Pheasant.com Blog | Starting To Till Our Pens

On March 30, 2011 in General by spope

Its been really cold recently, but it still has been warm enough for the crew to start tilling the game bird pens. We have two Howard Rotovators – the biggest garden tillers you can imagine. The tillers require a 45+ HP tractor to power them and they dig down about 10″ and literally pulverize the soil. Any bird manure, corn stalks or anything else for that matter just disappears after the rotovator passes over it. Getting such a head start by rotovating this early really helps in two ways. The first benefit is that the soil is exposed to sunlight for an extended period before we put 7 week old birds into the pen – and sunlight is quite effective in killing pathogens, etc. Secondly, since most seeds have not germinated yet – by rotovating early we aren’t killing any new growth in the pens – in fact we create an excellent seed bed where new plants can spring to life. We have lots of acres of pens to till – so the guys are working every day tilling.