1st Pheasants of the year

[Murph8868]

I raise Pheasants and Chukars as a side hobby in MN. My first batch of day old Roosters just showed up. Figured id share some pics. The one is a wild bird that likes to hang out around the pens where the birds move once they are fully feathered.

Anyone else raise birds in here? I do about 1100 Roosters and 300 Chukar a year.

 

[wildwilderness]

What do you do with the birds? Sell them to shooting preserves? personal use?

How old til they can fly?

 

[Murph8868]

What do you do with the birds? Sell them to shooting preserves? personal use?

How old til they can fly?

Typically I sell them to local dog trainers all summer. A few go out as meat birds during some of the Asian Holidays in the fall. Then once Oct hits I sell what I have left to a game preserve as I dont want to deal with the water once things start freezing up.

They are a week and a half old right now and are already flying up to the window sills in my brooder. But its about 6 weeks until they are fully feathered and I start moving them outside where they have 12' tall 50'x100' pens to really spread their wings.

 

[yfarm]

How do you segregate by sex or do you? Cant imagine much of a market for hens?

 

[Zak406]

How do you segregate by sex or do you? Cant imagine much of a market for hens?

Around here the preserves put out a split between male and female and they are priced the same. In pa the game commission also stocks hens and unlike out west you can shoot either sex. Training dogs I doubt the trainers care which sex bird they end up with. Atleast I never have

 

[Murph8868]

How do you segregate by sex or do you? Cant imagine much of a market for hens?

I buy them pre-sexed. They guarantee 90% accuracy. Once they are a few weeks old it's easier to tell them apart.

Some people request hens if they are going to release them in the spring to try to improve the bird population.

 

[yfarm]

I hunt a operation in Kansas that supposedly releases 14k rooster chicks a year, using surrogators, always wondered what happened to all those hen chicks. They maintain the surrogators are effective in raising near wild roosters. Research from Texas on quail using surrogators isnt so optimistic. Used to drive by a game farm supplier, had hundreds of roosters in net enclosed yards next to the highway. Know the chicken operations kill most of the male chicks as have little marketvalue.

 

[KurtR]

How do you segregate by sex or do you? Cant imagine much of a market for hens?

I know lots of dog trainers that use the hens

 

[sconnieVLP]

Started raising pheasants for 4H back in the day, my dad still keeps it going. Normally raise about 150-200/year, all roosters. Have some land set up as a game farm so we can go put some birds out essentially any time. Mostly about guaranteeing we can get the dogs on birds for us.

Taking some leave next week to go back and help my dad rebuild the pen, just tore the old one down after it got a little long in the tooth.

 

[RS3579]

I raised 10 pheasants one time I got at an auction. $2 a piece at 4 weeks old. It was fun. Kept them in my greenhouse. I released them and then found a hawk on-top of one for dinner. Good luck

 

[jklund38]

That’s awesome!

 

[sconnieVLP]

Pen is rebuilt. Used mostly hand-me-down materials on it to avoid sinking a bunch of money into it, but it turned out alright for us amateur pen builders.

 

[gonhunting247]

We raised a a couple hundred a year when I was younger. ODFW used to give them to you as chicks or eggs if you turned at least half loose when they were mature. I loved always having them around! We raised chukars also some years.
I hope to raise some again soon, but I haven't figured out exactly what I want for a brooder pen and run set up at the knew place.
Any do's or don'ts that you care to share about design of those?

 

[ccg951]

Lots of attempts to release pen raised birds to help wild populations; I believe the Wildlife Dept. here in OK tried it for a while. Seems only about 10% or so make it past the first few months, not good odds. I thought the surrogators were to be a game changer but have not seen state sponsored success stories their either......

 

[sconnieVLP]

We raised a a couple hundred a year when I was younger. ODFW used to give them to you as chicks or eggs if you turned at least half loose when they were mature. I loved always having them around! We raised chukars also some years.
I hope to raise some again soon, but I haven't figured out exactly what I want for a brooder pen and run set up at the knew place.
Any do's or don'ts that you care to share about design of those?

We get our birds late enough that we don't use brooder boxes, they go straight into the big pen.

Regarding design, a few thoughts:

1) If I could do it over again, I wouldn't use telephone poles (despite their price...free). I'd rather use 4x4s or 4x6s that have flat sides, it would make installing the wire a lot more straightforward process. Every telephone pole section was a little bit different size and it made the wire fit funny and was difficult to get on straight.

2) On the subject of the wire, the rubber coated stuff is much better than bare wire. Little pricier, but worth it. When installing, cut the wire down into sections to span from post to post rather than try to run it around the whole pen. We did the bottom section in a single piece and it was miserable to work with and really difficult to install straight and without a bunch of slack. We cut it into sections for the top half and it was night and day difference. Make sure the wire is buried about 18" below the pen to keep other critters from burrowing in and flare it away from the pen a bit if possible.

3) If using the preferred 4x4s or 4x6s, I'd like to have put a 2x6 or 2x8 header across the top of the posts to attach the top net to instead of the steel cable we used. It works, but it's attached via hog rings to the cable and then more hog rings to seal up the gap between the wire and the net. I think the 2x6 header would be more secure.

4) We use two top nets with a gap between them. We found that with a single net, hawks would fly up and the pheasants would freak out and start flying up into the net. Head pops through the net and the hawk rips it off. The gap between the nets keeps that from happening.