Pheasant.com Blog

Please mark your calendar for March 3-6th, 2024, to attend the International Pheasant Management Seminar hosted by MacFarlane Pheasants in beautiful Wisconsin! This year’s event will take place in Beloit, Wisconsin, at the Ironworks Hotel. Accommodations for attendees are at the Ironworks Hotel or the Hotel Goodwin, located across the street from the Ironworks Hotel. Both locations are offered at a special rate of $129.00 per night for the seminar duration. Registration is $600 for attendees and includes all seminar workshops. Registration also includes Sunday dinner, and all lunches and dinners on Monday and Tuesday. To register online, please click our link or call us at 608-757-7881. We are also inviting vendors. Registration is $950, including a booth and Sunday dinner, all lunches, and dinners on Monday and Tuesday. Each additional person is $600. If you want to register as a vendor, please call Sarah Pope at 608-757-7881. Vendor spaces are limited, so please don’t wait to reserve your space! We are excited to offer an outstanding itinerary for this event. Registration begins at 3:00 on Sunday, March 3, 2024. We will take you by bus at 6:00 pm to the Prime Quarter Steak House, with dinner at 6:30 pm. Read More »

We opened our chick sales at MacFarlane Pheasants on October 9, 2024, and will continue to take orders until the week before the last hatch in August! Our first hatch will be in March, but this is the smallest hatch of the season, so the availability of chicks is more limited at that hatching. We continue hatching chicks through spring and summer, and our last hatch is in the middle of August. We sell and deliver over a million chicks during the season so we will have lots of chicks! These are day-old chicks, and you may choose from the following varieties: Ringneck, Kansas Ringneck, Manchurian Cross, Melanistic Mutant, Extra Large Ringneck, and Chukar Partridge. You can find detailed pricing and shipping information on our website. Shipping through the USPS has been a successful delivery method for many years, and we anticipate the process to go smoothly during 2024. We also provide a percentage of chicks with each order to account for any loss during shipping. Read More »

The holidays will be here before we know it, and charcuterie boards have become popular for tasty foods and an impressive presentation. MacFarlane Pheasants sells smoked pheasant sausage at their online store and this product is the perfect centerpiece for a classy charcuterie board. You can find all the suggested additions for your board by downloading our cookbook. It’s free! Read More »

We have been busy reorganizing our buildings at MacFarlane Pheasants since the sale of property at what we called our "Main Farm." We plan to complete our moves by December 31, 2023. Our main office in Janesville, Wisconsin, has already moved to 1609 Center Avenue. Please send all office mail to that address. Our Oak Hill Farm in Janesville has 22 acres of flight pens that hold approximately 40,000 flight birds. Recently, we constructed pens west of Oak Hill that hold 65,000 mature pheasants and partridges! Our staff built these pens this summer to compensate for what we will lose on the original "Main Farm" site. We are currently in the process of building a break room at the Oak Hill site. The new break room is being built by remodeling an egg wash room. Work has commenced on this project, and we expect to have the space completed by the end of October 2023. Employee break rooms are an important part of any business. Providing an area in the workplace for team members is good for the staff, but it’s also beneficial for the company. Long-term productivity is often increased when the needs of employees are part of business planning. Employees are still using the break room on the "Main Farm" but will soon use the remodeled space at Oak Hill Farm. Read More »

Our Maintenance Department does a complete inspection of our leased trucks before they leave the farm for deliveries. Each inspection follows the Department of Transportation guidelines. We start with a walk-around review that looks for leaks, dents, or other damage. We check the muffler, tire pressure, wheels, lights, doors, windows, and mirrors. Our next procedure involves an under-the-hood inspection. We check the oil, radiator, and all fluids. The battery connections, drive belt, hoses and wires are inspected. We start the engine to ensure gauges, wipers, horns, defroster, emergency brakes, steering, lifts, and back-up beepers are in perfect condition. At the end of our complete inspection we ensure that the fire extinguisher and first aid kit are full and included. The seat belt cutter, reflectors, seatbelts and handrails are examined for security and condition. All repairs are made before our trucks leave MacFarlane Pheasants. The Maintenance Department is responsible for making sure we are compliant with all state and federal guidelines. This is a very important component for ensuring that deliveries leave and arrive on time! Read More »

A few weeks ago, we updated you about the 76 new flight pens we built on a new property we purchased. We are happy to say that our pens are currently full of our birds for the upcoming mature pheasant season. Hatchery Plans Ronnie Viljoen, our Hatchery Manager, reported that we have been planning for months to expand and modernize our hatchery with new technology because the demand for day-old chicks is very high. We have identified our new incubators. They are the Jamesway Platinum 3 Incubators. These incubators use intelligent software, conserve energy, increase efficiency in hatch rates, and are less labor intensive! We will be the first in the pheasant industry to use these incubators, and with the extra hatching space we are planning, we expect to raise 100’s of thousands more chicks. Our Chick and Egg Sales Manager, Tassia Gonzalez, shared more powerful news for our customers. We will open the chick ordering system sometime in October this year, a month earlier than usual! We expect to have all breeds available and do not expect to need a waiting list because of our new and improved hatchery! Read More »

Did you know our pheasant chicks are shipped the same day they hatch? We started our chick shipments on March 14, 2023, and continued through August 15, 2023. This season, we shipped 1,809,632 chicks! It was an outstanding chick season for us at MacFarlane Pheasants, and we expect 2024 to be even busier. Our shipping success is one of the reasons why our customers keep returning to order chicks each year. Our pheasants are shipped by priority USPS mail in well-vented boxes, with fine wood wool and a grow gel that gives the chicks nutrients during shipping. Chicks do very well using this shipping method. Chicks can survive for three days without food and water because they get their nutrients from absorbing their yolk sacs. Customers also receive an extra 5% off their chick order to ensure that a complete order is received. Our chicks were shipped to all fifty states and Canada this year, which is typical. Chicks arrived at the post office selected by our customers within three days. We send a tracking number to the customers on the night the chicks are shipped so customers can prepare for new chicks. We provide rearing tips that customers can access on our website. We want everyone who purchases chicks from MacFarlane Pheasants to be prepared and satisfied, so don’t hesitate to email us with any questions. Read More »

The QR Code portrayed in this article, developed by our receptionist, Emily Richter, is a real game-changer. We are looking forward to showing you how to access our websites and social media sites to make purchases easily, find out about events, and sign up for events like our Bi-Annual International Pheasant Management Seminars. You can scan the code directly from this article, which allows you to open all of your choices for exploration in Chrome! Read More »