January 9, 2012 – 12:54 pm
Sunrise at our farm
There is a shortage of adult pheasants unlike any shortage I’ve experienced in my 30 years of running our farm. Regardless of the weather from here til spring, there will be a shortage. In my opinion the shortage has occurred because of a number factors, some obvious and some not so obvious.
First of all, without a doubt the mild winter we are experiencing across the upper Midwest has resulted in many more hunters visiting local preserves. All the preserves are reporting that sales are up and the mild weather is continuing. Over the past seasons, several if not many weekends were lost at preserves due to significant snowfall or bitter cold temperatures. Zero weekends have been lost this year.
The shortage of wild pheasants in South Dakota this past fall resulted in tens of thousands of pheasants being trucked into the state from literally around the country. In the past, at times the beginning of the South Dakota season started out with few wild birds being located, but as the season progressed and the farmers began harvesting their crops more and more wild birds appeared. As this season moved into November, it became obvious that the wild bird numbers just weren’t there.
Many backyard operators have historically raised a few thousand pheasants. For these operators raising pheasants was a sideline, not their main source of income. In past seasons these operators filled the supply chain as the season progressed. These suppliers buffered the supply/demand balance. We noticed this past spring that many of the smaller operators weren’t ordering as many chicks or no chicks at all. We called several of the smaller farms to inquire and the two main answers we heard were that feed was just too expensive and also that they were sick and tired of selling surplus birds at a loss in March.
In the commercial pheasant business, the U.S. the past few springs reflected a market with surplus birds. The biggest hit was the spring of 2009 when at our farm we had 25,000 mature pheasants canceled and we were forced to sell those birds at wholesale prices for $2.00 under cost. The next two springs (2010 and 2011) there was less of a dramatic overproduction but there were still birds to be found at bargain basement prices. Some preserves came to count on this excess production and the resulting discount prices. With feed prices nearly double (we were paying $180/ton in the fall of 2007 for 20% grower and the spot price during the fall o f2011 for 20% here was $350/ton) it made no sense for producers to raise any more birds than they had orders for and they didn’t raise those birds.
So this perfect storm of unrelated influences occurred and now we have preserves closing down because they have no birds to stock. It is unfortunate that it has taken such a traumatic event to correct the imbalance that has been occurring for the past few years. My hope is that preserves for the coming season will order what they need and to equal out the burden put onto the raisers.
December 12, 2011 – 3:01 pm
- Employees inventoring by walking & counting the birds in each pen
- Counters and pen maps
Each year we “count the farm”, usually after the first of the year. It is much easier to accurately count when there is snow on the ground, as the birds stand out much better against the white background of snow. Even though we have no snow and it’s early December, our crews are counting as we need to make sure we have the number of birds we predicted we would have, in order to fill all our orders.
We have 120 acres of pens and to count, employees need to walk and count every single pen in the entire operation. Our prediction (which comes from taking the accurate number of pheasants placed into each pen minus expected loss based on past experience) is that we’ll have 140,000 adult pheasants on our farm. Not only do we need to know the number of pheasants, but how many are hens and how many are cocks.
This would not be the year to be short, as there are virtually no pheasants avaiable on the open or spot market. We’ll have the counts done in the next few days. I have positive intent.
December 7, 2011 – 11:20 am
- Tractor and tank setup
- Hydraulic valve setup
- Our Newest Water Tank
Some years the day after we are forced to shut down our pheasant pen watering system it snows. Since pheasants prefer snow to water, in those years we save a major amount of daily effort just allowing the pheasants to get their daily water from the snow. This year isn’t one of those years. We had an abnormally warm November which allowed us to keep our pheasant pen watering system operational until Thanksgiving. After a number of subfreezing nights, we finally had to give up patching our watering system together and we started watering the birds in pans.
We run one 3 gallon pan per 100 pheasants, and we fill the pans each day with a tank like the one pictured above. Our employees drive a tractor pulling one of the 500 gallon tanks along the side of the pens and they engage the hydraulic valve which then opens and lets the water flow.
With so many pheasants and so many pans, its a big job to water all the birds. We were accomplishing the job in past years with two 500 gallon rigs. A few weeks ago I spotted the 500 tank pictured on the lot above at a local trailer sales company and was able to purchase the setup at a reasonable price, which means we now have three rigs.
So yes, we are hoping for snow. Dry powdery snow. December 9th, 2009 is still fresh in our minds (check out my blog for that date to see why).
November 17, 2011 – 8:52 am
Trucks Are Here
We have just been through the two most intensive shipping months yet. The demand for pheasants has been great, and our trucks have been on the road most of the time. We own four tractor/trailer rigs and we had several seven full loads go out in one week. What that means is that three of our rigs went on two overnight (plus) deliveries in one week.
So the reason I took the picture above is that today is rare in that I can see several rigs parked outside my office. This week we have just four full loads going, plus all our local runs. We have two, maybe three full loads scheduled for next week.
We have shipped 60% of the adult pheasants in three months and now will have four months to ship the remaining 40%. We are happy about the fact shipping has gone so well for several reasons. One reason is its far better to be hauling the birds when the roads are dry and safer (vs. blizzards, black ice, etc.). Another reason is with commodity prices so high, the sooner we get the birds off the farm the better.
The weather this fall has been awesome, demand for birds has been great, and we’ve had few equipment breakdowns. It’s been a good fall season for our farm.
November 3, 2011 – 8:40 am
Our last hatch of the year are in the the barn one more day
Our August 8th hatch ringnecks are now 12 weeks old and the crew is moving them out of the barn into the pens tomorrow. Each year getting the last birds out to the pens is a milestone for us. For us to efficiently run our operation, we need to “second use” a good percentage of our pens. Second use refers to using a particular outdoor covered pheasant pen two times in one season. We can second use pens by placing March or April hatch birds into pens at 6 or 7 weeks of age, then selling those birds @ 22 weeks (in August or September) and then placing late hatch birds (late June, July or August hatches) into those same pens.
We’ve had particular success with this method when we use a pen for the 1st fill for raising “no spec” birds as when we raise birds without peepers (or specs) we run them @ 60 sq. ft. per bird. Such low density results in the pen cover remaining excellent meaning that we can much more readily use that “no spec” pen for a 2nd use without unduly stressing the second fill of birds.
There are a lot of other details we’ve had to work out, e.g. how to hold birds in a barn til 12 weeks old, etc. We would be glad to share our protocols – come to our seminar next March.
October 20, 2011 – 12:35 pm
Everything here is a full speed, this week we’ve shipped more birds than any other week in our history. The weather has been ideal for pheasant hunting across the U.S. and evidently wild bird populations really have taken a hit as demand for pheasants is currently crazy. My belief is that in past years many producers raised extra “speculative” pheasants, but with current commodity prices, those extra pheasants just weren’t produced this year.
Without the cushion of those extra birds, when higher demand hit, the effect was felt immediately. In the past in late October I’ve seen the picture as it stands now (i.e. potential shortage of pheasants) completely change with a 1 foot snowfall in South Dakota in early November. So to be clear, what we are seeing now could completely change with just a shift in the weather. In other words, the current shortage of birds could disappear depending upon the November weather. I’ve said before, that how South Dakota goes determines a lot about the supply and demand for pheasants across the U.S. When South Dakota is pheasant deficient, that one state alone can pull in pheasants from all the surrounding states. On the other hand, if there is a significant early snowfall in South Dakota that stops hunting for even a week, the whole situation can shift just that quickly.
The next few weeks will tell the tale.
October 12, 2011 – 2:35 pm
September 29, 2011 – 10:09 am
With margins becoming tighter, we must become increasingly efficient in the utilization of our resources here. This week the managers have been a bit agitated about not having enough trucks, trailers and crates. In some ways I am enjoying hearing that our equipment is being used to the max.
I often look at competing farms and can readily see the advantages they have over our farm. I strive for our farm to become as efficient as competitors. I remember the day I saw a presentation at a gamebird meeting by Tim Zindl of Oak Ridge Pheasant Ranch where Tim showed his three auger wagons lined up (full of feed) at the crack of dawn. Tim had one of his employees come in early to fill all the wagons. At our farm (at that time) we had two employees go out with each wagon (one to run the tractor and the other employee in the pen opening and closing feeders and using a chute to direct the feed into the small Brower feeders). Up til that time two employees would check in at 7 am, both go to the shed to get the tractor and auger wagon and then both employees stand by while the auger wagon filled. From then on we had our auger wagons filled in advance. We have taken it to the next level in that today we use all 900 lb. feeders in our all our pheasant pens which are filled directly by the feed company truck. We only use our auger wagons for touch up feeding.
One efficiency measure that we have worked on is what we call “flow”, i.e. at what age do our birds leave the farm and be delivered. I had a competitor this week ask if I could see if our long tailed cross birds had noticeable longer tails. I said “yes”, that at 23 weeks we thought there is a 1” up to 2” difference. The competitor then said “wait til 28 weeks, and you’ll see an even greater difference”. My reply was we don’t have any birds (during the fall) make it to 24 weeks here, let alone 28 weeks. Our “flow” is such that the birds are all committed and delivered. With today’s feed prices (currently spot price for grower is $.17/lb.) and birds eat 1.25 lbs./week for 50,000 birds shipping at 23 weeks vs 28 weeks = $42,500 feed cost (not even taking into account labor and additional mortality between 23 and 28 weeks).
We operate four truck trailer rigs with goosenecks. Each rig can deliver between 3000 up to 4500 pheasants/partridges. Two of the trucks are new and the other two trucks we are using both got new engines before the season. This week, in addition to our local pickup runs, we had seven full goosenecks scheduled to depart. Our first truck/trailer was loaded this past Sunday and returned home Tuesday and left again today (Thursday) The second rig left Monday, got back yesterday and is leaving again today. Tuesday’s rig is due back here today and is leaving tomorrow. Wednesday truck is just arriving at its destination today. We pushing the envelope a bit, but again what’s happening is we are using our equipment efficiently, which in today’s environment is the only way we can make this whole thing work.
September 23, 2011 – 9:50 am
We made some significant changes to the way we handled our breeders and our breeder pens at the end of this year’s laying cycle. Historically when our hens quit laying eggs in late July each year, we would move the “spent” hens to another one of our farms during the month of August. As the spent hens were moved, the empty breeder pens were rotovated and planted in a week or two. August can often be a dry month here, so the newly planted pens often had limited vegetative growth due to lack of rain and once we had our first freeze we commonly lost the cover in the breeder pens.
Our breeder selection crew usually starts selection of the next year’s breeders in November. Many of the groups of birds that were to be sorted through for breeders were bypassed by our catching crews and only once the breeder crew went through those groups were the rejected birds shipped out as hunting birds.
This year all our spent breeders were moved off the breeder farm aggressively, the whole process took only two weeks. Within hours of the time an individual breeder pen was emptied of birds the pen was rotovated and planted. Our breeder farm neighbor installed an irrigation well this spring and we made an agreement to be able to get water one day a week and the breeder pens were irrigated repeatedly during August.
The result of this new management plan was that our breeder farm has fantastic cover. Additionally our breeder selection crew started selecting breeders in late August (with over 10,000 hens already selected and placed at the breeder farm). Since the selection crew has been going through groups of birds, the rejected as breeder hens are already gone (shipped to hunt customers). With the rejects gone and 2012 selected breeders moved to the breeder farm, a substantial amount of space has been opened up on our farm for July and August hatch chicks to go into 2nd use pens.
This new procedure has been a very good thing for our farm and reflects the new attitude we have here about efficiency and a sense of urgency is accomplishing our tasks. Kudos to our staff!
September 10, 2011 – 2:46 pm
Birds ready to go
We are shipping birds like crazy and I believe we have produced the best looking birds ever this year. The temperature is getting colder at night which will result in our birds coloring out a little more quickly. In the pic above is a lane full of long tailed cockbirds ready to go.
Commodity prices continue to be at nearly all time high price levels and the result is our feed expense is up 35% from last year (and this even takes into account that we booked 40% of our feed at prices $50/ton less than the current price!). So not taking into account increased fuel cost and labor costs, our cost per bird has risen over $1.00/bird from just a year ago. If we don’t take into account the savings we accomplished through booking feed at the discounted price, our per bird cost has risen $1.35 from a year ago. We want to lock in our feed costs for 2012, but the prices offered right now are so exorbitant, we can’t see locking those prices in.
Across our industry (and all animal agricultural industries for that matter) producers are struggling just to meet expenses. Without a major commodity price drop, I believe that there will be a number of producers that will close their doors, and I predict that the remaining producers will be forced to raise their prices significantly (just to cover costs) for the 2012-13 season.
