Lady pheasant desperate to mate?

[Kiawaki]

Hi all,

We bought a pair of 1yr old golden pheasants 4 weeks ago (each from a different place). The male still has juvenile feathers and is only starting to show a few adult feathers here and there. They get along well enough. But yesterday morning the female was missing, and we found a hole in the wire mesh that she apparently managed to make to squeeze through. We found her the same evening, with bloody scratches on her head, most likely from torn wire, and managed to get her back into her run.

The wire mesh is thin but dense - 1 mm thick wire (plastic coated, so it's thinner inside), but only 12 mm (about half an inch) wide openings. The cage was newly built, so the wire wasn't worn out, so it's totally confusing how she even managed to do it, she must have been desperately trying. The hole was almost certainly made from the inside, as the mesh was stretched towards the outside. Even if some small predator managed to make a hole from the outside, I doubt that both pheasants and 2 doves in the same cage would still be unhurt after that.

The main cage for pheasants is surrounded by a rather big fenced area (cca 13x 15 m), and every afternoon lately I would open the cage door and let the pheasants into it. The male seems too shy to even come out most days, but the female does, although she usually keeps close to the cage door. Last several days the female would often squeeze in a narrow spot between the cage and surrounding fence and make lots of strange cries. So I thought she was calling for a mate and looking for a place to nest (I made her one in the cage, but maybe she doesn't like it).

I guess the male is still to young to be interested (or interesting?) but I'm not sure what to do with her now. Should I just keep her closed until the mating season is over? We reinforced the mesh around the bottom part of the cage, of course, but I don't like to see her closed all the time, and she looks rather unhappy today. Or maybe she just wants more freedom and space? Any ideas?

Also, when I found yesterday it was actually chickens who alerted me, because she came to them and walked among them for a minute or two, and they made a ruckus about it. Could such a short contact be dangerous for her in terms of disease?

 

[007Sean]

Howdy,
The hens head being bloody could have happened due to the male repeatible trying to mate. Even juvenile males are fairly aggressive when their hormones kick in....this could be the reason she was trying to escape the relentless displaying and attempted mating.
Pheasants need fairly large enclosures to be comfortable in captivity. It also helps to have several perches, hiding places for the hen to get away from the harassment of the male. Breaking up line of sight with stumps, rocks, shrubs, and grasses will also help. If the male is overly aggressive, to the point of killing the hen, you may have to separate them.
Goldens can be fairly aggressive during breeding season but mine have never killed a hen in the process. My pens have lots of "pheasant furniture" that I mentioned above.
I wouldn't worry too much about the mingling with the chickens for that short a period, unless you know for sure the chickens are carriers of a particular disease. Chickens do have disease's they can tolerate but will kill a peasant....so BIOSECURITY is a priority when raising pheasants.
Edited to add:
Seeing that the birds came from two different places, I would introduce them to a new pen that neither has been housed in before and I try to do this in the night time. That way when it gets daylight, their both in the new pen that neither has any territorial attachment. Their on the the same footing, so to speak! HTH

 

[Kiawaki]

Thanks Sean, didn't cross my mind it could be the problem as I've never seen them mating yet, they are both calm around each other, but then I only watch them for a short time, and the male is quite shy with me around. I'll see about putting some more "furniture" inside.