Can Pheasants be induced to breed and lay eggs out of season?

[yeoman]

I'm primarily raising quail for meat right now, along with rabbits and a few Silkies who mainly give me eggs for baking and breeding food (not a big egg eater), I love the taste of quail and rabbit but they're both just so tiny, 1 bird is one meal and 1 rabbit is two meals, which means that I have to raise a lot of them to reach my goal of 100% food self-suffiency, that number will go down once I get my goats (I plan to get 3, and keep them bred consistently so that I have milk, and slaughter the goat kids for meat at 3-5 months) but it's a lot regardless.

I'm interested in pheasant because they taste similarly to quail but they're much larger, and unlike chickens, I can keep them with my quail without worrying that they'll give my birds diseases or kill them (that's part of why I don't breed chicken anymore, along with the fact that they have a lot of dark meat that I don't like), however it seems that they only breed at a certain time of year, so it will be hard to keep my flock sustainable year round. Is there any way to induce breeding and egg laying outside of their season? I'm really interested in them but I don't know if it's worth it.

 

[007Sean]

Howdy yeoman, I'm not aware of anyone who has tried to induce year round breeding of pheasants. They are seasonal breeders.
You can expect 40 to 50 eggs from a hen during the breeding season. If you could get them to breed year round, it would ultimately ruin the hens health. Egg production is hard on the hens body. Calcium is extracted from their bones to produce the egg shell. This is one reason some people will supplement their calcium intake with oyster shell grit. Even if enough calcium is consumed, there will still be problems with egg yolk peritonitis from laying year round.
I had some Melanistic pheasants that did lay eggs year round. I don't know what caused them to do so...they would lay soft shelled eggs, weird color and textured eggs and at times, some had no shell, just yolk laying on the ground. They also appeared to be egg bound at times.
You can raise a bunch of them and butcher, process them and freeze them, thus being able to have pheasant year round.
Peasant & dumplings is a favorite of mine. HTH

 

[ravensgait]

Kind of late to this one but Yes you can get them to breed any time of year. Those that breed game birds for meat do this all the time. They keep their layers like many keep chickens, inside, temp controlled and adjustable lighting. The lighting being the most important as it is what tells a bird when to lay .
There are videos about it ,,, MacFarlane Pheasant Farm does it with their meat birds .