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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Recently we have been interviewing our newest workers at MacFarlane Pheasants. They came to our farm all the way from South Africa! Johan Jacobs applied, through an agency in South Africa for an opportunity to work in the United States. MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. was the first job that popped up and Johan jumped at the chance to work in America. Read More »

We currently lease 19 acres of  flight pens, in Miller, South Dakota. You can read about flight pens on our blog site. If you do, you will realize that it requires both time and money to build pens. An advantage to the property we lease is that the flight pens were there when we rented the land. Miller is a proud and beautiful agricultural community where we began raising 7 week old pheasants to maturity, last year. Read More »

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas and we are so happy to offer you some exciting choices for your pheasant loving friends and family!  Items can be purchased at our store in Janesville or online and we are sure that your gifts will delight the recipients and arrive on time! MacFarlane Pheasants’ employees pride themselves on quality service. Read More »