "Pavo cristatus (Indian peafowl)"
• Animal Diversity Web, "Afropavo congensis (Congo peacock)"
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln Extension, "G88-879 Peafowl"
• Journal of Food and Nutrition Research, "Comparison of Quality and Nutritional Components of Eggs from Blue Peafowl and Hen" (2014)
• Indian Journal of Poultry Science, "Studies on the nesting behaviour and egg characteristics of free ranging peahen (Pavo cristatus)"
• Open Gate Poultry, "6 India Blue Peafowl Hatching Eggs"
• Peafowl.com, "Peahen Hatching Eggs"