I never had a pet in my life.

And then all of a sudden, Oh, you like to eat them off the ground?

Here, have my hand.

You know how you like those.

And I was mesmerized by these birds.

We've had these birds since probably 1981.

See, when he gets his wings up, that means he's going to fly.

And it's no different than it was then.

I still can sit there and watch them for hours.

And then I was taking notes down while she would say, Are you coming in for supper?

Do you ever want to come to eat?

Yeah.

Producer Off Camera: How did the peacock farm come to be?

You know?

Yes.

He gave me a pig when we were dating, and we called up Charlie.

So when we got married, took a left, and he grew to about 800 pounds, and then he died.

We think he got struck by lightning.

And then he said, What do you want next?

And for some weird reason, I said, Peacocks.

And I'm glad you didn't say elephants.

Well, we didn't know anything about them.

And then we found that when our first Peacock junior died, the vet said, Oh, she had a bad heart.

And I said, she.

He said, Yeah.

And so she I thought we thought it was a boy.

He says, No, I hate to tell you, Junior is a girl.

And I said, I got to study this, but nobody would tell us anything.

So we learned firsthand.

We wrote books.

We wrote books, and I wrote down everything I could.

I took every still shot as the years went on, we got more and more birds.

And then all of a sudden I was substituting because we were out promoting our first Peacock book, which sold out our first thousand copies within the first month.

They're like any other barnyard poultry.

You feed them crack corn.

We have oats and wheat here.

We mix those up together and that's their diet.

And the only bird in the poultry world that does not lay an egg.

And is sexually mature until their second and third year, a male will not have his full tail feathers until his third year.

Now, if you were to have them, you have to make sure you have space for them.

So you have to have a cage that's at least eight foot tall.

I do admit that they are able to withstand the heat better than the cold, but they do well and 25 below zero temperatures which we've experienced over the 37 years.

Like other farmers, Dennis and Deborah Fett feed and water their livestock each morning among the goose and gennies are their pride and joy.

The birds are peacock farmers and this is where it all started.

The first TV we ever were on at the minute the book came out.

It actually started with Goosey Yes.

David Letterman.

Like my left foot, don't you?

In the mall in Council Bluffs.

I went there and they had a TV thing.

I said, Hey, I got a goose that unties Shoes.

David Letterman was going to put us on the show, but he said he'd only pay us $50 and we'd have to get our way to New York.

And I said, Well, we're kind of poor at this time.

And so we didn't go.

And then once we got to this place, peacocks are not as mysterious as everybody is led to.

The big thing happened was Iowa Public TV.

They came back in 1988, the film US four take one series.

So we lost our favorite pet.

And then I was about ready to give it up and I think Deb encouraged me and from then on in, people saw us all over the state and then we were invited to visit Davenport, be on TV and we were invited to Kansas City and we did all the TV stations in Des Moines.

We did stuff.

We we promoted our books at the Iowa State Fair.

The wacky world of Peafowl.

That's what we're going to talk about today.

I went over to the poultry barn this morning at Debra.

That's some place you've been a number of times, right?

Oh, yeah, we used to.

And her all the time.

We got tired of winning, so we quit entering.

Did that both for today's show?

Yeah.

Good morning.

I'm Eric.

Hi, I'm Deborah.

Hi, I'm Dennis Fett We're here on our pick up farm in Mindanao, Iowa.

Good Morning, America.

From the Minden Iowa Peacock Farm, we know what a difference today makes.

It was crazy.

And it was just like constant.

People found us and I promoted, but I could never get that.

It just.

It just no.

Magazines, radio.

Oh, yeah, I, I think we we have a total of perhaps 4 hours of air time of all our peacock stories.

I got a DVD of it.

I was a music teacher.

I started off as a band teacher in South Dakota, then came to Iowa, how I met her and we dated for three years and got married.

Now I'm a good clarinet player.

I I've taught for many years, but I'm not a songwriter.

About 1989, we were at the Iowa State Fair and we saw this gospel group on the Bill Riley stage, and I was so inspired by them, and I went home that night after the fair, and I woke up in the middle of night and heard a song in my head, went down, got my cassette recorder, I hummed it into the recorder and the next morning I woke up, I said, I think I had a dream.

I wrote a peacock song and I said, Can you write words to this song?

She says, Yeah.

And the next day she had words.

And it is the wacky Peacock song, Oh.

One Heart.

And Sunny.

Day.

Our Pet Pig Charlie passed.

Away.

We flew out from Omaha, Nebraska, to the water to the airport with four peacocks.

We did a seven minute segment where we talked about peacocks.

We walked around the cage and we sang our peacock song.

And from then on, then it was crazy.

Oh, yes, we got peacocks.

Lots and lots of peacocks.

We got.

Black shoulder.

White and India blue.

Then I got invited to be on the Animal Planet.

You lie like a dog where I was the peacock expert and the guy next to me wasn't.

But you're on The Tonight Show.

Well, we did The Tonight From Minden Iowa.

Please welcome Dennis Fett.

Dennis, Come on.

I got a call to say, Can you play Jingle Bells on your clarinet and 28 seconds and take it apart where I have it?

Just below the clarinet.

I said, Yeah.

And they flew me up and I did it.

And I talked about peacocks.

They cut it out.

But that's okay.

Here we are.

I'm a YouTube guy now, and I love making videos.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

You just got your clipboard.

Yeah.

You know, we're gonna say no.

Are you okay?

I'll.

I'll be right back.

Mrs. Peacock.

Do you have some questions that our viewers sent from our channel?

Yes, I do.

And the first question is.

When it started off, I didn't know anything about it.

We were videotaping.

I had old fashioned camcorder, VHS, and I was running around.

I went from still pictures, which I love with I books to video.

Maybe I need to go pro you this morning in a screen so I could get a good go for all of you.

I kept making videos and I learned about YouTube.

Didn't know what it was, and I put videos up and had a peacock video that's now almost 2 million views.

Peacock Yellen.

And it's probably my worst video that I think I've ever taken.

But the best part about it is, is Debbie's in the beginning of it, right?

trying to do a standup for one of our DVDs we made and the peacock went to let her talk and hear her speak.

And I put that in.

Apparently she always claims it's because of her.

And I agree.

Welcome to Mr. Peacock and friends.

I wonder what Mr. Peacock will be doing today.

We we average about 29 to 30000 views a month.

I really don't care.

I just make videos.

And like I said, I'm an educator of people find them an interest.

Fine.

If not, who cares?

[clarinet music] I grew up in a concrete jungle, Paterson, New Jersey, and I never thought in my dreams that I'd even have five feet of grass, let alone four acres, is what we have here.

It's peaceful, but it's fun to watch animals.

Animals are so much fun.

They all have personalities.

Its like a connection with the birds and wildlife and animals.

The peacocks never paid the bill.

After the book sales dwindled, that was it.

By looking inside the egg during the incubation process, you can see what's really happening or not have the ball.

That's that's moving.

I'm a teacher.

I want to teach people about peacocks.

I'm just happy to be retired, to be here on the farm and hear the peacocks yelling in the background and enjoying life.

Very interesting.

Pig to a peacock to.

Who.

Never think to songs.

I mean, it's endless.