For years we have lit pheasant breeders here to get eggs earlier in the season and hatch our chicks earlier too. Until about 10 years ago our first hatch of pheasant chicks was the third week of March. Because we began to get orders for mature pheasants for mid-August, we began hatching pheasant chicks the past few years the first of March.
For the most part the biggest issue we’ve had with hatching pheasants in early March is that it’s difficult to move out the chicks when they reach six weeks old because in mid-April it’s too cold yet for six week old birds. Another issue we’ve had with our 1st of March hatched chicks is that the males become quite aggressive towards the hens once the males reach about 16 weeks of age. We surmised that since the birds reached a certain stage in their growth before June 21st that the birds were somehow stimulated by the increasing day length up to June 21st. We addressed this issue by raising the males and hens separately, and sending a crew into the male pens at 16 weeks to net out the females.
A few years ago we noticed that our 1st of March hatched hens literally dropped their tails (and then grew new ones). Again we figured this was related to the June 21st equinox and frankly since it was hens dropping tails, we didn’t worry about it too much.
Then in 2010 about 40% of our first two hatches of male pheasants dropped their tails in mid-August. The tails on the birds were full and hard by early August – but what we saw happening was that new tails began emerging and the new tails literally pushed out the existing tails on the birds. The only thing different we knew of for 2010 was that it was a much hotter summer than for the previous many years and we had a different feed manufacturer.
So for 2011 we upped the protein level of our grower diet from 20% to 22% and we just kept a close eye on the birds. On August 1st my pen manager reported all was well. But then this week, a percentage of our first two hatched males started dropping tails again. The third and subsequent hatches seem unaffected.
All we can figure is that the birds go into some sort of a molt because they are at a certain age was days are getting longer (before June 21) and then days get shorter. We have plenty of birds that are mature with full tails to fulfill our orders but the whole deal is rather strange.