Pheasants by mail

[fishing4sanity]

My son had to do a senior project and wanted something wildlife related, so he looked into raising a few pheasants. He couldn't find chicks locally so he turned to the internet (that kind of sounds like an intro to on-line dating) and it turns out you can buy pheasants on-line. His project turned out very well and seems to be helping the resident population so we decided to raise some more for this year, they just got here Friday.

 

[cadman59501]

Sounds like a pretty cool idea. Forgive my ignorance, but are there any regs with releasing game birds that you raised?

 

[fishing4sanity]

Varies state to state, and if you intend on doing fee hunting or trying to get extended seasons, also health certificates for certain areas, can be a real hassle sometimes.

 

[Brentster7189]

Very cool.That is a great thing you guys are doing. Keep up the good work!

 

[fishing4sanity]

Just a quick update to the first post, the pheasants are about 2 1/2 weeks old now. No longer cute fuzz balls, but they're able to control where they fly to, when they first discovered their wings they would start flying until they went straight into the wall.

 

['Ike']

That's great F4S, when/what age/size are you releasing them?

 

[mixedbag]

What are the costs involved in buying and raising them?We 're allowed to release birds here without any hassle and have been thinking about it for my boys.The areas where the state releases them are like a war zone the first few days so I don't like taking them there.After that, without a good dog ,forget taking any cause they go into some unbelieveable thick nasty areas
Would like to do a few of my own private releases

 

[fishing4sanity]

Ike, I know some guys release birds at 5 weeks which results in 'wilder' birds but high mortality rates by the time hunting season starts. Others release them just before season or even in season. We've done a combination of release times with most of them in late September/early October, we also tried to hold some through the winter to release in early spring to then nest and hatch naturally, but unfortunately someone stole them out of my pen!

Mixedbag, I'm not sure I want to tally up all the costs or I'd probably quit raising them and for sure don't tell my wife or I'll be the one being hunted. The birds came from elkhornfarms.com at a delivered cost of I think $1.26/chick. The pen can be expensive, we were lucky in that we had some buildings at our old cattle feedlot that work good, the netting for the flight pen we got from pacificnettingproducts.com and then of course you need heat lamps, feeders and waterers to get them going. The chicks at first have to be warm, we keep the shed at 90-93 degrees to start and then slowly start bringing it down. It's definitely work to do it all but I think it was a great project for my son (about the only school project he did ahead of schedule) and it has made some difference in the number of pheasants we see all year.

 

[highmountian]

That is one cool project and I hope it works out for another great turn around. If not you have a lot of great dinner to come! How much do they cost per chick?

 

[fishing4sanity]

Highmountain, the day-old chicks run about $1.26 delivered, if I'm remembering correctly. I've never hunted pheasants on a bird ranch, it always seemed too expensive, after doing this project now for three years I'm starting to see why they charge so much.

 

[fishing4sanity]

The birds are now 8 weeks old and it's pretty easy to tell the roosters from the hens now. We'll start releasing a few of them now to give them more space in the net pen and to cut down on how much food I'm buying! The young roosters look a little awkward now but once they have full color there aren't many birds that look any better.

 

[Devil Diver Down]

That's very cool. Wish I had some space and appropriate habitat to do something like that.

I may have to look into elk by mail if I can't break my losing streak against them.