Pheasant.com Blog

Flight Pens The ground cover either doesn’t grow or gets burned up by the heat and lack of rain. This week we had significant rainfall in Janesville, WI, which was very helpful! Pens with poor cover need to be irrigated daily, increasing the cost of electricity, fuel, and machinery use. Pheasants in poor cover flight pens must be placed at half density to reduce fighting and picking (no place to hide from aggressive birds). Excessive heat decreases birds’ appetites resulting in slower growth and possible tail loss. Algae grow on plassons (waterers in pens), so plassons need to cleaned regularly. Roosters will fight and become aggressive to other roosters and hens in pens, leading to damaged tails and possible death. Droughts and excessive heat will attract predators looking for food and a water source. Pushing birds in extreme heat will cause birds to get overheated, stressed, and possibly die. We minimize this movement to the morning hours when it is cooler for this reason. During shipments, once pheasants are placed in crates, we have a driver drive the birds around to keep airflow to the birds until they are ready to leave for delivery. Read More »

Our MacFarlane Pheasants’ Retail Store has been open since 1986 in our current location. After much thought and consideration, we decided not to continue our retail store. We sold the property where we are currently located and will move our office to our new property on September 1, 2023. Currently, our retail store is connected to our main office. Finding a retail location adjacent to our office proved challenging without moving too far from the main farm. In addition, the traffic throughout the year varies greatly, and we decided we could still provide the public with their favorite pheasant items and needs by designating a local pick-up spot. We are still working out the details, so if you want to stay informed about our plans, we urge you to sign up for our e-mail campaign at www.pheasantfordinner.com. Read More »

"We do the best we can to keep our white birds as happy and healthy as possible, but sometimes mother nature doesn’t make that easy," says our White Bird Flock supervisor, Trudy Deremer. Extended heat in the summer has various effects on our birds that staff must combat. White birds are like us when it is super hot. They want to drink water but not eat. The decreased appetite can decrease weight gain for the processing birds and negatively affect our breeders. If it is hot for extended periods of time, and the breeders are not eating as they should, the males’ semen may not be as potent, resulting in fertility issues. If the hens don’t eat as much as they should, they can go out of production, meaning they stop laying eggs. Artificial insemination is not a good experience for birds that have had too much water and not enough food. It can cause the hens to vomit during the process, causing a messy situation for the birds and staff. Read More »

Why would a pet owner want to purchase MacFarlane Pheasant’s Pure Pheasant Pet Food? The answer, simply put, is that pheasant is filled with nutritional value! Our pheasant is sourced right here on our farm, and there is no intermediary. You can count on our pheasant to be humanely raised without antibiotics or hormones. The most significant benefit is that pheasant meat is low in fat and high in several minerals, including phosphorus and manganese. These minerals support strong bone growth and healing. You can find out more about our pet products by visiting our Pure Pheasant website. But first, let me tell you how to stay informed and benefit from sales of Pure Pheasant products. Read More »

The pheasants and other game birds we raise are an important asset to our farm. Virtually all of our expenses are related to their care and protection! Locking all our facilities and flight pens daily gives us peace of mind at the end of the day. Importance of Locking Gates and Doors Protection from human and animal predators trying to get into barns, pens, or buildings. Barn doors, pens, or gates can blow open, birds can escape, or brooder barns can chill, causing brooders to run constantly. Access is limited from people that shouldn’t be there, going into buildings. This is, among other concerns, a biosecurity problem. Locked doors protect expensive equipment in case of attempted break-ins. Read More »

Mowing and trimming our property at MacFarlane Pheasants adds to the beauty of our property, but it isn’t the only reason we need a great mower. We hire two people to mow 40 hours a week because when you are dealing with as much land as we have and have game birds to protect, it takes a great deal of time. We have bothersome pests that would like nothing more than to sneak into our pens and barns through tall grasses! Read More »

The gamebird industry is changing in significant ways due to the many risks that are involved in raising birds. The economy, weather and  the Avian Influenza outbreaks that have happened throughout the world In the past five years have impacted the gamebird industry in many ways. Gamebird producers have witnessed a change in both supply and demand for birds.  Bird producers who have thought about expanding their businesses have decided not to, or at least to think about that decision as the risk is greater. In previous years, people who are ordering hunting birds have been able to contact producers at the end of the season and buy them for $6 each, expecting producers to have overproduced. Now producers are taking orders in advance and only planning on raising the number of birds for which they have orders. Read More »

We announced in an earlier post that we sold the 175 acres that currently contain about 20% of our flight pens. We also have barns, offices, and a maintenance shop on this site that will be at a new location by December 31, 2023. We are happy to announce that the work is finished on the new pens. We recently completed the pen project and placed our first Huns in the new pens. We built 76 individual pens that are 80 by 150 feet each. By the middle of July 2023 we will have the rest of our new pens filled with MacFarlane’s fabulous pheasants! The success of this project required some hard work by some great people! Read More »