April 20, 2013 – 12:25 pm
Our breeders are located (on higher ground) within a mile of where this picture was taken
The cold wet spring certainly has been a challenge. Our pheasant breeders are in outdoor pens, and not only is egg production depressed from the conditions, but the eggs that are laid often are muddy. Our egg production hit 24,000 eggs a day this week, and that is a lot of eggs to wash.
It’s rained nearly every day for the past few weeks (over 8 inches now in April) and Rock River is flooded. Our first hatch of chicks will be 7 weeks old this upcoming Tuesday. We haven’t even rotovated one single pen yet, the ground is saturated. We’re not really sure what we are going to do, just hoping for a dry spell, so we can get pens set up.
The entire pen crew is here today (Saturday) pulling and pressure washing feeders and huts. Once we get that dry stretch we have three rotovators ready to go from first light until dark. The pen employees all know we will be rotovating non-stop until the job is done. We now have 157 acres of pens, and the job of tilling those pens is time consuming.
Not only do we have the pheasants nearly ready to go to the pens, but we have a flock of 10,000+ French Redlegs that need to go to the pens in the upcoming weeks, and our first hatch of 6,000+ Hungarian partridge that need to go out too.
We got some posts pounded into the ground for the new Hungarian pen that we are constructing. Once it quits raining and warms up, that pen will go up quickly.
It is such a dramatic shift to have such wet weather, after last year’s drought.
Our table room with our first hatch of Hungarian Partridges
Despite the coldest February and March any of us can recall, our Hun Building was set up and ready for our first hatch of huns this past Tuesday March 19th. The picture here is of our “table room” where the baby hun chicks start out on tables. At six days of age, these baby huns will be moved to a brooder room where they will be reared similarly to pheasants.
We have 100,000 hun eggs on order from our supplier in France. We hope to hatch 60,000+ huns from these eggs. The 60,000 is split up into eight groups of 7,500 chicks, every two weeks.
Congratulations especially to Ryan George who general contracted the project. Many others really pitched in to help. We had help from our Township to get the zoning correct and get us a building permit. Combs Surveying got things done on a tight schedule. Alliant Energy moved things along. Bjoin Limestone prepared the site and Wick Buildings built the building on our fast track requirement. Clarke Electric has completed things as we’ve needed them. And Sam’s Well Drilling drilled our well just in time. Now we just have to finish the building and get 8 acres of pens built on time!!
February 16, 2013 – 5:22 pm
This is the result of the last snowfall here about 10 days ago
We are on a record pace for the number of times our pen crew staff have taken down and then put back up the pens in one season. It seems like about once a week the pens are taken down (the crew goes into the pens and takes down the 2 X 4 prop posts in the pens, allowing the netting to settle down on top of the cover in the pen).
Once the snow event (or ice event!) has passed, the crews go back out and put the pens back up. This picture here is at our Milton farm. Unlike at our main farm or at our Noss farm, there is a row of trees along one section of pens at the Milton farm. Right next to the trees the snow tends to stick more readily as you can see.
We have heard on the radio yesterday and today that there may be a major snowstorm on it’s way, predicted to hit here Thursday or Friday. Here we go, guys get ready to put the pens down again!
January 24, 2013 – 3:41 pm
Our largest pheasant load ever!
Each year weather, wild bird population, speculation by producers and economics result in extra birds in some areas of the country and sometime shortages in other areas. Our farm has wholesaled birds from one area to another for years. One of the biggest considerations in making the movement work is controlling freight cost.
This season a large number of birds moved into South Dakota because of the diminished wild population there. So far the winter in the upper Midwest has been mild, with only one significant, hunt stopping snowfall.
We have been moving birds aggressively in the past few weeks. This week we took our largest load of pheasants ever, 6500 pheasants, out of the area.
The market isn’t long or short right now. The weather (both temperature and snowfall) in the upcoming weeks will determine if the market will start to be short.
December 31, 2012 – 12:34 pm
Dozers preparing the building site for our new Hun brooder building
We started raising Hungarian partridges around 1990. Hungarians are called Huns in the U.S. and are called grey-legged partridges in the U.K. and France. We purchased the eggs from Papsoes Wiltfarm in Denmark. We hatched the Hun chicks in our hatchery, and then raised the chicks on tables for 10 days and then brooded them similarly to chukars. At around 8 weeks of age, we transitioned the Huns to outside pens (on the ground, not on wire). In the mid 90’s we began buying our eggs from a Hun farm located in Iowa called Pine Tree Lane, owned and operated by Gene and Nancy Burken.
Huns can be more difficult to raise then pheasants or chukars, and as we developed more business for the Huns in the later 90’s, we started buying adult Huns from the Burkens. Eventually we discontinued raising Huns, and just bought adult Huns from the Burkens.
Over the past years then we have purchased 25,000 up to 35,000 adult Huns a year from the Burkens. The Burkens have decided to retire from the Hun business, and we are buying most of their equipment. We are constructing a 320’ X 42’ Hun brooding building along with 10 acres of Hun pens. So starting in 2013, we again are in the Hun raising business. We have hired a new manager for the operation and have our Hun eggs coming from our friend Olivier in France.
Pictured with this blog is the building site for the new Hun building. Construction will start on the building hopefully on January 14th. Our first hatch of Huns is scheduled for March 19th. Our intention is to hatch 60,000 Huns this year. So, stay tuned for more information on how to raise pheasants, particularly Huns.
December 5, 2012 – 12:37 pm
Our newly installed composter
Another view
One of our core values at our farm is stewardship of the earth. It is an inevitable fact of life that, as a commercial pheasant farm, we will produce some dead pheasants here. And the dead pheasants need to be disposed of in some manner.
Incinerating dead pheasants not only uses a lot of fuel (we’ve had both diesel burning incinerators and propane fired incinerators), but produces very sooty, smelly smoke. The idea of composting the dead pheasants has been discussed here over the years, but we never had a really good course or direction to actually start composting. Then a few years ago we heard about and saw a composter that looked like it would work for us.
We gave the job of checking out the composter to Ryan George. Ryan did the research, found the right size machine for our farm and did all the prep work. The composter arrived here a few weeks ago and Ryan hired a crane to hoist the machine onto the newly poured slab of concrete.
Brian Davis is now in charge of the actual operation of the machine. After some initial tweaking of the inputs (not only dead pheasants go into the machine, but biomass such as wood chips or straw go in also) the composter has now come up to heat (as high as 180 degrees) and is working.
Sometime soon we will have completed compost, which initially we will give away, but at some point we hope to be able to sell. Our incinerators have been shut down. The composter is a much superior way to dispose of our dead birds.
October 25, 2012 – 1:05 pm
- Our June 5th hatch cocks
- Notice the tips of the main tailfeathers
We know what management protocols generally work for the top quality of raising pheasants. We know the density (sq. ft. per bird), the feeder space and waterer space per bird. We know what constitutes good vegetative cover. We know what type of peeper we think works best, etc. etc. We know what energy level and protein level feed is sufficient for our birds. We’ve got it all down.
Our crew moved our June 5th hatch out at 6 weeks of age into pens with good cover. All the protocols were followed and yet the birds “picked” between 8 and 12 weeks. The factor we had no control over was the weather – it was steaming hot during July and August this year – right when our birds were at the most vulnerable stage.
We hear about people who have “broken tailed cocks”. We don’t have problems with broken tails. We also have seen and heard about birds with saddle picking (picking of the back feathers). We just don’t see back picking here. What we do see is where 8+ week old cocks get their tails picked out.
Interestingly, when pheasants pick out their tails, a new tail starts to grow. This 2nd tail is a regrowth tail. The birds in the pictures above have regrowth tails. The new tails have black tips on them (confirming the tails aren’t “broken” tails). The birds with regrowth tails are usually from 3 weeks to up to 6 weeks behind, i.e. we can’t ship the birds nearly as early as we could ship if they had not picked.
How do we prevent this? The best answer would be in this case for us to have given the June 5th hatch extra room because of the heat.
October 9, 2012 – 6:08 pm
Mature cocks ready to go
The mature bird season is now in full swing and we are busy delivering mature pheasants and partridges to our customers. We believe we have orders for the birds we have raised. The concern is that the weather stays reasonable through early December, i.e. no significant snowfall especially in South Dakota.
The word from South Dakota is there are still diminished wild populations, which makes sense as how could the bird numbers increase significantly in just one season. If we have good weather from now til early December we will ship over 60% of the birds we’ve raised.
The other factors most affecting pheasant sales are the economy and whether people will spend their discretionary income on going pheasant hunting. The word we hear from the lodges we supply (especially in South Dakota) is that their bookings are up from a year ago.
We still have thousands of birds “backed up” in the barns, so we hope to ship lots of mature birds out in the next two weeks, making room for the barn birds. How the next 6 weeks progress will be a major factor in determining if this season will be a success.
September 15, 2012 – 3:29 pm
Our employees biking to their work site
As the farm has expanded, sometimes getting from one worksite to the next can be time consuming (if one walks) or can be inefficient (such as taking a van, or a pickup truck just a few hundred yards).
We have bicycles scattered at many locations around our farm (we have bike racks) and we have encourage our employees to ride the bikes when they need to move from one worksite to another. Personally I love to be able to ride a bike on the farm, and I ride whenever I can. Cetainly riding the bikes saves time and compared to us burning gasoline, bicycles are WAY more efficient.
The picture to the left was sent to me by one of our managers, I just hope isn’t wasnt’ a staged picture.
August 23, 2012 – 11:45 am
A full load of mature French Redleg Partridges
We’ve begun delivering our mature pheasants and partridges. Our season will run into mid April 2013. Last week we shipped our first ever full load of 7500 French Redleg partridges. We imported the hatching eggs from our supplier in France, incubated and hatched the eggs, raised the birds (with minimal loss) and delivered the best looking and healthy mature Redlegs to our customer. Of the 7500 crated at our farm, 7497 were delivered live. Wow!!!
This week our pheasant deliveries have begun in earnest. We quantify overnight deliveries as “gooseneck loads”. A gooseneck holds (depending on whether its more hens or more cocks) anywhere from 2500 mature pheasants up to 4000 adult pheasants. This week we are shipping 6 full goosenecks of birds. Next week we have 7 full loads booked.
As we are able to ship mature birds off our farm, pen space is opened up for our last hatches of pheasants. So our pen crews not only are busy shipping, but busy moving out birds from the barns into the pens. It’s a very busy time.
Our hatchery crew is helping out the pen crew for the next month, but then will be actively diving into the task of selecting our 2013 breeder flock.
August and September can be a very rewarding time of year, not only our heat wave will disappear, but the product of our labor over the past months will be evident as we deliver our birds.
