Martha Stewart has said that her pet peacocks, which live in an enclosure on her 153-acre farm in New York, respond only to her when she talks to them.
The lifestyle icon, 82, has a special relationship with the more than 20 dramatically feathered birds that roam in a yard on her farm.
She described them as “very friendly”, adding: “They talk to me. Whenever I go to their enclosure, I talk to them. I go, ‘Awk, awk’.
“I make their noise and they talk right back to me. Everybody laughs when they see that because I’m the only one they respond to.”
Stewart detailed how each peacock has a different personality and told People magazine: “Some are shyer than others. Some are much bolder.
“Some are much more prone to ruffling their feathers, fanning their tails. I have a mixture of males and females. And I breed them. They’re all bred in my incubator.”
Last July, Stewart lost six of her pet peacocks to a pack of “aggressive” coyotes. In a post mourning her loss, she shared a video of her late peacock named Blue Boy fanning his feathers while he was still alive.
“RIP beautiful Blue Boy,” she wrote on Instagram. “The coyotes came in broad daylight and devoured him and five others, including the magnificent White Boy.”
Prior to the coyote attack, Stewart set the record straight about how many peacocks she owned and corrected an article by the New York Post that claimed she had 16 birds.
In a post on X/Twitter, she wrote at the time: “I actually have 21 of these glorious birds whose house is impeccable.”
Stewart described the birds’ loud call as “fun to hear”, adding: “They do not smell. They are so clean! Their voices are loud but such fun to hear. They are so friendly.”
The Martha Cooks star also keeps horses, Sicilian donkeys, homing pigeons, geese and more than 200 hens and roosters on her farm.
On top of all those, she also has a number of cats and dogs. At one point she had nine cats, but cut the number down to three last year after admitting that nine was “too much”.
But in April, she mourned the death of her 12-year-old calico Persian cat Princess Peony, who was attacked by her four pet dogs after mistaking the feline for an “interloper”.
Stewart wrote in an Instagram post: “Burying the beautiful and unusual Princess Peony. The four dogs mistook her for an interloper and killed her defenceless little self. I will miss her very badly. RIP beauty.”
