Raising Pheasant Chicks Transcript
Kenny Coogan: [00:00:00] Today we’re talking about raising pheasant chicks and although it is fall, people can be building and brainstorming this winter to be ready for the spring.
Brian Davis: Absolutely. That’s actually a good time to start. Yeah. Don’t order them. And then start panicking a week out. There’s a little bit of preparation and some good things that should be taken care of before you get them.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources, while helping you conserve your financial resources. In this podcast, we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well, wherever you are, in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
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Jessica Anderson: We’d like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Brinsea. That’s B R I N S E A, chick incubation specialists. They’ve been [00:01:00] focusing on egg incubator design continuously since 1976, resulting in egg incubators, chick brooders, and incubation accessories. They offer unparalleled practicality, reliability, superior hatch rates, and healthy chicks. Innovation you can trust.
Kenny Coogan: Good day, everyone. I am Kenny Coogan and joining me on this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends is Brian Davis, brooder farm manager at MacFarland Pheasants Incorporated. Brian has been with the hatchery for over 13 years and oversees the young birds and barns from day one until the birds go outside to their flight pens.
Today, we’re going to be talking about caring for pheasant chicks. Welcome to the podcast, Brian.
Brian Davis: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Kenny Coogan: Today we’re going to be talking about caring for pheasant chicks, but Brian, what species are we specifically discussing today?
Brian Davis: We’re going to stick with the most common in [00:02:00] the upper Midwest and the United States, that’s the ring neck pheasant.
Starting with Pheasant Chicks or Pheasant Eggs?
Kenny Coogan: I’m not sure if people start off with pheasants, they might first start off with chickens and then move into pheasants. Would you recommend somebody starting with chicks or eggs first?
Brian Davis: Chicks, are a lot easier to get and a lot easier to handle. Take the easier approach there. You don’t have to be set up for the incubation process and all those other things that come with eggs. one of those would be sourcing the eggs or somehow breeding them yourself but chicks are pretty readily available, across the U. S. And the nice thing is you can ship them through the mail. So you can generally get them, sea to sea basically, and it’s a pretty easy process.
Sex ratio in phesant chicks
Kenny Coogan: Most people are raising chickens for eggs and then maybe the byproduct of that is meat. But most people are raising pheasants to stock or hunt, so it doesn’t really matter [00:03:00] the sex ratio that you receive, right?
Brian Davis: No, in general, the rooster, the male pheasant is actually more sought after, especially on the hunting side. In some states, you, even if you do raise hens you may not be able to hunt them hypothetically unless you’re in a preserve situation. But hens are a little bit smaller, so if you’re looking for a meat bird you may have better luck with a rooster as far as size is concerned. But as far as raising them goes, it’s a lot easier to raise hens. They’re not quite as territorial, quite as aggressive towards each other.
How to raise baby pheasants in a brooder
Kenny Coogan: Let’s back up to, day one or day three, when people receive their chicks, what type of environment does a baby pheasant need?
Brian Davis: It can be very simple or it can be very advanced. In, in general, you can start about, we start about four birds per square foot. So you can have quite a few birds in a small space. The [00:04:00] big details that I always talk about are heat, water and food, so if you have a decent heat source good, clean water and a good food, good feed you can do things pretty, pretty easily, pretty efficiently.
In a small space you can go larger, if you have a building or have a hoop that you’re not necessarily using at that time of year, and it’s clean and disinfected you can stick with that 4 birds per square feet for the first 3 weeks then you have to start thinking about the next space, the larger spaces as the birds get older.
You can start with just a heat lamp, simple heat lamp will work just like a chicken ambient space. You probably want around 90 to 94 degrees. Right underneath the heat source, you’d want that up in the one00 degree range. So the birds can find their comfort zone and you can start them on a chop straw is probably our first recommendation on the farm here. We tend to use a large flake [00:05:00] pine shaving. There are places in even our recommendations that we say not to use wood shavings. Most of that is due to the fact that pheasants will pick those up and eat them. And if they fill their, fill their guts full of straw, there’s no nutritional value and there’s essentially starve out with feeling full.
When to purchase pheasant chicks
Kenny Coogan: Now, Brian, we are filming mid fall, is there a preferred season to be obtaining pheasant chicks?
Brian Davis: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, right now, there probably isn’t much for pheasant chicks available to be honest. Say, here, we’re already prepping for next year’s season. So we’re selecting our breeders now. From our flocks from this season to create eggs for next season. We will start selling our chicks in October for next season, those chicks will not come available until March. So it’s generally a March to August type of thing. The earlier in the season, obviously those birds will have to go outside in a colder situation or a [00:06:00] cooler situation, especially here in the upper Midwest. So a mid season, if you’re just starting out, late May, mid May to mid July is probably a good time frame for people to raise pheasant chicks. Reason for that is it’s warmer outside. You don’t have to spend as much as many resources on fuel, maybe to keep your brooder house or your brooder area warm. And then once they’re ready to go outside. You’re not so worried about the temperature outside. You’re able to focus more on the rain situations and get them outside without too much trouble.
Kenny Coogan: So today we’re talking about raising pheasant chicks and although it is fall, people can be building and brainstorming this winter to be ready for the spring.
Brian Davis: Absolutely. That’s actually a good time to start. Yeah. Don’t order them. And then start panicking a week out. There’s a little bit of preparation and some good things that should be taken care of before you get them.
What to feed baby pheasants
Kenny Coogan: We know that we do not want them to [00:07:00] be eating wood shavings, so what a feed do you recommend a baby pheasant eat?
Brian Davis: Do your best to find a complete crumble feed when I say complete it’s got everything they need in one bite, essentially, it’s a 30%, up to a 30 percent protein level. Sometimes it’s hard to find, if you’re, in an area where there’s not so many farm stores. It’s whatever you can find with the highest protein. So even if all you can find is a 26 percent protein, that’s still, a good feed. Turkey starters, game bird starters there’s companies out there that, that are making a really nice feed. And crumbles important. So if all you can find is a pellet, you may have to grind that down or crush that down just to make sure they can eat it in the first few days.
Do pheasants need medicated feed
Kenny Coogan: Do you recommend that the feed is medicated?
Brian Davis: We do recommend a medicated feed. Best case scenario, it’s medicated for coccidia so a coccidia built in typically common ones would be like an [00:08:00] Amprolium or Avatec® is also a good coccidia stat you may find in some feeds.
Kenny Coogan: You mentioned that the feed should be a crumble. Can you, using the scale of a baby chicken or a baby duck or goose, can you tell us how big a baby pheasant is when they first hatch?
Brian Davis: Oh, gosh. Some cases, they’re they could be half the size. They’re taking. Yeah, they’re pretty small. A pheasant egg is probably just a little bit bigger than a quarter, if you were to look at it that way. Yeah, day one they’re pretty small. At times and actually, I prefer to do it we start them on like a gel product. We’ll add a little bit of what we, a brand name would be like a Grow Gel or Avi Vit is another one and they’re green. They’re like a green gel that you can mix up and you sprinkle over the feed. And that green color really attracts into the feed. So it really gets them going. It’s a probiotic as well, gets their guts move in the right direction. And that [00:09:00] all helps anything you can do to really get them interested in that food and with a little bit of nutritional value and hydration it all helps getting those tricks started.
Kenny Coogan: I think the United States post office has been shipping chicken chicks since the late 1800s. When you ship the baby pheasants, I know that they have those yolks still attached to them, but is there a gel or any feed or are you not concerned because it’s so fast?
Brian Davis: We absolutely put that grow gel product in the boxes with the chicks that’ll hold them over for those. Generally, your birds will get to you in two days. But there are places where things aren’t as efficient in the postal service and those birds can get stressed. So we definitely do put that gel in there to keep them good and healthy for the shipment.
Should baby pheasants be vaccinated?
Kenny Coogan: You recommend that the feed is medicated. Is there an option for baby pheasants to be [00:10:00] vaccinated or do you think they should be vaccinated?
Brian Davis: We don’t really mess much with the vaccination stuff. Can they be vaccinated? I believe there is technology out there that they could be vaccinated. Generally, any technology that’s available in the other poultry worlds could be, I can, that’s all I can really say. There’s, I don’t know a whole lot about that going into the depths, but there isn’t really anything that we vaccinate for.
Minimum number of pheasants chicks to raise
Kenny Coogan: The number of pheasants you raise is going to be based on if you’re stocking, if you’re hunting, maybe the end goal, but for shipping and brooding purposes. What is the minimum number of baby pheasants somebody should obtain?
Brian Davis: As far as brooding is concerned, there really isn’t a minimum. Obviously, there could be a maximum. It’s all size restrictions at that point. But as far as getting your chicks. A lot of places will have a minimum that you have to order in order to put them in through the postal service. Some of that has to do [00:11:00] with keeping those chicks warm, to be honest if I get into a cool situation, they, they do and will huddle. So our minimum when ordering from us for chicks would be one0 birds.
Kenny Coogan: I remember growing up in like the 90s, the minimum was 25 birds and now some chicken places can ship you three safely.
Brian Davis: Sure. Yeah. And a lot of that comes with just different size boxes, and the technology and paper products really, you can, Really work on getting that temperature just right in a shipment and that’s that has to do with a lot of it if birds get overstressed and shipments and show up in rough condition, a lot of it, it has to do with temperature and what they were put through on their way there.
Can you mix pheasant species in a brooder?
Kenny Coogan: Can you mix pheasant species in the same brooder?
Brian Davis: From what I understand yes, you can. It’s not something we do. We generally don’t do a lot of the ornamentals. Some of those ornamentals, they have [00:12:00] obviously, flock to flock doesn’t have a different personality, but species to species just like anything else, there’s some challenging personalities that may come out of a box and not so much of an issue early, but as the birds get older, and, they may take on their territorial sides or their aggressive sides I have heard that certain ornamentals are more aggressive than the ring neck pheasant.
Should you raise pheasants as straight runs or sexed flocks?
Kenny Coogan: And what about mixing the sexes? How long are you good for any ratio that you happen to receive when you start separating them?
Brian Davis: So we will raise based on what our needs are, we will raise we’ll try to split them up at times, but we also have some that are raised together. We would call that a straight run if they’re raised together. Basically you’re half and half is what, the idea of that ratio is so 50/50 you can raise those absolutely 50/50 actually all the way through. The issues you may see is if it’s an early flock let’s say let’s [00:13:00] just use the month of March, for example, especially in the upper Midwest as those birds get older. Those birds are early enough that they may be, they may come in to maturity before the end of the season. So they may try to start breeding or get aggressive to the point that they will pick on each other quite hard. And especially the males will come in. In general, you just have to watch it. You have to watch your densities. It’s better to have more hens than roosters in that situation, if you get too many roosters and not enough hens, they may start to pick on them. And to the point of they may be so aggressive coming into maturity that they may kill them.
But mid season, you keep your densities right out in your flight pens, or, it’s generally once they get outside in the barns, there’s. You really, in the first, few days, unless, what you’re looking for, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Male to female by the time they’re 6 and 7 weeks old yeah, you can see them, an untrained eye can start to pick them out a little bit more the roosters will get a little bigger and a little [00:14:00] more color. But in general you can raise them all the way through with little issues. And most growers do. We sex out all our groups. So we have hens here and roosters over there. And a lot of that comes with our shipping and our shipping needs. As we get a customer who may only want roosters because those are what what they can hunt.
Kenny Coogan: We’re going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor. And when we return, we’ll be focusing on raising pheasants for profit.
Jessica Anderson: Brinsea products are designed to be long lasting and energy efficient. Their Advance Series incubators and brooders feature the latest state of the art digital control systems, providing instant readings of temperature and humidity to ensure successful hatches and healthy chicks.
Check out Brinsea incubators and more at www.Brinsea.com. That’s [00:15:00] www.Brinsea. com.
Transitioning pheasants to the outdoors
Kenny Coogan: We are back with Brian Davis, Brooder Farm Manager at MacFarland Pheasants Incorporated. So we just talked about transitioning pheasant chicks from a brooder to a larger area. Are we concerned about training them to eat on their own? Or once we release them because they’re a wild bird and not really domesticated, they’re good to go.
Brian Davis: No, there’s they definitely need a little bit of help. When you start moving to your larger areas, or you’re going outside with your birds there is a transition period. They generally, coming from a pen raised situation, a barn raised situation, they’ve had feed in front of their face, their whole life. Easy to get to. That’s what we want. We want it to be easy. We want them to grow. When they start moving to the outside world. Things may not be as easy, right? There’s going to be challenges for them, so you still want it [00:16:00] to be easy. But at the same time, you want them to get a little more wild.
So flight panelized. We make sure there’s cover in there, and that helps them to adapt to that outside world as well, along with being able to hide if there’s rain, or, even as weird as it sounds, there could be a predator that ends up somehow getting to them.
But if you’re to release them outside at least for the first while, as long as they’ll stick around, I would recommend a supplemental feeding, something in the open where they can get to pretty easy. That’s stocking them as well. Do your best to maybe put a range feeder out in the middle of nowhere and see how it goes.
They got plenty of challenges. The big one is predators will do just about anything they can, and they’re everywhere unless you’re about as tight as can be. They’re going to be there.
What does a pheasant flight pen look like
Kenny Coogan: So you move them from the brooder maybe a barn or really large pen, and then you have a flight pen. And does this flight pen look [00:17:00] like branches and trees and evergreens and grass does it look like the wild?
Brian Davis: In some cases yeah. We use posts for the frame and then we run like aircraft cable along it with chicken wire on the outside. And then up on top, we have a, a two inch, two inch netting that goes across the top. Obviously to keep them in inside that we grow cover, whether it’s. Something some kind of weed that we can get to grow that works really nice.
Some of our favorites, the farmers hate, but lambs quarter is a is a really good cover for pheasants. It’s got low cover. It’s got high cover and generally, it survives some of those first frost or survives through the summer heat up here in the upper Midwest. You can get away with some ragweed another favorite for all the allergy folks out there, but it does a good enough job for cover. Especially if it’s only one group that’s going through that pen, but it tends [00:18:00] to, get stocky, down low, and doesn’t provide the best cover. But yeah, it can be a jungle in those pens for sure.
And cover is very important, but so is open space. The birds really prefer to spend their time in the open space. A third of your pen is going to end up being open. Completely open, no cover. If there’s not enough open space, those birds will get as rambunctious and as aggressive as they would if there was no cover. They like to have their little spots, and in some cases, they’re just like a human. They don’t want to be right on top of each other. It definitely can be like a jungle out there. If you’re unable to grow the cover there’s things you can do you can plant corn, you can plant milo, mullet, there’s things out there, you can plant for sure to make sure you have that or, sometimes it comes down to whatever you can get. There are growers putting Christmas trees, dead on their sides or branches or depends on whatever you can do in your space.
We can go back to, how we do things from the brooder, how we [00:19:00] transition out. We start them, pretty tight in three weeks that four birds per square feet they’re in one room and then we double their space at three weeks. So they go from, a quarter of a square foot to half a square foot per bird.
And then they’re in there until they’re about six or seven weeks. And that’s when we will put them outside. And before we put them outside, we got to make sure that the weather’s right. So we may have to, move a few days here, a few days there to make sure that our temperatures are right. And we try to minimize the chance of rain for those first three days. Cause we need those birds oil glands to get going before they get rained down too heavy.
What age do you release pheasants?
Kenny Coogan: And what age can you open up the pens?
Brian Davis: So open up the pens to outside there are growers and there are places in the world where that’s 7 weeks they’re basically on their own or, to some level with the supplemental feed and the, actually supervision, there’s game keepers that’s their job is to make sure they’re seven [00:20:00] week olds out in the wild, stay close and are safe. Far as we’re concerned, our birds are marketable at about 22 weeks old what we’re looking for in that a lot of it goes towards that hunting side. A long tail, a full, long tail, fully feathered tails are the, they’re the trophy in the pheasant world.
The longer the tail, the generally older the bird, we can do some things with genetic selecting that gets us a longer tail earlier. We want those tails tight when tails grow, they, they start at the base and that base may not be quite tight on those 2 long king feathers on the tail.
And so when we ship them in crates, they may come out if they’re not tight enough. , yeah, 22 weeks is a marketable bird. The longer you have them, the more you got to feed them, so your margins may go down the longer you have to hold on to them.
Kenny Coogan: When you open up the pen, is there a bolt to the wild, or do they keep coming back as long as there’s feed?
Brian Davis: Yeah even when they’re in the pens, the first thing they want to do is get out. [00:21:00] Once they finally get out, they want to come back. Even if you were to open a door wide open, it would take them, they’re a little curious at first and once the first one pops out, and the next one pops out, then, they’ll be a steady stream. They can find a, they can find an 8 inch hole about as fast as a ten foot hole. It’s pretty slow going at first, but once they find it they start moving through pretty quick.
Raising pheasants for profit
Kenny Coogan: What type of operation would somebody need to start raising pheasants for profit?
Brian Davis: There’s a lot of decisions that need to be made and a lot of things to think about, and really it comes down to what do you have in your area, or, as far as markets, that’s the first things to talk about. Okay. You got a club nearby or some market that, whether it’s a restaurant or whatever it may be is it marketable if you don’t have it close by can you get the birds there? So transporting but we can go back to, what does it take to start them?
So you got to have a building to at least get them through their [00:22:00] first 6, 7 weeks, probably then you got to have a flight pan of sorts or a building of sorts that can then that can handle mature birds and those mature birds in general need, 20 to 23 feet per bird when you start talking about the spatial needs of a bird outside without them get becoming aggressive and fighting. So there’s those spatial limitations, right? Beyond that, you got to have your vehicles and your rates and your tools, to maintain, those pens, those buildings, the transportation idea the things that we don’t always think about, but are, uber important is biosecurity. You need to make sure that, the diseases that are out there are the, the outside birds aren’t bringing anything in or, you yourself isn’t working on a chicken farm and then going home and potentially bringing something there or bringing something from home to your job or to your other facilities. There’s lots of [00:23:00] viruses and bacteria in the world that can really wreck your operation or your, your startup stuff. So startups are huge. Beyond that the veterinarian, a veterinarian is very important. They can help you through some hard times and make sure that your birds are the best they can be. They can develop a plan for care or if you have to travel with those birds.
You need their signature saying those birds are top notch are healthy can travel, can cross state lines if you need to the NPIP, which is the National Poultry Improvement Plan that monitors all poultry really and make sure that you’re not going to be, taking a bird to a fair somewhere or whatever it may be to a delivery that, that may spread pullorum or, other viruses.
There’s just, there’s lots of risks associated with starting a pheasant farm. Is it possible? Yeah, absolutely. There’s people that have started farms in the last few years. I know a few personally and starting small, but, as they can they double their [00:24:00] production, or, they can move up the ranks.
And I got to have staff if you’re going to have, if you’re going to have a lot, or a big family anyways, somehow to keep your costs down and do the work yourself. It’s rewarding. Absolutely. And just like anything else, if you can raise a flock and be successful, it’s a pretty rewarding experience.
Kenny Coogan: I like the part that you just said about scaling up because I have a lot of my own endeavors, and I always think about you need to scale up in the right ratio to prevent all those overhead costs from being a debt rather than an asset.
Brian Davis: Right? Yep. Absolutely. And there’s always things you forget about, as you’re trying to scale up or, this isn’t so bad. How can we do this? And, before you know it, you got, there’s all those fuel costs and, utility costs and lots of costs out there really. And then, you got to remember, you’re paying all this up front, you don’t get paid potentially until they’re 22 weeks old.
If you’re buying chicks, [00:25:00] there’s a big expense. And then those birds are going to eat by the time they’re, let’s say, ten weeks, they’re going to get close to eating a pound per week. And, feeds about a quarter a pound that’s just, reality. If you’re lucky and you’re close to a feed mill and, they can work with you and get it to you reasonably that’s awesome. It’s not always the case. So it’s one of those, take the plunge or, find someone who’s raising them, and sometimes that can be just as easy or, easier and the costs work out.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, Brian, for this great conversation.
Brian Davis: Of course.
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
For those of [00:26:00] you who don’t recognize my voice, I’m the Content Director for Mother Earth News. You will hear my voice a bit more often as I’m taking over some podcast production work for Jessica Anderson, who did excellent work here for the podcast for over seven years, but has recently moved on to work with a local organization here in Kansas called Monarch Watch that endeavors to provide the public with information about the biology of monarch butterflies. Their spectacular migration and how to use Monarchs to further science education in primary and secondary schools. Thanks so much to Jessica for everything she added to what we do.
We’re excited to see her next chapter and plan to have her on in the near future to discuss Monarch Watch’s work. Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod.
Thanks to our sponsor Brinsea
Jessica Anderson: Thanks again to Brinsea, our sponsor for this Mother Earth News and Friends podcast episode. You too can experience the Brinsea difference and [00:27:00] maximize your hatch rates with Brinsea incubators that monitor temperature and humidity and are made of antimicrobial materials.
Brinsea ships worldwide and provides stellar customer support to answer all your questions. Hatch your chicks with Brinsea, the leader in innovative incubation research. Learn more at Brinsea.com. Again, that’s www.Brinsea.com
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