Rearing Pheasants

	©Jessica Almy/The HSUS
	Pheasants are raised in crowded pens before being released to die.

Game bird farm owners raise birds in a series of cages, boxes, and pens in sometimes crowded, factory farm conditions. Many stocking states—including Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming—operate state-owned rearing facilities. Other stocking states purchase their birds from private facilities and some wildlife agencies even distribute day-old chicks to local gun clubs to rear and release.

Chicks hatched after incubation are immediately transferred to brooding boxes and deprived throughout their short lives of a mother hen's guidance and any other natural social order that might imprint upon them necessary survival skills.

In brooding boxes and indoor facilities, if the rearing environment is not tightly controlled, chicks and birds may die. They will peck at each other if the light is too high or suffocate if the box is improperly constructed. Cleanliness of facilities is imperative to ensure that the birds do not die, and feed must be kept dry and changed frequently. Unfortunately, these standards aren't met on many rearing facilities.

Peepers and Beak Trimming

To minimize pecking, breeders sometimes outfit the birds with "peepers" (blinders placed through the nares, or nose holes) and beak-deforming bits to prevent them from harming other birds. The North American Gamebird Association claimed in its journal, Wildlife Harvest, that "certain stresses...are considered necessary in gamebird production. These include beak-trimming, handling, moving birds to new environments, upsetting the established social order within a pen, and others."

Debeaking, or "beak-trimming," as it is called within the industry, may be performed on pheasant chicks to prevent them from pecking each other. This process is painful and results in the removal of the touch-sensitive tip of the beak—an important sense organ for the birds—with a guillotine-like apparatus—a so-called hot knife—or scissors.

Related Links

Pheasant Stocking

Releasing Pheasants

States with Pheasant Stocking Programs

The "Collateral Damages" of Pheasant Stocking

Tower Shoots

Flying in the Face of Ethics

Pheasant Preserves: Flushing Fair Chase Out

Pheasant Stocking Report 2007