Breeding, feeding, incubation of pheasants at home for beginners

Pheasants are very interesting and beautiful birds that are worth keeping even just for decorative purposes, although the main purpose of their breeding is to obtain meat and eggs. There are a lot of varieties in this family and you can choose a bird for almost every taste. The most popular are various subspecies of the Common Pheasant, which are also called Hunting. But you can pick up more exotic species belonging to other genera.

Although now pheasant birds have begun to displace quails from personal farms, there are certain difficulties with them:

• requires a lot of space for maintenance;
• “capriciousness” of eggs;
• pugnacity of birds;
• specific diet;
• strict seasonality of oviposition.

When breeding pheasant birds on the farm, you will definitely need an incubator. It is better for complete beginners in poultry farming not to start their journey with breeding and keeping pheasants at home. You should first practice on less whimsical and familiar chickens. And in parallel, to study in detail the methods of breeding pheasants at home in a private courtyard.

Features

For beginner pheasant breeders planning to breed pheasants at home, it will be useful to first assess the size of their farmstead and that part of it that they can allocate for these exotic birds. These birds have a very pugnacious disposition. With crowded content of pheasants in the backyard, fatal fights begin even among females.

It is also impossible to mix different types of these birds or adults with young animals. Unless the young were raised by the female herself. When mixing pheasants with chickens, even in a very spacious aviary, fights begin between roosters of these species. Fights go to the killing of a weaker opponent.

Since it is often not possible to keep pheasants separately and in large areas, the owners try to prevent fights by putting special “glasses” on the fighters. But birds quickly learn to get rid of the hindrance.

The second nuance that makes it difficult to breed pheasants in captivity is the thin shell of eggs. The female can damage the eggs, even just hitting him with a claw. The same moment does not allow laying eggs under hens, although pheasant breeders make such attempts. Chickens crush pheasant eggs. And on an industrial scale, a private owner cannot afford to keep a herd of pheasants and the same number of hens for pheasant eggs. Therefore, when breeding pheasants, incubators are so common.

Contrary to advertising, the real experience of pheasant breeders shows that when keeping pheasants at home, females very rarely sit on eggs.

Conditions of detention

If the birds are kept solely for the sake of aesthetic pleasure, then they will be quite satisfied with a small range and a room for spending the night. Such conditions for keeping pheasants at home in the video below, where the owner just does not have the opportunity to provide the birds with a full-fledged living space.

Pheasant eggs will also be laid in such conditions, but a large number of pheasant offspring should not be expected.

The cage keeping of pheasants in sheds is not practiced anywhere. These birds need walking and the possibility of movement.

On pheasant farms for pheasant young, enclosures are determined at the rate of 1,5 sq.m per individual. It can be compared with the cultivation of broilers, where more than 0,4 sq. m.

To breed pheasants in home enclosures, each breeding bird must have at least 5 square meters. m. “living space”. For beginners, the exactingness of pheasants to keep at home can create serious difficulties. It will be quite difficult to build an aviary that satisfies these birds with your own hands. Although pheasant birds are terrestrial inhabitants, they prefer to spend the night high in the trees, where they will not be reached by a predator. In the absence of the opportunity to climb a high perch, the birds will experience constant stress. And since pheasants rush in a state of stress very badly, at home it is unlikely that it will be possible to obtain the “declared” 100 eggs per season from females. The aviary for pheasant birds should mimic natural conditions with trees and ground shelters.

In addition to a spacious and high enclosure, pheasant birds need a specific diet high in protein.

Features of keeping in winter

Pheasants do not impose special requirements for keeping in winter. Hunting subspecies in the wild completely winter on their own. Therefore, the birds do not need an insulated house, just shelter from wind and snow is enough. The main requirement for keeping pheasants in winter at home is to provide birds with energy food. Often in this case give corn kernels.

If the grain is whole, then there must be plenty of fine gravel in the aviary, which works in the pheasant’s stomach instead of millstones.

How to feed pheasants

The diet of pheasant birds in nature consists of plant foods and small invertebrates. Sometimes a bird can get hold of a lizard, a small non-poisonous snake or a mouse. When organizing feeding pheasants at home, these nuances should be taken into account. The diet of the Hunting subspecies should contain a very high percentage of animal protein.

Most often, pheasant owners give them raw minced meat or fish. Another option for feeding pheasants to make up for the lack of protein is not for the squeamish:

• a container is placed in the aviary;
• a piece of foam rubber or a rag is placed in the container;
• pour everything with meat or fish broth;
• after 2-3 days, maggots start up in the container.

These maggots are bait for pheasants. In fact, fly larvae are almost XNUMX% protein and are very useful for birds. But the smell of rotten broth may not please the neighbors.

The rest of the components of the diet, what you can feed pheasants, are the same as in chickens:

• wheat;
• corn;
• beans;
• fresh greens;
• chopped vegetables.

In summer, pheasants in the enclosure can be given grass, fruits, vegetables. There you can also pour out the snails collected from the beds.

The winter diet in nature consists of fallen grains of cereals and dry berries. But at home, the question of how to feed pheasants in winter is easier to solve. A man buys grain for the winter. Some owners have an opinion that pheasants can survive the winter only by eating whole grains of corn, which will be crushed in their stomach by gravel stones. But corn in Europe is no more than 500 years old, and pheasants have been living on the mainland for tens of thousands of years. Therefore, the basic principle is: increase the amount of grain feed.

To compensate for the lack of vitamins, birds can be given spruce paws. If there are dried berries: mountain ash, currants, raspberries, etc., they can also be added to the diet.

Therefore, we can say that fine gravel is an indispensable component of the diet at any time of the year. In addition to cereals and greens, pheasants are given chalk and shells.

Feeders and drinkers

Like chickens, pheasants are very fond of digging up the ground in search of food. In nature, this is justified, but when keeping pheasants at home, all food from the feeder will be thrown into the litter and lost in it. As long as it’s not whole grains. Feeders for these birds are set the same as for chickens. There are two optimal options for pheasant feeders:

• groove feeder with partitions;
• bunker feeder.

Both varieties can be bought at the store, or you can make your own.

A homemade flute feeder is a piece of plastic drainpipe with plugs at the ends. The pipe is cut in half lengthwise. Holes are drilled along the entire length on both sides of the gutter and pieces of wire are fixed in them. The distance between the wire is chosen so that the birds can stick their heads to the feed, but could not scatter food around.

The variety of bunker feeders is much greater. The store is similar to a vacuum drinker, but with a hole at the top. Homemade bunkers are often made in the form of a box with a feed tray at the bottom or from the same drainpipes.

Feed for pheasant young should be freely available for the possibility of unhindered development. Especially if a batch of young pheasant birds is fattened for slaughter. But a working person does not have the opportunity to monitor the consumption of feed and ensure timely feeding of young pheasants. The bunker feeder, designed for dry grain feed, removes this issue.

Drinkers in bird aviaries are installed vacuum or nipple. Variants of automatic flute drinkers with a float lock are undesirable, since the water in them is open and the birds, digging in the litter, throw garbage into the drinker.

The advantage of a vacuum drinker is that it does not require a connection to the water supply and can be placed anywhere. But the tray, where water comes from the tank, is also contaminated with bedding particles, feed and droppings. The water container must be washed regularly.

The nipple drinker provides the birds with fresh, clean water at all times. But in this case, a connection to the water supply is required. If nipple drinkers are located on the same pipe in a row, drop eliminators can be added to them, which will not allow water to wet the litter.

A home-made nipple drinker in the form of a bucket with holes drilled in the bottom has the same drawback as a vacuum one: pathogenic organisms multiply in the container. Drip eliminators cannot be attached to it, and drops from the nipples will wet the bedding.

Below is a video on how to breed pheasants at home by building the right enclosures for them so that the birds do not die due to stress and fights.

Selection of pairs for breeding and breeding

Pheasant families are formed from at least 3 females. The normal number of females per rooster is 4-5 heads. A separate enclosure is allocated for each pheasant family. Otherwise bloody fights between birds are inevitable. When keeping hunting pheasants at home, one has to take into account that usually the females are ready for oviposition earlier than the rooster for their fertilization. If the pheasants receive compound feed for laying hens, they will start laying eggs very early. The norm for the start of egg laying is the end of April – May. But at home, pheasant breeding can begin even in March. Reproduction in this case will be conditional. In March, males are not ready to fertilize eggs. Therefore, the first pheasant eggs can be collected for food.

When buying the initial stock on one farm, pheasants are likely to be related. In this case, the offspring will be very weak, the percentage of hatching of pheasants in the incubator will be low, and many chicks will die in the first days.

There are three ways to breed pheasants at home:

• the pheasant herself sits on the eggs;
• eggs are laid under the hen;
• incubation of pheasant eggs at home using a household incubator.

According to experienced pheasant breeders, the first method is rather from the realm of fantasy. Female pheasants at home very rarely sit on eggs. If this happened, the owner is very lucky with the birds.

The second way to breed pheasants is more realistic, but chickens often crush pheasant eggs. For this method of breeding pheasant birds, it is better to use a bantam.

But the method of breeding pheasants using an incubator needs to be considered in more detail.

Pheasant incubation

When selecting pheasant eggs for incubation before laying them in the apparatus, they are translucent with an ovoscope. The shell of pheasant eggs is very fragile and may have cracks that are invisible to the eye. The remaining procedures are similar to the selection of hatching eggs.

Due to the small number of pheasant breeders and the too short period of breeding and keeping pheasants by private individuals in household plots, the mode of incubation of pheasant eggs is still being groped experimentally and the data vary greatly. It is only known for certain that the period of incubation of pheasants depends on their species. At the same time, in all tables of incubation, the mode of incubation of pheasant eggs is indicated only for the Asian (Hunting) species.

The incubation period of the hunting pheasant is 24-25 days. Silver lofur will be excreted in 30-32 days. Therefore, when incubating pheasants, the tabular temperature regime is a poor guideline. It can only give approximate data on the incubation regimen for pheasants.

Below are several tables with such data on Hunting Pheasants.

It was theory. Life is more severe.

Practical incubation of pheasants

The incubation of pheasants at home is very different from the industrial one. A working person does not have the ability to turn eggs manually, and automatic household incubators turn eggs every 2 hours and this parameter cannot be changed.

Humidity in a household incubator depends on the amount of water in the machine. Before hatching pheasants at home, you can put a pot of hot water in a large home-made incubator to increase humidity, but then the temperature will rise, which before hatching the pheasants should be lower than at the beginning of the incubation of pheasants in the incubator.

In a small household incubator, the owner can only influence the temperature, lowering it depending on how many days the pheasant eggs are incubated. But such incubator models have one drawback: the temperature data on the incubator display may not match the actual temperature inside the machine.

To establish a real picture, you need to measure the temperature at the corners of the incubator and in the middle. If everything is fine, you can try to get pheasants. How to breed pheasants in an incubator in real life:

• pour water;
• lay selected pheasant eggs;
• close the lid and turn on the incubator;
• if the machine is without automatic egg turning, turn the pheasant eggs by hand several times a day;
• after 4-5 days, enlighten the pheasant eggs with an ovoscope and remove the unfertilized ones (they are still suitable for eating);
• reduce the temperature as you incubate;
• 2 days before the expected hatching, the pheasants should transfer the pheasant eggs from the automatic incubator to the manual one, since the turning of the eggs cannot be turned off;
• wait until the pheasants hatch and transfer them to the brooder.

Then comes the second stage of growing pheasants: feeding the young.

Chick diet

The temperature in the brooder is maintained the same as for chickens. But feeding the first-born pheasants will be different, since little pheasants need a lot of protein food. As a dry grain feed, it is better to give them starter feed for broiler chickens, if there is no specialized feed for pheasants.

Without fail, finely chopped boiled eggs should be present in the diet. A week after hatching, pheasants can begin to slowly introduce fresh greens.

Pheasant diseases: treatment and care

When pheasants are crowded, as always happens in business breeding conditions, these birds get sick in the same way as chickens. Diseases in pheasants are the same as in other chickens. But the situation is aggravated by the fact that birds are expensive, and the treatment for most bird diseases is to cut off the head with an ax. When trying to “save” the pheasant population from infectious diseases by “folk remedies”, an inexperienced poultry farmer can destroy the entire herd. Among the diseases in which sick birds are immediately slaughtered include:

• Newcastle;
• flu;
• smallpox;
• Marek’s disease;
• leukemia;
• infectious bursitis;
• egg drop syndrome;
• adenovirus infection;
• infectious encephalomyelitis;
• pullorosis;
• respiratory mycoplasmosis.

With all these diseases, a detachment of chicken pheasants is slaughtered in the same way as any other poultry.

The remaining diseases of pheasants are also “chicken” and their treatment is carried out in a similar way. These diseases include:

• colibacteriosis;
• coccidiosis;
• salmonellosis;
• helminthiasis.

Since it is impossible to keep pheasants at home in a private courtyard separately from other birds, the risk of disease in these birds is very high. Young growth is especially susceptible to infections of pheasants. From external parasites and worms get rid of with the help of appropriate drugs.

Pheasant breeding as a business

Breeding pheasants at home as a business is often not a very good idea, although those who have already fallen for this bait are trying to prove the opposite. Why the idea is wrong:

• prolonged puberty of birds;
• large area required for one bird;
• frequent fights even between females;
• thin shells of eggs, due to which a significant part of a potentially hatching egg is lost;
• large losses in the event of a disease outbreak;
• low demand for products.

The most early Asian species, which is called the Hunting. These birds mature by the year. As a result, eggs can be obtained from them already in the first year, although they reach the peak of egg laying only by the second year. Other types of pheasants mature by 2 years. That is, the chickens will have to be fed for 2 years before you get a return on them. In this case, birds most often need to be replaced after the first year of laying. That is, all the eggs received will go to the self-repair of the herd. Only culling will remain for sale, which also still needs to be grown.

For meat

Such breeding of pheasants is usually carried out on a farm, where it is possible to keep a large broodstock plus young pheasants for slaughter on an industrial scale. In this case, the question arises of where to sell the carcasses. Theoretically, restaurants can buy them, but these establishments do not accept meat from individuals, and even without accompanying documents.

The accompanying documents mean that it is not enough to build an aviary and purchase the initial livestock to breed pheasants for meat. It is necessary to draw up a full-fledged enterprise in compliance with all veterinary standards. Thus, such a business will only make a profit at a large poultry farm. That is, we need an agro-complex and serious financial investments. Since the demand for the meat of these birds is actually not great in Our Country, pheasant breeding as a business is unprofitable for large entrepreneurs, and for small ones it will never even pay off.

Hunting

Attempts to breed pheasants for hunting by private individuals have already taken place, and as practice has shown, it can only be profitable for birds to be bred to provide related services at the camp site. Even attempts to sell grown pheasants to hunting farms turned out to be unprofitable.

If the hunting farm is engaged in the organization of shooting, then it itself breeds the animals and birds it needs, and also feeds wild hunters for the convenience. There is no need for the hunting farm to buy pheasants from private owners. Visitors can always hunt other game.

In addition to adversity, only the Asiatic species can be used as a hunting pheasant. The rest are decorative and camp sites for hunting will not buy them.

To zoos and to the tribe

An attempt to find a niche for marketing in this direction may be more successful. But in this case, a significant number of chickens cannot be sold, since zoos do not need much, and another farmer, having bought a breeding bird, will breed his flock.

Perhaps someone will be lucky and in his region there will be a steady demand for various types of pheasants. But deciding whether or not pheasant breeding as a business is profitable in each case will have to be done individually, after carefully researching the potential market. With a high degree of probability, raising pheasants at home will be a hobby with a nice bonus in the form of some reimbursement from the sale of birds and their eggs.

Conclusion

In the case of pheasants in a private backyard, the main difficulty is not that it is not known for certain how to grow pheasants at home, but that they have a very long reproductive period. As productive birds, pheasants are economically unprofitable, and there are not as many lovers of ornamental birds as they could be.

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