Rules for breeding and keeping pheasants at home for beginners

Pheasant is a bird of extraordinary beauty, which is kept mainly as a decorative object in parks and garden plots. But with the right approach, breeding and keeping pheasants at home becomes a profitable business. Dietary pheasant meat is in demand in the restaurant business, eggs can also be sold profitably. The main condition for profitable breeding is proper care and high-quality feeding of birds.

Pros and cons of breeding

Despite a significant number of disadvantages, growing pheasants is profitable. A significant source of income is meat, which is considered a delicacy and is served in the best restaurants.

Which breed should I choose?

There are many breeds suitable for meat and egg breeding and for decorative keeping. Successful farmers who have acquired reliable sources of sales keep tens of thousands of individuals.

But for a businessman who has started breeding pheasants from scratch, it is better to purchase several pairs to begin with, and as the business develops, increase the number of animals.

The most popular breeds are:

1. Diamond pheasants have a luxurious appearance, but are problematic to keep. They require a warm and comfortable house and cannot tolerate drafts or cold temperatures. The diet must be regularly enriched with vitamin complexes. An adult weighs no more than 1 kg and produces about 30 eggs per year.
2. Silver pheasants are optimal for beginners, highly productive, easy to keep, quickly adapt to climatic conditions, frost-resistant, rapidly gaining slaughter weight, and therefore do not require significant costs for feed. An adult pheasant weighs 2.5 kg and lays up to 50 eggs per season. The only drawback is the sensitivity of birds to drafts.
3. Golden - decorative pheasants, quite picky about their keeping and climatic conditions, need a warm enclosure. The bird is small, weighs up to 1 kg, and produces no more than 25 eggs per year.
4. Brown are decorative pheasants, and males and females are equally beautiful, the latter are only smaller in size and do not wear spurs on their limbs. The upper part of the body is rich brown with a metallic sheen, the chest and belly are light brown, the head is silver-black, the tail is light gray with a wide brown stripe along the edge. The feathers on the back of the head form a cute crest.
5. Copper - decorative pheasants, distinguished by plumage of a rich copper color. Each feather has a brown edge, making the color variegated. The skin around the eyes is not covered with feathers and looks like red glasses.
6. Green (or Hungarian) are ornamental meat pheasants obtained by crossing European and Japanese birds. They are distinguished by their luxurious plumage, iridescent in many shades, with a predominant green tint. The pheasant is not capricious in keeping, weighing up to 3 kg.
7. Steppe pheasants are a hunting subspecies. Suitable for breeding for meat, they are unpretentious, adapt to climatic conditions, and are rarely affected by infectious diseases.

Important aspects of buying poultry

It is not advisable to buy eggs for breeding.Due to the fragility of the shell and sensitivity to temperature fluctuations, there is a high risk of not delivering them to their destination intact and viable. Therefore, it is better to buy young animals 4 weeks old. It is not worth buying for breeding earlier, since younger individuals cannot be distinguished by gender.

When purchasing pheasants, you should pay attention to signs of their health:

• moderate fatness, developed muscle mass without excess fat deposits;
• mobility, good coordination of movements;
• shine and color saturation of plumage;
• absence of nasal discharge;
• dry and clean feathers around the rear opening.

It is advisable to buy birds for breeding from different sellers to avoid inbreeding, which results in chicks with weak immunity and infertility.

Features of keeping pheasants in detail for beginners

Breeding pheasants is a simple process. The main thing is a competent approach, comfortable arrangement of the enclosure and high-quality feeding. Pheasants of any breed are housed in opposite-sex pairs: a male and 3-5 females. You cannot house several males together: this will inevitably lead to conflicts.

In summer

During the warm period, pheasants should be kept in an open area, in an enclosure, protected from precipitation and direct sun by a canopy. Feeders and drinkers must be firmly secured. When birds enter the mating season, it is necessary to build closed nests in the poultry house from branches, straw, and cereal grasses. The females will arrange the internal contents themselves, adding leaves and blades of grass.

Females have low intelligence; birds often forget about the nest and lay eggs in different places. Therefore, the house should not be cluttered to make it easier to find eggs. In addition to arranging the enclosure, it is necessary to allocate a walking area. Free range is important for pheasants, it improves health, increases egg production and muscle growth. It is advisable to choose a place near a natural reservoir or make an artificial pond.

in winter

Pheasants are considered adapted to unfavorable climatic conditions, but still, a poultry house located on a personal plot must be insulated before the winter cold. Insulation is placed on the floor and walls so that pets are protected from winds and snow on all sides. If the breed is capricious, then it is better to move the pets to a closed, heated room for the winter.

Artificial lighting is provided in the poultry house. It also performs a heating function, but its main purpose is different: with a lack of light, pheasants’ bodies weaken and egg production decreases. Daylight hours should last at least 16 hours.

Rules for caring for birds

Pheasants, distinguished by their freedom-loving character, are kept in families. Therefore, the poultry house should be spacious. When kept as a family, there should be at least 2 m per individual². If the birds are kept in a common aviary, then the norm per individual is 5 m². Pheasants tend to take off and flutter around in the enclosure, so its optimal height is 2.5 m.

The enclosure should be designed so that it resembles a natural habitat. There should be plenty of sunlight inside. For the flooring, a sand-ash mixture is used, in which the birds bathe. As decoration, they place driftwood, dry bushes and low trees on which pets can sit.

To prevent conflicts during common keeping, males are given special opaque plastic glasses on their beaks.

Caring for pheasants is not difficult, the main thing is to ensure cleanliness in the house and balanced feeding. It is necessary to regularly clean the room of droppings and dirt, wash feeders, disinfect walls and equipment. Otherwise, pets are highly likely to become infected with a parasitic or infectious disease.

Pheasants are extremely shy and prone to stress. Therefore, a quiet and secluded place is chosen to build a poultry house. You should not wave your arms or speak loudly near birds.

Pheasant nutrition

In large farms that practice breeding for meat, they mainly use mixed feed. In small farms, the diet of pheasants is based on wet mash, consisting of:

• barley and corn grain – 45%;
• oats – 30%;
• millet – 10%;
• legumes – 10%;
• green fodder – 5%.

The daily food requirement per individual is 80 g. During the mating season, the norm is increased by 10 g. It is recommended to periodically drip fish oil into the wet mash, mix in ascorbic acid powder, and in the winter months, glucose. To saturate the bird's body with proteins, pets are given a small amount of raw minced meat or maggots specially bred for this purpose.

Pheasants readily eat Colorado potato beetles, so pets can be released into a potato field. Young animals are not given legume food. Compound feed intended for turkey poults is suitable for feeding. Small chicks are fed crushed boiled eggs and greens.

Cold water is poured into the drinking bowl. During the winter months, you can give pheasants snow collected in a clean area as a source of moisture.

How long does it grow before slaughter?

To start a pheasant breeding business, you need to define your goal.The most profitable breeding is to obtain delicious meat, which is in demand among restaurant owners and gourmets.

The large silver pheasant is optimal for meat farming. Representatives of the steppe hunting breed also gain quite a lot of weight. The maximum weight for slaughter is 2.5 kg, which the bird gains by 4-5 months of age.

Reproduction

Pheasants mate in early spring. The owner himself divides the pets into families. Typically, a male cares for 3-5 females, although monogamy in pair formation is sometimes observed. It is undesirable to increase the number of females in the family; this will reduce productivity: the number of eggs laid will decrease, and many will be unfertilized.

Females mature for reproduction at 8 months of age, males at one year of age. Females begin to lay eggs 2-3 weeks after mating. There are few eggs in the first clutch, the number increases with each subsequent clutch. Pheasants lay eggs until the first weeks of summer. The weight of the egg is 30 g. It is advisable to pick up the eggs in the morning, before giving food, otherwise the pets may break through the thin shell with their beaks.

Pheasants have an undeveloped maternal instinct; due to their weak memory, they often forget where the nest is. Therefore, incubators are used for breeding. Some poultry farmers place pheasant eggs in the nest of brood turkeys. A two-stage breeding method is possible: the turkey incubates pheasant eggs for 2 weeks, then they are transferred to an incubator.

Incubation is carried out according to certain rules. Its average duration is 25 days. Before being placed in the device, the eggs must lie in room conditions for 6 hours. They are placed carefully in an incubator heated to 37.7 °C.A week after laying, it is necessary to illuminate the inside with an ovoscope to ensure the development of the embryos.

Environmental parameters at different stages of development of pheasant eggs in the incubator are given in the table:

Business goals and benefits

Whatever the purpose of breeding pheasants, the benefits of a competent approach are obvious, since the products are expensive. However, for the success of the enterprise it is necessary to select the optimal breed and find reliable points of sale.

For meat and eggs

An adult meat breed weighs up to 2.5 kg. And 1 kg of gourmet meat costs from 1000 rubles. Eggs that are not used for breeding are sold as table eggs. For a dozen you can get 350 rubles. In order for the income to be significant and versatile, it is necessary to support both laying females and young animals for slaughter.

Pheasant meat is mainly purchased by restaurants. The poultry farmer must understand that a reputable buyer will not contact a private seller. Therefore, in order to successfully sell products, you will have to register the farm and raise birds in compliance with sanitary and veterinary standards.

Hunting

Live birds can be sold to game owners. There are many wealthy hunters who want to shoot game, which has long been a symbol of noble hunting. One live individual can be sold for 1,500-3,000 rubles, although it must be taken into account that many hunting farms independently breed future trophies.

Decoration

Pheasants have luxurious plumage. It is bought by designers to create outfits and theaters to sew actor's costumes.Decorative pheasants look great on well-groomed lawns, among garden and park compositions.

Sales of products

Before breeding begins, it is necessary to find buyers and agree on sales, so that later you don’t have to think about where to put the products:

• pheasant eggs are dietary, hypoallergenic, they are sold to restaurants or a specific family where a child or adult suffers from food allergies;
• meat is bought only by restaurants preparing gourmet meat dishes for celebrations; it is not sold in stores;
• live ornamental birds are purchased by hunting farms, zoos, botanical gardens, mansion owners, and taxidermists.

What are the expected costs?

You should not hope that pheasant farming will immediately become profitable. At first you will have to spend money. You will have to open a farm, register it, and arrange it in compliance with sanitary standards.

If, for example, a population of hundreds of individuals is planned, then you need to build 300 m² diverse enclosures (family, communal, for young animals). Separate rooms are allocated for keeping chicks (at least 15 m²) and for incubators. Next you need to buy equipment, equipment, and breeding birds. The minimum monetary requirement to open a business is $5 thousand. If breeding is successful, you can expect the business to pay off in 2 years.