Pheasant.com Blog

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 »

Karina Rangel has been working at MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. since October of 2016. She was hired as a temporary employee, but by January of 2017, she was officially hired as an administrative assistant. We were so pleased to add a talented and bilingual employee to our office staff! Please enjoy our recent blog post explaining how helpful it is to have a bilingual employee on staff.  Read More »

We look at multiple weather sites for information to plan our days and weeks on the pheasant farm. Generally, the Weather Channel, Accu Weather, and Wunderground, are our sources. We combine the forecasts and try to make rational decisions about our work and bird safety. Everything from warm rain to cold rain, snow and the wind affect our birds and the decisions we make! Read More »

Erik Rusch and Heidi Welch, employees at MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. recently attended Layer School At Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. It was a two-day crash course geared toward everything to do with layer chickens (chickens that are in cages laying eggs for human consumption). Heidi and Erik were the only two “non-chicken” students attending this class and were happy to find that the information was applicable to our pheasant farm.  Read More »

Each year we sell lots of chicks over the course of our main chick season from April to mid-August.  Consistently, our sales reach 1.5 million chicks by the end of the season! During the several months, when sales are booming, our staff is working long intensive days to take orders, prepare records, and ship chicks all over the world! August is the end of our chick sales season and the month of chick sales that is least understood by our customers. Read More »