Pheasant.com Blog

We will raise 220,000 white pheasants on our farm this year which is a substantial increase in these birds, from just a few years ago.  The white pheasant is occasionally born as a mutation in the Ringneck breed. What we found out many years ago is that when white pheasants are selectively bred, they produce more white pheasants. These birds are bigger than the typical Ringneck and very tasty. We use white pheasants for 100% of the meat we sell because of their taste and size. Their average size is 2.5-3 pounds when dressed! Read More »

We have five talented people in our office at MacFarlane Pheasants. Their backgrounds are as diverse as the colleges they attended. They are experienced, educated and dedicated to outstanding customer service. Read More »

Let me begin by inviting you to attend the Empty Bowls event at Parker High School, 3125 Mineral Point Ave., Janesville, WI, on October 28, 2017, from 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Read More »

The number one trait buyers look for in a pen raised bird is performance like a bird naturally found in the wild. We have literally used a lifetime of experience to raise all of our pheasants with the attributes of a perfect wild pheasant. Our birds are uniform in size and right in the desired weight range to be the best flyers (around 2 pounds). No one wants a fat pheasant. Hunt clubs want their pheasants to be the best flyers and the most beautiful examples of wild birds!  Read More »

Raising pheasant and partridges is the easy part of our job at MacFarlane Pheasants. We hire talented employees who enjoy working outside and are knowledgeable or willing to learn about game birds. The real challenge on a game bird farm, or in any business is to figure out how to help employees be successful at their jobs. Read More »

Art Schumacher is the maintenance manager at MacFarlane Pheasants. It takes a lot of equipment to operate our pheasant farm so he is a busy man. Art has worked at MacFarlane Pheasants for 10 years. Prior to that, he worked at Allied. Read More »

We have begun shipping pheasants, French partridges, Hungarian partridges, and Chukar partridges from MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. for the season lasting from the middle of August until March of 2018. Our drivers have already traveled to Canada, Montana, South Dakota, Idaho, and Colorado since the middle of August and we are just getting started! By the end of the season, drivers will have also delivered to Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, Wyoming, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Michigan. During the first week of September local customers can bring their own crates or use our cardboard boxes to pick up birds, as long as they place an order 72 hour in advance. It really is an exciting time around the farm! Read More »

MacFarlane Pheasants Inc. ships pheasants and other game birds in shipping crates built by a dedicated on-staff carpenter. Basically, we use what we call a warm weather small crate and a cold weather large crate. Recently, we began trying out the use of manufactured plastic crates.  Avian Influenza is a threat we worry about constantly. Plastic is easier to clean and least likely to hold invasive bugs or micro-organisms. Read More »

Health and safety are topics that are always at the forefront of our planning at MacFarlane Pheasants. Health and safety go hand in hand with biosecurity. That is why it states specifically in our employee handbook that employees are forbidden to own birds of any kind. There are many backyard flocks that are not tested regularly, like our flock is, for Avian Influenza and other diseases. Interacting with a backyard flock and then coming into our flock at MacFarlane Pheasants is dangerous for our birds. The ownership of birds is one of the many biosecurity issues on a game bird farm.  Read More »

Aflatoxins are nasty contaminates found in feed. No animal is immune from aflatoxins. They are produced by certain molds, like aspergillus flavus. The good news is that feed companies must test for these molds regularly and constantly and we have never had to return feed because of high aflatoxins. We don’t let the testing by our feed supplier be the last test, though. We test four random feed samples on the farm per week. We have often talked about how important it is to do everything possible to insure the health of our birds. This procedure is just one of many steps we take to make our birds stay healthy.  Read More »