It’s December and we just got our first snowfall last night. Snow and pheasant farming have a love/hate relationship. No snow (accompanied by sub freezing temps) means lot’s of extra work for our crews watering our birds. Too much snow (especially the wet heavy snow) spells disaster for a pheasant farm (go back and look at my posts December 9th, 2009 and the following weeks).
Our guys were able to keep the water system operational til about 2 weeks ago, and then it just got too cold and the waterers froze up. So for the past two weeks, we have been watering our birds with our water wagons. Since it was so cold, the water in the pans froze overnight, so not only did we have to water daily, but the crew had to dump out the ice in the pans most mornings. Today we have 120,000+ pheasants on the farm, and there is one water pan per 100 birds – so the job of dumping ice and watering daily takes 2 men the entire day.
We got the best kind of snow last night – let me explain why. First of all the snow was a relatively dry snow, meaning the flakes did not stick to our nets – but simply passed through the nets to the ground. Our guys (though gun shy from past experiences) were certain the snow would not stick, so they chose not to put the pens down (lowering the nets by tipping the 2X4 prop posts lowers the risk of catastrophe if the snow sticks to the nets), so we didn’t waste any labor there. Secondly the snow was sufficient to without question address the hydration needs of our birds. Sometimes when it snows just an inch or two, we can convince ourselves it is enough snow for the birds – but you always wonder. Since it snowed about 3″, one can see readily that the birds have enough snow to eat.
