Why we Import Pheasant And Bird Eggs

Here at MacFarlane Pheasants we attempt to make our jobs as streamlined, cost effective, and often simple as possible when dealing with our birds. This means treating each kind of bird different and being willing to employ different processes for raising pheasants when necessary. Specifically, some birds are easier to breed than others. Examples of these difficult-to-breed birds are Hungarians and French Partridges. In both cases, domestic suppliers of hatching eggs are not existent, so we need to import the eggs from outside the U.S.

Until this past season, we would buy adult Huns from another regional supplier. Buying adult Huns was a workable situation until our supplier decided to retire. At that point, we needed to choose between getting out of the business of selling Huns or find a source of Hun hatching eggs. We never seriously considered breeding Huns as they must be pair mated, which it is quite an involved process. Not wanting to abandon our Hun business, we made the decision to import our 2013 Hun hatching eggs from a French supplier.

French Redlegs pose a similar situation. We aren’t producing enough adult French Redlegs to economically justify keeping our own breeding flock. It works well for us to have just four hatches of French Redlegs each season and if we were to keep our own flock, we would need to have many more hatches of partridges than we need.

The bottom line is this: we specialize in hatching pheasant eggs, but we import certain eggs because it is more cost effective than trying to raise these partridges ourselves, and it often works out better logistically for us to buy eggs.