Breeding pheasants at home: how to breed chicks, build an aviary and feed the birds
Hunters know how delicious wild pheasant meat is. Today, many farmers breed these beautiful birds in their yard. In addition to meat, pheasants are distinguished by the fact that they carry eggs, this is an additional reason for their cultivation.
Beautiful representatives of pheasants have an exotic appearance, but they have completely adapted to our conditions and can decorate the garden of any farmstead with their presence. Only males can boast of bright plumage, although females with elegant painting of dark patterns also look elegant. Pheasants look especially impressive in winter, with scarcity of colors on white snow or on bare tree branches.
Contents
Favorable directions for growing pheasants
Collection of eggs for rearing young animals
An adult female pheasant lays about a hundred eggs per year. This is a lot and she will not be able to sit through everything physically. There is a profitable business building an incubator for breeding chicks this beautiful bird. Approximately 75-79% of chicks hatch from pheasant eggs. Hens can tolerably help incubate the eggs of female pheasants, they will handle them as if they were their own. Such a turnover will not require significant investments, and the incubator will pay off very soon. Pheasant chicks are expensive and in constant demand.
Collection of eggs for own needs and for sale
Nutritionists highly appreciate the taste and culinary qualities of a pheasant egg. Such a product is recommended for people suffering from allergic manifestations, as it does not cause side effects. Their nutritional value is higher than chicken, they compare favorably in terms of chemical composition, contain a sufficient variety of vitamins. Recommended for preparing children’s cooking.
Breeding pheasants at home for hunting grounds, exhibitions and zoos
Pheasants are well bought by hunting grounds for organizing bird hunting. Sometimes they hold exhibitions of the best breeds of pheasants to attract visitors. Growing adult specimens and selling them can be a profitable business.
Collectible breeds of pheasants can be grown for professional exhibitions and elite zoos. Their beauty and uniqueness will raise the price. Many wealthy people are fond of keeping a zoo in their backyard. Of course, there is a place for handsome pheasants.
Before you start breeding pheasants at home of elite collection species, you need to learn how to breed unpretentious simple breeds, and only then move on to expensive ones.
Breeding pheasants for the meat business
Many culinary gourmets cannot imagine their diet without tender pheasant meat. Previously, for banquets, meat was supplied from abroad from farms, but the spread of pheasant breeding at home in our country has made such supplies cheaper. And fresh meat is much tastier and more nutritious than frozen.
Pheasant meat is not sold in the public trade, it can only be bought from the farm. The conclusion of long-term contracts with restaurateurs will bring benefits to both parties. And the supply of raw materials to the kitchen will be regular, and the manufacturer will have a permanent meat distribution channel.
Buying pheasants for breeding
For breeding, the option of obtaining pheasants from eggs on your own will be the most budget option, but sometimes you have to buy chicks from neighboring breeders. Young chickens are chosen for purchase. Pay attention to well-fed, without visible wounds and damage, lively specimens.
To buy sexual partners of birds, you should ask the seller how this type of pheasant creates families. Birds according to the method of creating cells are divided into polygamous and monogamous. In a polygamous species about four females should be launched per malewhich helps to reduce oviposition.
Monogamous partners settle in cells in pairs.
It is more profitable to buy pheasants in autumn, there is no rush spring demand. The cost of females is always higher than for males, therefore, if you do not specifically set a goal for breeding certain species, then you can buy a female of an inexpensive variety and planted with a thoroughbred male. The family life of the couple will proceed as always, the egg harvest will be large. From such eggs, offspring can be obtained, but it is difficult to guarantee a beautiful appearance.
How to set up a pheasant enclosure?
In the wild, pheasants fly away or hide in tree branches at the first danger. They have many natural enemies, cats, dogs, ferrets.
On the farm, it is best to arrange enclosures, one and a half by two meters in size for one monogamous couple, in which they feel safe. It is not recommended to keep how many males in one pen during the mating season, since they are very aggressive birds. and in a fight can seriously injure each other.
If the goal is not to breed pheasants, then many males can be raised, which are more accessible, since their birth rate is higher than that of females. During the period of keeping together, the males become mobile and cocky, threatening their neighbors through the net. Young males can only be kept together until the age of one year and in winter. The rest of the time they need to be separated.
To sprinkle the floor in the enclosures, a layer of sand is used, in which birds love to “swim” very much. Sand is a good collector of waste products of individuals, and in case of severe contamination, it is easily removed and replaced with a new layer.
It is possible to add up to 10% ash to the sand mixture. If the aviary provides for a floor made of clay, then for the pleasure of “bathing”, boxes with a sand-ash mixture are placed for the birds.
For feeding and drinking, feeders and drinkers are provided, they must be done so that the birds cannot climb into them with their feet and turn them over.
At a height of up to 2 meters, they arrange perches for a night’s sleep and rest from poles.
At the beginning of mating and nesting time, special huts with two exits are made and installed. The material is reed or reed. Facilitating the work of the female, she throw up the components for the nest device, dry grass and leaves, moss, thin branches, feathers and fluff.
In addition to the listed items and structures nothing more to put and put in the aviaryotherwise the pheasants will break off their beautiful tail feathers. A broken feather can be easily pulled out of the tail, this will not cause pain to the bird, and a new feather will quickly grow in place of the old one.
To create a decorative enclosure with an imitation of the natural landscape, much more space will be required. There you can plant live trees and shrubs, or put and strengthen dry trunks with branches to create a perch. In some places, grass is sown, reservoirs with running water are arranged. The arrangement of a beautiful habitat for unusual birds is very tempting, and if there is such an opportunity, you should definitely use it.
Sometimes such gardens are arranged for breeding pheasants at home only in summer, and with the onset of cold weather they are transferred to specialized enclosures for living. Arrange portable enclosures to simplify garden cleaning. Such a cage of a standard size of 1,5×2 m consists of a mesh fence and upper shading from the sun.
To incubate chicks, some types of females use masonry in a variety of places. Sometimes it can be a nest or sand, or grass and even tree branches are used. In order to create comfortable conditions for keeping pheasants, need to know all the features breeding exactly the breed that you have identified for keeping in your area.
Some breeds of females are able to forget where they laid their eggs, so for such breeds they make an aviary where a person can enter to search for eggs.
It is necessary to provide for the possibility of mating males and females in February-March, and the female will lay eggs seasonally from April to August. To learn the behavior and gain experience in pheasant care, beginners should start with a small number, namely one monogamous pair of pheasants.
Aviary Requirements
- The construction of the poultry house requires a dry place.
- To protect against foreign birds stealing food, the walls of the aviary are made of steel mesh with cells up to 25 mm in size.
- Rats are regulars in bird aviaries, so the bottom of such a cage is protected with a similar mesh under a layer of sand.
- One of the walls of the aviary is made of solid material to protect from the wind.
- At the entrance to the aviary, a place is made of sheet steel for storing food supplies. This is where the cleaning equipment is located.
Pheasant feeding
In food, pheasants are unpretentious and can eat various foods, such as:
- green mass (plantain, wood lice, gout, dandelion);
- food leftovers from the hosts’ table (cereals, cottage cheese, vegetables, flour products, meat, etc.);
- grain mixtures (sunflower, corn, millet, millet, etc.);
- berries and fruits are a delicacy for pheasants.
For fruitful reproduction and successful rearing of adults you need to take care of the diversity of the diet birds. Of great importance is the constant availability of high-calorie feed.
In winter, grains, cereals and hay are used for feeding. You can dilute winter food by adding apples, dry fruits of mountain ash to food. In winter, in severe frosts, feeders must be constantly filled high-calorie food from sunflower seeds. In winter, food is given to pheasants at the rate of 75–80 g per daily allowance.
In summer, green fodder is mainly used from crushed food waste. It is recommended for better crushing and digestion of food in the stomach and esophagus to add coarse sand and fine gravel to the feed. For the intake of vitamins after the winter period, in early spring add lime to feed, chalk and crushed shell rock. These minerals are necessary in the body of pheasants for the formation of egg shells and intensive growth of feathers.
Adding grain impurities to feed
To gain optimal weight, a pheasant eats 4–5 kg of food during the growth period. The bird reaches its greatest weight by the age of four months.
The diet must include:
- corn – it is recommended to add to the general feed at half the weight.
- wheat is added in the same quantities.
- barley should not be mixed more than forty percent.
- oats are used only for feeding adults and not more than 30% of the total feed.
- millet is added when feeding young females and males up to 20%, for adults, adding more than 10% will be redundant.
- peas, beans, soybeans and vetch are added to the feed of formed specimens no more than half of the feed, and at the same time methionine and B vitamins are used in food.
- bone meal is mixed into grain crops, it is also added to the green mass.
Breeding pheasants at home is a very exciting, useful and profitable business. Using information and a little experience gained poultry farming can be put on stream and achieve early success.
