It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m thinking about the upcoming week. We want to get a better handle on the number of adult birds we have sold for this fall. The market is so competitive. Even though are our feed prices are up $100 a ton vs. three years ago, bird prices aren’t up much at all over that same three year time frame. All we can do is to try and be as efficient as we can be producing the birds. It seems like the demand for adult birds is recovering – but preserve managers are still quite cautious.
Our breeders were ahead of the curve vs. the last few years – that is until we got a 10 day cold stretch mixed with lot’s of rain. Cold rain doesn’t mix well with pheasant hens in full production – and our eggs numbers went down. It doesn’t help that we are finding that our breeder feed tests came back from the lab showing that there are mycotoxins in our feed again. It seems like we just can’t get the feed companies to provide us with feed that is mycotoxin free. I advise anyone who listens to have their pheasant feed tested for mycotoxins. We have set the limit that we will not accept feed with a level higher than 4 parts per billion alflatoxin. We have been told that 4 parts per billion is unrealistic – but that is the boundary we have established. I think if we just make it known that we are keeping a close eye on the mycotoxin levels in our feed will result in the mills making sure that when they are making our feed, they use the best corn they have.
I don’t like it that we seem to be in the dynamic with the feed companies that we are complainers or whiners. I believe that the information we have is valid that pheasants are more sensitive to myco-toxins than domestic poultry.
Some of our chick customers are much more attentive to their chicks, and some of those customers are in quite close contact with us – about any losses they deem higher than acceptable. I am learning to be more empathetic (and less defensive) with those customers because of our mycotoxin issue and the interaction with the feed manufacturers. I can’t have it both ways (feel like it’s OK to set the boundary with the feed companies and feel like we have every right to tell them yet not want to listen or hear from our chick customers if things are going the way they want).
We worked for a few weeks on a newsletter – and we sent out an email to over 5000 email addresses that offered teasers on 16 different articles – and the recipient could click on any of the teasers and would be redirected to the article on pheasant.com. Next week we are sending out the printed form of the newsletter to 3800 addresses. The newsletter is quite an investment ($$$) but I think it pays off. Hell, what do I know?