{"id":3194,"date":"2016-08-02T02:16:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T02:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pheasant1.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=3194"},"modified":"2024-08-02T15:16:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T15:16:14","slug":"what-does-day-length-have-to-do-with-pheasant-mating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pheasant.com\/about-us\/blog\/what-does-day-length-have-to-do-with-pheasant-mating","title":{"rendered":"What Does Day Length Have To Do With Pheasant Mating?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Pheasant mating is triggered by the longer spring days. The roosters\u2019 pituitary glands become active at this time and the hormones produced cause the roosters to have the physiological desire to mate. At\u00a0MacFarlane Pheasant Farms<\/a>\u00a0we have a select group of breeders, so of course we don\u2019t want the pheasants we are growing for mature sales, to breed.<\/p>\n

This year our first hatch was February 22nd. Typically, the first hatch is around March 7th.\u00a0 Since we hatched earlier, as the days got longer, our males were triggered to want to mate. Imagine the scene when we noticed that the roosters in a flock of 20,000 pheasants were strutting around trying to claim territories! They strutted and crowed and had little tolerance for each other because their hormones were raging.<\/p>\n

We had to move quickly to separate the 20,000 hens and roosters and eliminate the mating dances! We followed two basic procedures:<\/p>\n