Farm Management

Last Saturday, a tornado struck MacFarlane Pheasant Farm, causing significant damage and challenging our team. As farmers dedicated to the well-being of our animals and our community, we want to update you on the situation and our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety and care of our birds. Immediate Impact [...]

We have been busy reorganizing our buildings at MacFarlane Pheasants since the sale of property at what we called our "Main Farm." We plan to complete our moves by December 31, 2023. Our main office in Janesville, Wisconsin, has already moved to 1609 Center Avenue. Please send all office mail [...]

Flight Pens A few weeks ago, we updated you about the 76 new flight pens we built on a new property we purchased. We are happy to say that our pens are currently full of our birds for the upcoming mature pheasant season. Hatchery Plans Ronnie Viljoen, our Hatchery Manager, [...]

MacFarlane Pheasants has some exciting news about our business. We sold the 175 acres that currently contain about 20% of our flight pens. We also have barns, offices, and a maintenance shop on this site that will eventually be at a new location. We bought a new piece of land [...]

MacFarlane Pheasant’s employees are excited to be using a New Holland tractor on our main farm in Janesville, Wisconsin. Traver Weber, our Maintenance Manager traveled to New Holland, Michigan to drive this beauty and make sure it matched our needs. Brian Davis, our Farm Management Manager, had already researched tractors [...]

We are so excited about purchasing a new Kubota Skid Steer at MacFarlane Pheasants. Traver Weber, our maintenance manager, explored both used and new skid steers before deciding that a new one would be the best long-term investment. His decision to negotiate for a new skid steer involved meeting with [...]

  What does Milton Farm Manager, Lodewyk Davis, have to say about the success of the Milton Farm? He proudly attributes the success to excellent communication between himself and his four co-workers who are at the farm full time and his colleagues at the main farm. The Milton Farm crew [...]

We manage the price of feed at MacFarlane Pheasants in a couple of different ways. It is essential to watch the commodity markets and establish contracts when prices are as low as we think they will get for the year. Lower markets translate into lower prices. We also use our [...]

It is a fact that high ammonia concentrations in barns are dangerous to animals and humans. We take the job of protecting our pheasants and our employees seriously at MacFarlane Pheasants, so we follow a consistent process to keep ammonia levels low. If you are keeping birds in your barns, [...]

What are Thermal Foggers? They are a jet engines with liquid injectors that use flame and heat to turn a disinfectant into vapor form (fog). The mist allows the disinfectant to cover all the nooks and crevices of a barn. It even permeates the bedding material to ensure that pathogens [...]

Protecting our pheasants and other wild birds from rodents and other predators at MacFarlane Pheasants is a year-round job, but it becomes even more critical when we place our young birds in the outdoor pens. Rats, mice, hawks, foxes, skunks, and coyotes are our main concerns. We use a variety [...]

Smart Barn Alarms are protecting our barns at MacFarlane Pheasants. Heidi Welch, the Brooder Crew Lead, can tell you all about why they are needed in the brooder barns and exactly how they work! Heidi says, “The temperature and water alarms are VERY important and I cannot stress that enough!” The [...]

Bill MacFarlane sits down with Jessica Mitchell with Mother Earth News, to discuss how his family established their pheasant farm, how he joined the business, and what MacFarlane Pheasants does today. Click on the link below to join in and listen. https://www.motherearthnews.com/podcast/raising-pheasants-zepz2010zmit

You can depend on MacFarlane Pheasants to feed the pheasants and other wild birds they raise, the highest quality feed available on the market. MacFarlane Pheasants is a family owned pheasant business. It was started 91 years ago by Ken MacFarlane, Bill MacFarlane’s uncle. After his passing, Don MacFarlane, Bill’s [...]

Water must be treated (cleaned) to prevent bacteria and algae from growing in the water lines. Both these organisms left untreated in the water lines can lead to clogged lines and sickly birds. We treat the water lines in MacFarlane Pheasants’ barns daily and flush the lines through the entire [...]

The summer weather on a large wild bird farm like MacFarlane Pheasants is an important factor in raising beautiful, healthy birds. MacFarlane raises many breeds of birds and the weather affects all of them! Ideal Weather Conditions: • Upper 70’s during the day with plenty of sunshine and not too much [...]

MacFarlane Pheasants has always composted used bedding and bird droppings. We create windrows that are about 4ft wide by 4ft tall and can be 1500ft long. This is where our “bedding pack” is hauled weekly. It takes about a year of turning the compost by machine to create the breakdown [...]

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 [...]

Our Milton farm has about 40 acres under nets. We have three brooding barns and raised about 72,000 pheasants this year. We predominately raise the Kansas strain. What we call Kansas birds were bred and developed by the late Bernie Janssen, a longtime gamebird farmer from Kansas. Bernie bred his birds [...]

Major snowstorms or freezing rain events can be disastrous at MacFarlane Pheasants! Before and after these events we have a plan to protect our game birds. We watch the weather carefully and check our birds night and day during the winter to be sure all heaters are working, that our [...]