Releasing adult pheasants

fiestaman

Im collecting 5 cocks & 10 hens on saturday, just woundering what the story is with letting them off. will it be ok to let them all off in the same field or should i let half off in one field and other half in another?

Donalmit

Hi Fiestaman,

In theory it sound great to restock ground with replacement adult birds but in practice the levels of survival are so low at times that it just leads to frustration. Captive bred birds have little or no survival instincts; they very often roost on the ground instead of up in the trees; hens, even though they will lay eggs, will not sit for long enough and will rarely bring on a clutch. As they have no teratorial instinct, the cocks will just wander about and could finish up anywhere. Dont get me wrong, it is far better than doing nothing at all, just dont set the expectations too high. If you build a very simple pen and keep 2 cocks with the 10 hens, place some scrub around the pen that the hens can lay in, provide some food (layers pellets)and water you might bring on a clutch or two. Pheasants are a very hardy bird and once they have shelter food and are wormed a couple of times/year they can live for years. The clutches from these captive birds have a better chance of survival than their parents, they do not become canabilistic and can be released once the corn is cut. Just my 2c.

Mitch

EPointer=Birdss

Donalmit wrote: »

Hi Fiestaman,

In theory it sound great to restock ground with replacement adult birds but in practice the levels of survival are so low at times that it just leads to frustration. Captive bred birds have little or no survival instincts; they very often roost on the ground instead of up in the trees; hens, even though they will lay eggs, will not sit for long enough and will rarely bring on a clutch. As they have no teratorial instinct, the cocks will just wander about and could finish up anywhere. Dont get me wrong, it is far better than doing nothing at all, just dont set the expectations too high. If you build a very simple pen and keep 2 cocks with the 10 hens, place some scrub around the pen that the hens can lay in, provide some food (layers pellets)and water you might bring on a clutch or two. Pheasants are a very hardy bird and once they have shelter food and are wormed a couple of times/year they can live for years. The clutches from these captive birds have a better chance of survival than their parents, they do not become canabilistic and can be released once the corn is cut. Just my 2c.

Mitch

Bang on Mitch. Fiestaman If your going to listen to any advise on this forum listen to the above.
You might as well put your money to something constructive & start breeding a few birds instead of releasaing adult pen raised as it is just a waste of money & is frustrating.

Wolfhillbilly

I concur. You could be lucky but I would bet on you never seeing them again. I have done this several times and I have shot some of the birds later in the year but they have usually wandered back onto the ground. They have never bred and even when I tried keeping them in a pen with the hope of breeding, none of hens sat on the eggs. The instinct just doesn't seem to be in them.
If anyone has any advice on how to establish birds in an area, I'm all ears. we release about 60-odd a year on our small shoot, shoot cocks only and hope every year that during the summer one hen will raise a clutch. Every year we are disappointed!

homerhop

Most big shoots will gather up birds and sell them on at the end of the season for this reason, they wont hatch and cocks will kill hens when it comes to breeding. Its a handy income for them and a way of getting rid of the birds to clubs hoping to establish a stock in an area.On saying that our club did come across a small no of hens that we had tagged about 4 years earlier with a clutch of chicks.
The only thing we found usefull was to put a few feeding barrels around farm yards and let a no of birds out at these locations. It helped in relations with the farmers involved because they seen the club take an interest in keeping birds in the location and as the majority of farmers we approached said, its nice to look out and see a few birds about the place.

Double Barrel

Your best bet is to feed and protect the wild stock on your land.

This study is for wild birds.
Insects are consumed by adult pheasants in spring and summer months, and comprise nearly the entire diet of pheasant chicks for the first five weeks after hatching.

California wildlife biologists Ed Smith and Chet Hart spent ten years studying pheasants for California Fish and Game to develop a technique to increase chick survival that is now used throughout California and in Idaho and Oregon. It directs land managers to create moist, bug-rich areas, or "brood strips," in the midst of pheasant nesting habitat.

A strip of land near a water source is disked, or cleared and regularly irrigated preferably by means of a channel three feet wide and about 18 inches deep running through the center of the strip.
If the ground is just ploughed and left, a good if not abundant crop of weeds will emerge which will include redshank, lamb's quarter, fat hen etc, which in themselves make an excellent source of food, including playing host to abundant insect life.

The tall overhead broad-leaf plants that grow provide cover for the chicks and help maintain the continuously damp environment that encourages insect production. Grass and small plants are discouraged because they are hard for pheasant chicks to move through.

The brood strips are attractive crowing territories for cock pheasant's . In spring, roosters attract hens into the area that then nest in the denser cover along the brood strip. When chicks are born they are only a short distance from a plentiful, continuous supply of insects for those early, critical months of their lives.

"Disking: Disking strips in dense vegetation removes thick, matted grasses, creates more open travel
areas, and promotes growth of native annuals and other pheasant food plants. Adjacent strips 10 to 20
feet wide and no less than 100 feet long should be disked rotationally along woodlot, grassy field, and
fence- and hedgerow edges. Adjacent strips should be disked on a two to three year rotational basis
from January through March. June disking can be done to promote growth of vegetation and attract
insects; however, it should be done only on small areas late in the month to minimize disturbance of
nesting pheasants and other ground-nesting birds. Disking, plowing or harrowing to a depth of four to
six inches is sufficient to promote vegetation regeneration. Studies have found that disking wheat
stubble in the summer or fall can decrease soil moisture storage capacity and reduce crop yields.
Avoid disking and plowing harvested wheat fields and leave stubble to provide residual nesting cover."

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/publications/tracks/tracksupland2003_5-7.pdf