Pheasant Farming For Beginners

Pheasant Farming For Beginners

How To Begin Raising Pleasants

Buying day-old chicks or incubating pheasant eggs on your own has pros and cons. The incubation process requires certain attention to details, including temperature and humidity. Also, eggs need to be turned several times per day, which can be tedious and time-consuming.

Fortunately, many manufacturers make incubators that possess the capabilities to maintain proper heat and humidity levels while automatically rotating eggs as needed. Whatever kind of incubator you choose, be sure to follow the instructions carefully to ensure success. Also, be sure to clean and disinfect equipment between uses.

Incubating eggs can be risky not only in nature for the wild hen, but also for you. Be sure to purchase eggs from a reputable dealer. Starting with bad eggs will ensure poor results. Eggs need to be handled with care and stored at appropriate temperatures. Always keep eggs stored at a minimum of 50 F. Eggs kept in proper conditions should stay viable for at least 18 days, but some reduction in hatchability should be expected.

Also Read: Pheasants Brood Rearing Period

Following these helpful guidelines when purchasing and handling pheasant eggs will increase your success of hatching eggs.

Once the incubation process is underway, methods exist that will allow you to monitor chick development within the eggs. Candling is one technique used to access the development of chicks within eggs with minimum disturbance to the egg (Weller, 1956).

However, ring-necked pheasant eggs have dark shells, which make candling difficult. The use of a strong candling light can improve one’s ability to candle pheasant eggs properly.

Another method that can provide accurate measures of egg development is the egg floating method (Westerkov, 1950). As the chick develops within the egg, an air sack forms on the tip of the egg. This air sack makes the egg buoyant, which causes the egg to float with time. Regardless of the egg-candling method employed, periodically monitoring incubating eggs may allow you to catch a problem, should one occur, and discard eggs that have become rotten and no longer contain a developing embryo.

These methods allow you to monitor chick development, which can be rewarding in itself. Experience is the best teacher, but sometimes your experience is full of fine details that can be difficult to remember. Therefore, you should keep a detailed journal regarding all aspects of the incubation process.

Journals should be used to keep records of such things as the length of time the eggs have been stored, storage temperature, date and time incubation procedures began, egg rotation times, and daily incubator temperature and humidity. Journals should be used daily for observations of eggs or for the incubation process in general.

If it interests you, write it down.

Finally, the success rate of eggs should be recorded following the completion of each incubation run.

These data will allow you to compare egg success rates through time, and the journal can be used to correlate the success of eggs with egg management, incubation procedures used, egg rotation schedule, and daily incubator temperatures and humidity used.

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Incubating pheasant eggs can be extremely rewarding, but it requires some initial start-up costs, and when not done correctly, it can set your operation back. Buying day-old chicks is a good alternative and often is recommended for beginners.

Numerous vendors sell ring-necked pheasant chicks. Be sure to purchase chicks from a reputable dealer who can confirm your chicks are coming from a disease-free environment. While buying day-old chicks can belles work than incubating your own eggs, buying pheasant chicks that carry disease and introducing them into your flock may prove devastating.

Day-old chicks are extremely sensitive to temperature and require special feed, so prepare in advance for their arrival. The purchase price, vendor name, arrival date and any dead on arrivals should be recorded in your journal.

Pheasants Brood Rearing Period

The brood-rearing period is a time of rapid growth for ring-necked pheasants, and keeping young birds in good condition can prevent many problems. Young pheasant chicks are somewhat dependent upon their mother to keep them warm in the wild. In captivity, pheasant chicks should be in a brooder house, which is relatively weather-tight, free from drafts and rodent-proof.

A special game bird brooder house or a building that has been used for rearing chickens can be used. If the building was used for rearing chickens, the brooder house must be disinfected properly. If such facilities are not available, a part of some other building, such as a garage in which a portion can be penned off, will work.

Today, many options are available for brooding pheasants, including self-contained brooders that possess all the requirements in a small unit. These units are very nice and can handle a fair number of birds, but the price may deter a beginning producer.

Also Read: Pheasant Chicks Feeding and Watering

Your brooder house should provide no less than 1 square foot per two chicks up to 6 weeks of age. An area within the brood house or room should be sectioned off with a chick guard and the light should be placed in the enter of the area.

Use a 24-inch-high chick guard to confine the chicks to the brooder area for the first week. The guard keeps the little birds from straying away from the heat and prevents floor drafts.

Use roll roofing metal and make a circle around the light. Do not make square corners because the chicks will pile up in these corners. Keeping the brooding area large enough to allow chicks to escape one another and allow them to choose their comfort zone around the light is important; however, the brood area should not be so large that a proper temperature cannot be maintained. Perhaps the easiest and most economical way to brood 50 pheasant chicks is with a heat lamp. This is called cold-room brooding because the heat is directed at the chicks without regard for temperatures in the brooder house.

The heat lamp burns continuously and uses a 250-watt, red-end, infrared heat lamp. If possible, get the lamp with Pyrex glass. It won’t break if you accidentally hit it with a few drops of water. However, a commercial heat lamp made especially for brooding chicks and pigs is best. This unit generally has a reflector and built-in safety features.

Heat from the lamp keeps the bird swarm while the red color helps reduce cannibalism. The heat lamp needs no hover (stand to ensure the heat lamp stays in one place suspended in the air), but a reflector is desirable. When using a heat lamp, you can see your chicks at all times.

This makes caring for the birds easier to do than if using a conventional brooder. Hanging the heat lamp from the ceiling or some means that allows the distance between the floor and the face of the lamp to be adjustable will work best.

Once the brood area is safe and secure, the light should be placed approximately 15 to 18 inches from the floor. Once the brooder is ready, place day-old chicks into the brooder and observe their reaction to the light. If, after acclimating to their new home, they avoid the area directly under the light, this may suggest your light is too close to the floor and the temperature beneath the light is too hot. Simply raise or lower the light to adjust the temperature.

Keep the rest of the brooder house dark to keep the chicks near the lighted heat source and help prevent cannibalism. Again, day-old chicks cannot thermal regulate well, so be sure to maintain a temperature beneath the light of approximately95 F during the first week. As chicks age, their ability to thermal regulate improves; therefore, the temperature at chick height beneath the light should be reduced by roughly5 F on a weekly basis. When making adjustments to the light, be sure to monitor chick response and readjust accordingly.

If overcrowding of chicks occurs and they appear to be competing for space beneath the light, you may have to addl lights to meet the heat requirements of young pheasants. Also, remain mindful of outside conditions.

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Dependent on the overall brood house, cold night time lows may greatly reduce the temperature beneath the brood lamp. A cold chick quickly dies, so be sure you are providing adequate heat.

Additionally, keep the brooding area clean and dry, and take out wet bedding as soon as it occurs and replace with dry bedding. Coccidiosisis a serious disease in young pheasants and wet bedding may contribute to a devastating outbreak.

Clean and disinfect the brooder house and all equipment after use and allow it to sit empty until the following season. Be sure to record all pertinent information in your journal, including causes and dates of all chick deaths. While using a heat lamp is one option for keeping chicks warm, others exist. Other heat sources include propane, electric hovers, oil and even wood.

Propane hovers have the advantage of keeping the birds calmer because of less intense light, and thus less feather picking (cannibalism).Regardless of which heat source you use, be sure to follow all manufacturer recommendations and test the heat source prior to the onset of brooding. Recognizing your heat source does not work after chicks have arrived undoubtedly will result in chick mortality.

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