4-H Pheasants

Here it is....Our next big adventure in 4-H. We will be raising pheasants to release to help with the re-population in our area.  Seems like fun but of course its going to be quite a bit of work too. This is also the only project we will be doing this year that involves animals other then the wild birds we built feeders and such for.  Yet here again we are raising "wild" birds.....Fingers crossed all goes smoothly for us.

60+ day old pheasants....WOW!

We started out with quite a batch of babies.......We ordered 70 to raise and release.  I know that sounds absurd for our first attempt but hey came in groups of 35 and knowing already that 24 of them were heading to be raised by our members in town we figured strength in numbers would not work well with just 11 left here so we added the 2nd batch.  Guess it was a good call as by the time they had reached our local 4-H office a few had already passed and a week into this we have also had a few pass too.

Cleaning out the brooder tank for the pheasants and we only had
one escapee to catch...I'm sure it had help "escaping". lol

Its hard work taking care of 30+ pheasants even though they are barely a week old.  The brooder has to be cleaned regularly, they need to be fed and watered daily and other things generally associated with raising of baby animals/bird.
Thankfully for the club, we have regular animal chores to do daily so they will be well taken car of when members can not make it here.  But when the opportunity arrives for members to get a turn you can bet they will.  I will admit that I was a bit surprised when they found out they had to clean the poopy mess in the brooder that they actually were more then willing to do it.  Then later I found out it was more of a case that they got to take a break from the "building" part associated with raising pheasants.

Building the run for the pheasants

Unfortunately for these guys it was cold and snowed on building day (May 15, 2016) which is sort of not normal for our area.  We are cold in May still but we usually don't have snow showers and even a cold morning usually warms up, just not on this day....sorry guys.   But they built anyway and did a splendid job too.  There is still a little tweaking that needs doing to the run, holes to fill in and brush to move in for cover but soon enough the pheasants will be learning the way of the "wild", wit a little human assistance of course.

Now we just have to wait on Mother Nature to warm us up to safe levels for the pheasants and also for them to be big enough not to fit though the netting any guesses on which will happen first????