Pop door for Lady Amherst pheasants

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Henrik Petersson

Henrik Petersson

Crowing
11 Years
Jan 9, 2009
646
1,126
312
Karlskrona, Sweden
Hello!

I've been in the chicken game for ages and know most of the ins and outs of housing them. Just today, I happened to turn my eyes on the Lady Amherst pheasant, and have tried to gobble up as much info as I can of them from the Internet, and think I have managed to pin down the major difference in keeping them and chickens.

There is, however, one small issue which causes me to scratch my head: How do I build a pop door for their coop? Living in Sweden, with our winters, I do think they would need a coop. However, I read that the male needs a lot of turning space so as not to mess up his tail. Therefore, I'm not sure a standard chicken pop door - a foot by a foot, or so - would be big enough; unless he walks straight in and out, it seems to me that his tail would risk getting scratched.

Not to mention if I do like with my present chickens, and make a pop door with a wind shield that forces the chickens to turn 90° when they enter or leave.

Thoughts?
 
Henrik Petersson said:
Hello!

I've been in the chicken game for ages and know most of the ins and outs of housing them. Just today, I happened to turn my eyes on the Lady Amherst pheasant, and have tried to gobble up as much info as I can of them from the Internet, and think I have managed to pin down the major difference in keeping them and chickens.

There is, however, one small issue which causes me to scratch my head: How do I build a pop door for their coop? Living in Sweden, with our winters, I do think they would need a coop. However, I read that the male needs a lot of turning space so as not to mess up his tail. Therefore, I'm not sure a standard chicken pop door - a foot by a foot, or so - would be big enough; unless he walks straight in and out, it seems to me that his tail would risk getting scratched. 

Not to mention if I do like with my present chickens, and make a pop door with a wind shield that forces the chickens to turn 90° when they enter or leave.

Thoughts? 
Click to expand...
Do you plan to "free range" your pheasants? If not, then their tails are more likely to get broken by the enclosure wire and not a "pop" door.
 
007Sean said:
Do you plan to "free range" your pheasants? If not, then their tails are more likely to get broken by the enclosure wire and not a "pop" door.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I intend to do as with the chickens: Free range most of the time, but keep them in a fenced enclosure while no-one's home or awake.

On a related note, how far from the wall does the roost have to be in order not to ruff his feathers?
 
Pheasants don't free range very well, they will be gone if you let them out of a fully enclosed area. Being your in Sweden, I suspected you would try to free range, as a lot of European countries do free range alot of different birds. Your experince with your birds may differ from the norm...depends on what level of "tameness" you can achieve with your birds.
I've raised some pheasants that would walk all over me, eat from my hand and let me pick them up without going berserk but once they got out of the enclosure, they were gone.
As far as how far away from the walls to place a perch, it's up to you, whatever you think a good distance would be...I run my perches all the way cross the shealterd area. I have posts and yard arms in open areas of their pens. In the covered areas they are about 2' from the ceiling. In open areas, the height of posts varies. If you want to keep their tail feathers from being damaged, a full length roof is best...mud, wet grass does more damage to their feathers than rubbing against walls or wire mesh enclosures. HTH
 
007Sean said:
Pheasants don't free range very well, they will be gone if you let them out of a fully enclosed area. Being your in Sweden, I suspected you would try to free range, as a lot of European countries do free range alot of different birds. Your experince with your birds may differ from the norm...depends on what level of "tameness" you can achieve with your birds.
I've raised some pheasants that would walk all over me, eat from my hand and let me pick them up without going berserk but once they got out of the enclosure, they were gone.
As far as how far away from the walls to place a perch, it's up to you, whatever you think a good distance would be...I run my perches all the way cross the shealterd area. I have posts and yard arms in open areas of their pens. In the covered areas they are about 2' from the ceiling. In open areas, the height of posts varies. If you want to keep their tail feathers from being damaged, a full length roof is best...mud, wet grass does more damage to their feathers than rubbing against walls or wire mesh enclosures. HTH
Click to expand...

There's possibly a cultural difference. I see a lot of hen houses being hailed on this site that make me go "Jeez, are they gonna live in that tiny space?" I've seen how chickens always want to explore new surroundings, so I find it bordering on cruel to keep them confined in small areas. Then again, I eat eggs and chickens bought from commersial farms, so I'm a hypocrite.

I hope I would be able to achieve the tameness level of where they eat from my hand. That's what I've managed with my chickens and muscovy ducks. I seem to be unable to get a bird to be okay with me touching them, though.

I hadn't read that pheasants were that bad at free ranging, so thanks for the new info. If I get these pheasants, I could be okay with building a huge pen for them, perhaps two or more adjacent pens that they can rotate between to always provide fresh greenery. A lot of the pleasure of keeping fowl, though, is having them walk around and socialize with me as I go about my daily business, so lack of free ranging would definitely detract from the experience.
 
Not a bad idea of building 2 or 3 huge adjoining pens. Grasses, forbs, weeds have a chance to recover from trampling, grazing, etc...I rotate some of my birds in this manner, mainly me prairie chickens. Also, pheasants should not be kept with chickens nor their pens within close vacinity of the chicken's enclosure. Chickens carry diseases that they can tolerate but will kill a pheasant. Bio security is an ultmost priority with pheasants. Also, need to address predator encounters, especially if free ranging.
Im not saying you can't free range pheasants but stories of success are rare. I've seen Golden pheasants free ranging on private estates in the United Kingdom and in France, so I know it's possible...I've never been able to achieve that goal. Too many predators here in Texas.
 
007Sean said:
Not a bad idea of building 2 or 3 huge adjoining pens. Grasses, forbs, weeds have a chance to recover from trampling, grazing, etc...I rotate some of my birds in this manner, mainly me prairie chickens. Also, pheasants should not be kept with chickens nor their pens within close vacinity of the chicken's enclosure. Chickens carry diseases that they can tolerate but will kill a pheasant. Bio security is an ultmost priority with pheasants. Also, need to address predator encounters, especially if free ranging.
Im not saying you can't free range pheasants but stories of success are rare. I've seen Golden pheasants free ranging on private estates in the United Kingdom and in France, so I know it's possible...I've never been able to achieve that goal. Too many predators here in Texas.
Click to expand...

We're in the process of building an additional adjoining pen for our chickens! :D AND they get to free range almost every day.

I hear what you're saying about keeping pheasants separate from chickens. We have chickens and muscovy ducks. They're in different pens, but free range on the property, and the two species, while mostly ignoring one another, occasionally get into a little rough-and-tumble. I've also read a little about the risk of disease spreading between chickens, ducks and turkeys (and now pheasants), so it seems like a good rule of thumb to keep one fowl type per building.

Yeah, I googled a little bit about free ranging pheasants, including Amhersts specifically, and 9 pages out of ten strongly adviced against it. So I'm dropping that idea! There are actually feral common pheasants in my area, I wouldn't wanna mess upp the ecosystem by introducing yet another invasive species.
 
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Yeah, I don't even mix my various species of pheasants together. I strive to keep them in their pure form. It's hard enough to find pure bloodlines here in the states. If your really into learning about pheasants, I reccomend, Pheasants of the World and James Pharr's, True Pheasants. You can get both books on Amazon and other sites on the web. You can also get True Pheasants as an e-book in PDF form. Good Luck in your endevors!
 
007Sean said:
Yeah, I don't even mix my various species of pheasants together. I strive to keep them in their pure form. It's hard enough to find pure bloodlines here in the states. If your really into learning about pheasants, I reccomend, Pheasants of the World and James Pharr's, True Pheasants. You can get both books on Amazon and other sites on the web. You can also get True Pheasants as an e-book in PDF form. Good Luck in your endevors!
Click to expand...

Thank you! When it comes to fowl, I like to get down to the nitty-and-gritty.
 

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