I have set 56 ring necked pheasant eggs. Hatch date is 9th January.

Reading up on the web.

Having been involved with managing chicken breeding in the past (out of touch for over 10 years) I am learning new stuff and remembering old stuff hidden in my foggy memory!

I am still looking for an affordable source of extra protein for the chicks and adults.

I have read that if game bird feed is not available a good alternative for pheasants is turkey feed (but not chicken feed).

Sharpes is your answer.

https://stockfeed.co.nz/products/pheasant-feed

If you get stuck I have 1.2 ton of it here, but you will need a surprising amount if all those eggs hatch. Can spare a bag of starter though if you are in a bind.
You will need approx, 2 bags (50kg) of starter, and 4 bags (100kg) of grower before you can switch them over to kibbled maize so sharpes should do that order for you. If they start feather pecking, increase protein by putting blood and bone in pen.

Thanks mate. very helpful I never knew that NZ had special pheasant feed!

I got some meal worms to start a colony but I wonder if that is going to be a real slow long term option & if it is really worth it.

What do you use the pheasant feed for?

I worked in the Poultry breeding industry in India for 5 years - managing 6 farms & 4 hatcheries. Than I worked in Tegel in head office and also in New Plymouth.

My chicks should be ready around 9th Jan & I was thinking that i could bring you a pair of poults if I came in Feb /Mar.

But I would like come earlier .... itching to get out.

Really appreciate your help.

Cheers

Nah, worms are not worth the hassle. This stuff is good and quality controlled.

I rear 400 every year.

One tip with the drinkers you see in the photo, Fill the green part with marbles. Those birds standing in the water will get stuck and drown. marbles a re easy to sterilise and clean, and they let the birds drink in the gaps between them without getting stuck. Only need them for first week and a half until the birds are big enough.

Do you get Black Soldier Fly in NZ?

Just googled them Bakes. Ive seen something like that around, but never heard of them being used.

Hang the back leg of a roo or pig in the pen,they will eat it like vultures and wont feather pick.
My own Isa Brown hens eat venison and lay like no others.A skinned rabbit will be picked clean like Top Cats fish frames!

Thanks guys.

Yes Shanks, I had quail chicks get stuck, fall upside down and drown etc. 25+ years ago.

Wow 400 bird. What do you do with them? Do you run a shoot on your place?

Yep, release them. Got a crew of guys that cover the costs and in return get some great rough walked up shooting.

My chickens love em Shanks. You can buy or make a self harvester for the larvae. They crawl up the walls and are directed into a chute and fall into a closed container. Lots of info on the net. Cheap protein as they will turn kitchen scraps into larvae.

This is great stuff. If we had fewer foxes I'd give it a go myself. I love everything about pheasant shooting, esp. the eating.

Nakihunter

I have the exact same incubator as you do but have really battled to get a good hatch out of it. I have tried chickens and guinea fowl. I suspect the thermostat is not accurate and was interested in the little digital display/thermometer you have placed in yours.
Can you confirm if it proved the incubator to be accurate?

Many thanks

JCHB

You'll have a lot of fun.
I love raising chicks, so lovely to see them grow.

I use turkey feed if I can't get the right feed. Just make sure you chicks don't get coccidiostats.

A thing I did in summer and spring for my young chickens: take some waste meat, blood or whatever is left over and leave it in a bucket until it turns into maggots. I did a bucket like this every week and my chickens loved it.

Today is the 7th day.

I tried candling about 10 or 15 eggs. One cracked one that I had put in knowing it was low viability had lost a lot of moisture and had a huge air sack. Broke it open and saw a small embryo and no major reticulation.

A few others showed good reticulation. Some of the eggs were obviously infertile. A few did not show through - not sure if they are dead, opaque shell or wrong kind of light.

Regarding the thermometer - I have been going crazy.

The digital one was what I got first and guy who sell them online said he uses them for his incubators.

I maintained a constant 99.5F / 37.5C for the first 3 days. Then I got a glass bulb (red) thermometer which I was planning to use for brooding the chicks. I put that in the incubator and found it showing 101F! That is a 1.5F variance.

I then took out my 2 clinical mercury bulb thermometers from my medical kit and put them in. I was shocked to see one show 98.4F & the other was 101.5F.

So I have no idea what my temperature really is! I have decided to run the incubator at 37.1C = 98.8F

That is not too low and hope it works.

quote:

Originally posted by Caracal:
You'll have a lot of fun.
I love raising chicks, so lovely to see them grow.

I use turkey feed if I can't get the right feed. Just make sure you chicks don't get coccidiostats.

A thing I did in summer and spring for my young chickens: take some waste meat, blood or whatever is left over and leave it in a bucket until it turns into maggots. I did a bucket like this every week and my chickens loved it.

Caracal, when you say make sure they dont get coccidiostats.... Are you meaning that or coccidiosis itself?

We have massive problems with coccidiosis and if you dont treat is from about 3-4 weeks of age then it will go through whole mob and cause so much trouble. I keep really close eye out for first indicators now, and introduce Baycox to there water at first sign of scours.

@Shankypony
Quails, Pheasent don't do well with the coccidiostats in turkey feed as small chicks. There are probably coccidiostats that work well with pheasents but it's worth noting that game birds are more sensible to coccidiostats then chickens or turkeys.
That's what I learned raising them and from literature. That said I did it in a small scale and never had probs with coccidiosis.
With meat chickens and turkey coccidiosis has been a problem and I gave chicks coccidiostats.

What is your experience? Do you give them coccidiostats from the beginning?

My feed comes with elancoban in it. But Im not sure how effective it is as every year I get coccidiosis anyway.
Its a bitch of an infection and Causes big issues so from now 3.5 weeks old, I treat the water with toltrazuril which keeps it under control until about 7 weeks when they seem to build up immunity.
If I dont I will have smothers and poor health through my flock.

I found that Farmlands gets regular supply and stocks the pheasant starter from Sharpes. They said that many people buy from them!

I have been involved in poultry breeding on & off for 30 years but never did hands on hatchery work, though I managed 4 hatcheries at one time.

Learning new stuff and re-learning old stuff all the time.

Found that the thermometers need to be on the eggs to get egg level readings. When I put the glass bulb model and digital model on the eggs, the reading variance was minimal.

Now after 8 days the embryos seem to be growing and giving out heat (as expected) So the thermostat has to be adjusted down!

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What a wonderful project !!!

Looking forward to more pictures.

Something I hope to do when we finally get back to Europe and settle down.

Out of interest - from the shoot pictures above it looks like you are only shooting cock birds in NZ. Is that the case and are hens not shot?

Cheers

Charlie

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A lot of unfit pheasant shooters would have a tiring day in this rough ground.

https://youtu.be/oS7LrsuaFr8

quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
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What a wonderful project !!!

Looking forward to more pictures.

Something I hope to do when we finally get back to Europe and settle down.

Out of interest - from the shoot pictures above it looks like you are only shooting cock birds in NZ. Is that the case and are hens not shot?

Cheers

Charlie

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As a general rule for most of the country the hens are not shot. limit is 3 cock birds each per day. If you are releasing over a certain number and have a mapped designated boundary for the property you hunt, private land only, you can apply for permission to shoot unlimited numbers per day and including hens.
I could do that if I wished, but I dont consider it worth the compliance hassles and we get a percentage of wild born recruitment from the hens as well, so we are just happy to shoot the cocks.

Today is day 26.

I got 11 chicks by end of yesterday & it is now 15 this morning.

I have moved 10 chicks to the brooder and the incubator is still running - 5 chicks drying out and 5 more pipped eggs.

Nice! High proportion of melanistics in that lot!

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Awesome ! Well done. Brooder !! Bit of an overstatement perhaps ! Nevertheless great work and keep the thread going please with pics!



Charlie

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Thanks guys. Yes we do seem to have mostly melanistic - over 75% I think.

I put the last 2 chicks into the brooder this morning.

Day 28 and I am stopping the incubator as all the remaining eggs are not viable. I lost 2 that did not survive the struggle out of the shell. One more stuck in shell.

The rest may be infertile or early dead in shell.

Total I think is 26 healthy chicks. 46.4% hatch rate - not bad for a first timer with manual turning and up to 16 day old eggs.

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How are the chicks getting on ? Updates ? Next installment time !



Charlie

Ps how often did you have to turn the eggs?

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Hi Charlie

The chicks are doing well

Final correct count was
24 chicks hatched out of 56 set - 43%

2 dead after hatch in incubator - I helped with releasing them from shell. They looked like the membrane and shrink wrapped around them when I was opening the incubator in the last couple of days. May be the same issue with the other 8 below as well.

8 dead in shell last few days

2 early dead with embryo a few days old.

4 infertile with no embryo development as blastroderm was obvious even after 8 to 28 days.

16 - all eggs opened were liquid mess. Possibly early dead at some stage. May be a few infertiles.

Turning of eggs - 3 times a day from day 2 to day 22.

Placed chicks in brooder from day 26 onwards.

On day 29 one died - small chick. No feed in crop. Abdomen looked matted & vent looked swollen. My guess is that was also a chick I helped out of shell and it just did not have the energy & development.

Now they are 7 days old & doing well. Very active. Last 2 days feed consumption has gone up. Well feathered, running around, flapping wings. Happy soft chirping.

When there is sudden movement or noise they do a panic run and stop suddenly - like wild chicks would.

Wing feather are developing fast and few are showing tail tuft. Not sure if they are males as the females also have long tails but not as long as the males.

No immediate plans for a next installment.

Thanks for the interest.

The chicks are coming along well - almost 3 weeks old. Starting to fly a bit so I will have to put some mesh on top. I will move them to the chook house next week.



The old chook house is at least 35 years old & the sheets were all broken. I replaced the sheets and put a new door on.

We now have to repair the outer yard and put finer mesh and a roof net to keep older pheasants.

Great to work on this with my 2 boys aged 17 & 14.

You dont need this then Naki.

Bird flu found in flock of 10,000 pheasants in Lancashire - The Telegraph

www.telegraph.co.uk › News
5 days ago - Bird flu has been confirmed in a 'flock' of about 10,000 pheasants at a premises in Lancashire, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said. ... A number of the farmed breeding pheasants at the premises in Pilling, Preston,

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Great updates - so they are off outside now in the chook house with a netted outdoor run ? What are you feeding them on now and what about predators outdoors ?

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No I have not moved them yet. They are only 3 weeks old. I will keep them in the small wood shed as long as possible with the cardboard box. I have put a plastic garden mesh on top as the chicks can fly 3 or 4 feet high now!! A couple of them flew out last week at age 2 weeks!!

I feed them the special chick started for pheasants which has 28% protein. This will go on for 6 weeks and then change to pheasant grower until 16 weeks. They can then move to kibble maize over the winter. End of winter they will go to pheasant layer pellets that are also high protein.

I hope to keep one rooster and few hens. I will release a few and probaly sell a few to recover some cost.

Just a bit of general information re keeping pheasants in nz.

We are not able to own pheasants. They and every part of them is the property of the crown until they are killed (Taken) legally.
So officially we need to apply for a Permit to keep them, which for the small time rearer is a nonsense! ( my personnel opinion only) As the permit costs 400 dollars and that makes it not worthwhile unless you are doing bulk lots.

Because we never own them, we are not allowed to sell them and indeed even when we shoot them or take them legally we are not allowed to give them or any part including feathers to anyone outside our direct family. That includes giving the neighbour a brace for his dinner.
I have tried a few times to get this changed to fit reality but its in the too hard basket it seems.
Taking them legally basically means having a gamebird licence and hunting them by the rules within, and with the permission of the administrator or owner of the land you hunt them on. But that administrator or owner is not allowed to charge you any sort of fee for the permission to hunt them either.
This go's for all gamebird's in NZ, Pheasant, Duck, Quail, Swan, Pukeko, Partridge, Chukar.

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Same for trout right. You cannot sell them on either.

Certainly interesting if not unique legislation.

So it's a bit like having your own moonshine still ! Just be quiet about it !

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Ps I am really enjoying this thread !

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Yep thats right, and actually another one of the reasons I have no time for the guiding industry in NZ is that if you hire a guide to hunt gamebirds and in some cases fish for trout, then there is a good chance the law is being broken if the guide owns the land or has paid a fee to have any sort of access to that land.

Birds are 5 weeks old and growing fast now. 2 or 3 are a bit small. They seem to be eating a lot! 50 to 60 grams a day at this age looks high.

I am setting up the chook house to move them this week.

Got a 200 litre3 plastic drum and I am connecting that to 10 nipple drinkers with pan.

I moved the birds yesterday. Installed nipple cup drinkers and made a trough feeder with a bit of roof drain channel. Used a tomato mesh as a grill.

Birds look ok. They seem to be drinking. Not sure how well they are eating.

It felt very hot inside the shed at 3 pm. So I decided to cut the lower half of the sheet on the door and put a bit of mesh to allow good ventilation. I might put some large sheets of cardboard - flattened refrigerator boxes - above the rafter to reduce direct sun heat on the roof.

Birds are almost 7 weeks old. Doing well. Back feathers have grown back. No pecking.

I stopped the heat lamp last night and they seem to be fine.

Feed consumption see,s to have gone up significantly this week.