Looking for some help with chukar / pheasant facility plans.

I've raised a lot of gamebirds since 1995. Pheasants, besides cannabilism issues, are easy. Chukar, besides wet ground issues, are easy.

MacFarlane Pheasants has a lot of great information on their website and good videos on YouTube.

https://www.pheasant.com/

https://m.youtube.com/@PheasantFarm

They do a lot of gamebird seminars, that are open to the public.

You can buy Top Flite Netting for pretty much any size pens you want. Design the pens so that you can herd and easily catch the birds.

Steve Fogt, who lives near Kirkwood, Ohio, has my favorite large pens. The pens are long and relatively skinny. The pens all go into a narrow corridor that narrows down to a metal disc conveyor belt. There's an L shaped lid that can be closed down on the crates at the end of the belt. Once the lid is down, the crates can be pushed into a barn with a shelve, that keeps the birds from popping out of the crates, about a half inch above the crates. The crates have grooves where a lid can be slid in.

To catch the birds, he just drives the birds into the corridor and chases them towards the belt. The birds go into the open crates. He then closes the L shaped lid and slides the crates into the building, under the shelf. He can load hundreds of birds very quickly this way.

One side of the crate is made from flexible plastic, that originally was used on pallets of baby bottles. You can easily pull out or push in a pheasant through the plastic.

Pheasants will need blinders or ring bit gags, to prevent cannabilism. Diane and I used Poly Peeper blinders. We would put on 500 blinders a night, until we were done.

Chukar do best on dry ground. In very wet areas, it's best to keep Chukar on wire or deep sand. Chukar usually won't hurt each other and will stay in near perfect feather, even when crowded.

Do you have any specific questions?

Keith

Gamebirds can be hard to make money on because of feed and equipment costs. I recommend starting small and building your market over time. I lost $27,000.00 on pheasants the first year I tried to raise a lot of them, 3750 pheasants, due to construction costs, feed costs, cannabilism and theft.

The last time I raised a large number of pheasants, I lost a little over $6000.00 on them because my main buyer had financial issues and I had to keep the pheasants for 4 additional months.

I and 4 other people in my area, stopped raising bobwhite because a woman got into it, grew out thousands of chicks and sold them below the cost of production, to get rid of them. Long term buyers are mostly fairly loyal, but you can't sell bobwhite for $5.00 each to someone who can purchase them for $1.00 each.

It's best to have a cull buyer set up to.purchase anything you can't sell for full retail, once sales slow going into Winter.

I recommend having varying price points depending on the volume of birds a customer is buying. Your time is valuable. Small orders often aren't worth dealing with, even if the profit margin is higher, because it takes proportionately more time per bird sold. I greatly prefer selling wholesale to save my time.

I recommend getting a substantial deposit from anyone wanting large numbers of birds in the future.

Keith

metal wiring mesh around the sides and netting on top.

Raising for your own use or commercially? I've raised several hundred thousand pheasants. Great business if you have a market.

Id be happy to answer any questions

I know a guy who sells quail to shooting preserves. He buys chicks for $1 each, 4000 at a time and starts selling at 4 month. 100 or more, $6 apiece. Small batches up to $7 each. How much profit does he make per bird?

So, are you looking to sell the birds for meat, sport and just raise them for yourself and to release? Today ai walked some wooded river bottom by some agriculture fields next to my place and I would say I seen a thousand plus pheasants. Not a one in gun range and hunting season is over but to make my point there is so much cover the habitat is excellent for them.
Pheasants need heavy cover to sustain in the wild.

Here are a few pictures I got in the last few weeks and yesterday


.