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No Snow – Watering 140,000 Pheasants Daily

On December 7, 2011 in General by spope

Some years the day after we are forced to shut down our pheasant pen watering system it snows. Since pheasants prefer snow to water, in those years we save a major amount of daily effort just allowing the pheasants to get their daily water from the snow. This year isn’t one of those years. We had an abnormally warm November which allowed us to keep our pheasant pen watering system operational until Thanksgiving. After a number of subfreezing nights, we finally had to give up patching our watering system together and we started watering the birds in pans.

We run one 3 gallon pan per 100 pheasants, and we fill the pans each day with a tank like the one pictured above. Our employees drive a tractor pulling one of the 500 gallon tanks along the side of the pens and they engage the hydraulic valve which then opens and lets the water flow.

With so many pheasants and so many pans, its a big job to water all the birds. We were accomplishing the job in past years with two 500 gallon rigs. A few weeks ago I spotted the 500 tank pictured on the lot above at a local trailer sales company and was able to purchase the setup at a reasonable price, which means we now have three rigs.

So yes, we are hoping for snow. Dry powdery snow. December 9th, 2009 is still fresh in our minds (check out my blog for that date to see why).

Tractor and tank setup Hydraulic valve setup Our Newest Water Tank


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