Starting Out with Pheasantsl.

[jykmoy]

We have a wild, male cock pheasant around our neighborhood. He croaks all the time looking for a female, but there are none around. There use to be one; a pair. And they walk around the neighborhood as if they owned the place! Alas. We're not sure what happened to the female. All this has prompted my buddy and I to think of hatching and raising some pheasants for release. All kinds of concerns immediately pop up. We're not thinking big...we just want to hatch a few pheasants, raise them, and then release them. We live on an island that is VERY RURAL.
Suggestions from everyone will be appreciated.

I mentioned this interest to a friend who told me she use to hatch pheasant eggs in a bowl with a heat lamp. Her husband farms and his machinery had killed a mother hen who was laying on her eggs, so he brought the eggs home and she hatched them! Sounds simple to me!

 

[birdboy15]

The pheasants that you release would just be easy prey for predators. I have also seen eggs hatched this way but it is a very unstable method that does not work well, especially with pheasants as they are harder to hatch than chickens.

 

[centurion90]

Well, i don't know which species of pheasant nor where you live. There may be laws in your area that don't allow this, so you may need to look into that. Also, if you wanted to have any pheasant survive, you would have to release a very large number as most will be wiped out by predation and weather. All this will most likey cost a pretty penny, lots of effort in your part, and time.