November has been very kind to us \u2013 weather wise.\u00a0 We have over 100,000 pheasants on the farm \u2013 outside in the pens.\u00a0 Once we reach late October and then November, our water system usually freezes.\u00a0 Once the water system is down, the birds will eat snow \u2013 if there is snow.\u00a0 Without snow, we then must water our birds with water tanks.\u00a0 Adult birds will drink about 3 gallons for every 100 birds in a day \u2013 so our 100,000 birds require 3,000 gallons of water into their pans every single day.\u00a0 So far this year we have been able to keep our automatic water system functional.\u00a0 The labor hours we have been able to save by not having to water with tanks yet this year is significant.<\/p>\n
I can remember a year that within a day or two of the first hard freeze (persisting into the daytime) we had a significant snowfall and we had snow cover virtually the entire winter.\u00a0Therefore we didn\u2019t have to water with tanks to speak of that year.\u00a0 Alternatively we have had open winters (very little snow) and we watered our birds with tanks for the majority of the four month winter season.<\/p>\n
The mild weather has also resulted in better than expected sales of grown pheasants to preserves.\u00a0 Working conditions for our employees are great \u2013 it\u2019s 50 degrees today, again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
November has been very kind to us \u2013 weather wise.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mature-birds"],"yoast_head":"\n