Eggs

        Who works there? What keeps them so busy? For the 2024 season, we relocated all of MacFarlane Pheasants' breeders to Missouri. The three farms we have there are called MoMac, MoPhe, and MoArk. Shane Smith, our manager at MoPhe, and his staff, renovated a barn at MoPhe [...]

Clear Cut Remodeling has constructed a 3000 square foot addition to our hatchery at MacFarlane Pheasants in Janesville, Wisconsin. The inside of our building was completed on February 20, 2024, and the installation of new machines has already begun! The demand for pheasant chicks is high.  The only way to [...]

The History of Our Red-Legged Partridges We started raising Red-Legged Partridges in 2009. Our owner Bill MacFarlane had a customer request for these partridges and that started the ball rolling. Since the Red-Legged Partridge has been raised at game farms in France and Italy for centuries, we began exploring how [...]

Raising Hens Effectively and Ethically Raising breeder hens to produce the chicks and eggs that are an enormous part of our business is a process we have refined over many years. In the past, we raised most of our breeders outside, but currently we keep only 5% in outdoor pens. [...]

We are in the process of making plans to expand our hatchery because the demand for day-old pheasant chicks is very high. Months before we place the eggs in the brooders, we find that MacFarlane Pheasants’ orders have surpassed the eggs we are hatching! So, we are discussing what our [...]

Hatching pheasant eggs requires an incubation time of 23-25 days. The incubation time is affected by temperature, genetics and management; these factors are considered the most important part of hatching in our hatchery department. There are two different processes to hatch poultry eggs – single-stage and multi-stage incubation. We use [...]

Troy Cisewski, our Production Manager, oversees the three MacFarlane Pheasants’ farms in Missouri. They are all located within a 30-minute driving distance of each other. The primary purpose for having the Missouri farms is biosecurity. Multiple egg sources protect us if a disease occurs and other farms would need to [...]

MacFarlane Pheasants raises breeder hens in Missouri at three sites. Troy Cisewski, our Director of Production, is responsible for overseeing the three sites we have there. They are all located within a 30-minute driving distance of each other, and there are four production barns at each site. The Missouri breeder [...]

Moisture and temperature are the main issues that can slow down our hatches and affect our chick hatching. As we go into the winter season, the hatchery crew performs various tasks that keep weather-related issues to a minimum. As winter begins, the staff plans ahead when preparing for hatches. They [...]

Troy, Director of Production here at MacFarlanes, revealed some great news about egg collection at MacFarlane Pheasants’ facilities during the 2021 season. We collected 2.2 million eggs between January 25, 2021, and July 15, 2021, from the 17,600 breeders located at our Missouri sites and the 9,000 breeders that we kept [...]

May is the busiest time during MacFarlane Pheasants’ chick season. Why, you might ask? Our customers are preparing for the fall season to either release birds into the wild or prepare for the upcoming hunting season. Chicks born in May reach full maturity in late August and September, making it [...]

Breeder Selection is an important aspect of raising pheasants. A good breeder selection program means that the health, appearance, and performance of the mature pheasants are superior. The number of breeders we select is based on the projected sales to our customers. Once the numbers are determined, we map out [...]

Keagan Strange, MacFarlane’s Hatchery Manager, typically starts his day arriving at the hatchery between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. This gives him time to get organized for the day before other employees begin arriving between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. • On Monday-Wednesday, hatchery employees are filling orders. This includes packing [...]

On March 20, 2019, three new high roof cargo vans with gas engines went into service at MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. We bought them because we needed vehicles that were 100% reliable and we had been having some problems with the Sprinters. We feel confident that these vehicles will meet our [...]

Incubating and hatching pheasant eggs requires a specific process to ensure success. The process we use at MacFarlane Pheasants is documented in our online booklet called The Complete Guide to Incubation. You can download our booklet for free and try incubating and hatching your own baby pheasants! Let me use this [...]

MacFarlane Pheasants, Inc. hatches over two million birds each year in our hatchery. That means we collect over three million eggs in order to get that many hatches! Obviously, we have our system down to a science. We use the Natureform I-14 machines to incubate our eggs. These machines must [...]

During the month of April, I wrote an article about practices for incubating and hatching eggs in our hatchery that was an overview of our practices at MacFarlane Pheasants. We hatch over two million chicks per year so our staff is quite knowledgeable about incubating eggs and hatching baby chicks! [...]

Our hatchery at MacFarlane Pheasants is where we incubate eggs and hatch our pheasant chicks. The most important part of incubating eggs is to provide heat, humidity, and ventilation. If you can provide those basic needs and follow some basic steps, 25 days later you will have some beautiful peeping [...]

The Chinese Ringneck is our best seller at MacFarlane Pheasants. We expect to sell over 450,000 of these birds in 2016-2017. They are the most popular breed in the United States. Since they were brought here from China in 1881, they have continued to flourish and can be found in [...]

One of the more exciting moments on our farm is when baby chicks begin to hatch. However, there are many steps to complete in the brooder barns before hatching begins, to prepare for the 500,000 chicks we hatch each year. Planning Ahead Set up a master schedule of when we [...]