Busy Times at MacFarlane Pheasants’ Missouri Breeder Farms 2024!

Who works there? What keeps them so busy?

• For the 2024 season, we relocated all of MacFarlane Pheasants’ breeders to Missouri. The three farms we have there are called MoMac, MoPhe, and MoArk.
• Shane Smith, our manager at MoPhe, and his staff, renovated a barn at MoPhe in July of 2023 to create an additional breeder space. Shane visits each site daily to check on bird health and egg quality.
• We are collecting and washing 25,000 eggs daily from our 3-breeder farm locations so this requires lots of help!
• Our MO staff is also comprised of 9 temporary employees from South Africa. (All of the employees from South Africa go through a complicated process with a company in South Africa that helps them find employment in America for ten months at a time.)
• Our maintenance person, Sheldon wears many hats for MacFarlane Pheasants. He performs maintenance at the Missouri farms and mows and helps wash eggs and loads reefers.
• Each day, two employees pick eggs at one location.
• Two local part-time employees perform egg washing.
• All employees work from 7am-4:30 pm.
• At 3 pm, when egg production is slow, one employee from MoMac and MoArk transport their day’s eggs to our egg wash at MoPhe.  The second employee at the farm continues to pick eggs at all four barns making sure that all eggs are collected before the end of the day.
• From February until late June, egg picking and washing are the primary jobs.
• Egg picking slows down in June. Then, we start having one person pick eggs at each location. At the same time, the employees from South Africa are tasked with farm projects before their departure at the end of August.
• For egg deliveries from MO to WI, we make 1-2 trips weekly based on WI’s needs.  All eggs are washed into trays and placed on carts.  These carts hold 5000 eggs.  We can fit 19 carts (95,000 eggs) on our reefer trailer at a time. Our reefers are climate controlled and the eggs stay at 60 degrees F.
• We send one driver from WI to MO.  They typically arrive at 6 pm to our MoPhe location where we have our egg cooler. The supplies that have been requested are unloaded, and then the reefer is loaded with carts of eggs.  The driver will then get his downtime at a hotel and leave for WI the next morning. The total trip is roughly 38 hours!

Spring and summer are busy times at our Missouri farms, but we are proud of the contribution we make to the success of MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc.