PINECREST, Fla. — Over the last 100 years, peafowl have made their way into many South Florida cities.

The birds are beautiful to look at, but they also come with an array of issues as they try to cohabitate with humans.

For the past three years, or three reproductive seasons, South Florida veterinarian Dr. Don Harris and the city of Pinecrest are working together to reduce the population humanely, one surgery at a time.

“The population is expanding beyond the environment’s carrying capacity,” said Harris. “There’s so many peacocks now, there’s not enough places for them to hide and stay safe.”

Best estimates put the Pinecrest peafowl population anywhere from 2,000 to 5,0000.

Too many of the birds are being hit by cars, mauled by animals and killed by humans, so it was time to get creative.

“The unique thing about peacocks is one male will have seven to 10 to 12 mates, so if we castrated him, he would lose his tail, he would lose his dominance, he’d lose his masculinity and he would lose all his girlfriends,” said Harris.

In 2023, Harris received a grant from Plantation, including endoscopy equipment, along with the orders to conduct as many vasectomies as possible.

“That’s what proved to be so useful in this case, because by neutralizing one male, we could stop anywhere from seven to 10 females from laying fertile eggs that season,” he said.

In three years, Harris has scoped more than 500 birds, performing vasectomies on the males.

That’s about 60 percent of the peafowls captured.

In three-to-five minutes he can put a small incision, then a camera, and then simply snip the vas deferens.

“The vasectomy, in which case we go into the male and we simply disconnect the testicle from the rest of the reproductive tract,” he said.

The surgeries are safe and minimally invasive and the birds bounce back as soon as the anesthesia wears off.

The males can continue to mate with females, but their eggs will not be fertilized.

Until recently, though, Harris was only operating on the males.

That was until he invited Local 10 Animal Advocate Jacey Birch to witness the first commercially-done hysterectomy, which Harris explained is a very big deal.

“If every baby peacock survived and reproduced in the 25 years that that female reproduces, she could have been the beginning of a population of 7 million,” said Harris.

Now he has proven he has the capacity to sterilize both the peahens and the peacocks, which is massively innovative for a domesticated feral non-native species.

Once they are sterilized, the males wear a blue band and the females wear a red band,.

So if you see them out in the wild, that’s how you know they are sterilized.

It’s the exact same concept with the feral cats, where when they are spayed or neutered, they have their ears tipped.

“For the people who love peacocks, we’re not trying to get rid of them, for the people who hate peacocks, we’re doing something, we’re taking action,” said Harris.

Feral animals and invasive species have long been a problem for South Florida wildlife, but with programs like this one, targeting the heart of the matter means making sure no more peachicks are born on our urban streets.

“To be doing this with Pinecrest, a novel procedure, something that has never been adopted by a community before, that’s going to increase the health of the peacock population by limiting the numbers,” said Harris.

More cities are expected to follow the feathers, especially since the beautiful birds are known to range up to Fort Lauderdale and down to the keys.

“If I had the opportunity to retire right now, I couldn’t walk away from this,” said Harris. “This is too cool.”

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