Raising Pheasants

Thinking about raising some birds for release next year. Has anyone attempted it? Any advice, comments, suggestions on where to find day old chicks with good genetics or any other help?

My dad has been doing this for over 5 years for a living. He buys 12,000 a year. It’s a lot of work. You get them at a day old, you need a barn with dry straw, water and heat. It’s very important the birds don’t get cold or they will huddle and suffocate themselves.

Next, at 6 weeks, you’ll need to put blinders on each bird. Leave them in the barn for another 10 days or so. Slowly increasing the light levels in the barn.

Next you’ll need a pen outside to keep the birds in. This will require you to grow cover in the pen. It helps keep the birds from beating each other up. The problem with good cover, it also makes it hard to know if you have predators in the pen. This pen needs to be varmint proof. Dad digs a trench around all his pens. The chicken wire is buried done 12 inches and then out 12 inches in the shape of an “L”. This is not fool proof by any means. Coons & skunks still find a way in.

Keep in mind, birds raised in pens never have the wing strength a wild bird does. It takes them time to build that up after releasing. My Dad figures about 10% survival rate for pen raised birds. This is of course very dependant on the amount of predators in the area you release them.

Any specific questions, let me know. To give you an idea how a year can go good or bad. Dad lost over 3000 birds this last year due to cold spells and a family of coons in one of his pens.

Good luck!!