Gamekeeper

A return of wet weather threatens this year’s stock but there has been a good lay and experiments with the hatcher appear to have paid off

Ithink I spoke too soon. Just as I was starting to feel confident that 2017 could turn out to be a bumper year for wild game, the temperature dropped and it started raining. Not light, warm showers, but cold, hard downpours that have so far lasted for several days. How well our wild stock will do if the rain keeps up, I don’t know. Undoubtedly some will survive but there will certainly be fewer than if it had stayed dry and warm and sunny.

The pheasants in the laying pen have been unaffected by the recent weather and have laid the best I can remember. They have produced good-quality, fertile eggs and the hatch rate has been about five per cent higher than normal. The birds are the same strain, the food is the same and the pen is the same. There are a couple of things we have done differently this year that have made some difference, though I am sure most of it is down to the dry weather we have had, up until the last 10 days. Most of the people I have spoken to who have laying hens have had a similar year. Plenty of good-quality eggs, good hatch rates and very little mortality in the birds themselves.

The two things we have done differently are netting the laying pen and experimenting a little with the hatcher.

The laying pen was netted because we had to be able to separate our laying stock from “wild birds”, as per the Government restrictions and instructions introduced after the first avian influenza outbreaks in Lancashire. Netting it, which was quite a job on a big permanent pen, took eight of us the best part of a day. I do feel it was worth it and we will do it again next year — restrictions or not. The net kept the other birds out, including no doubt a number of egg thieves. Excluding the crows would have increased the number of eggs we picked and it probably reduced feed cost a little as well, though it hasn’t really been enough for us to notice any difference.

The tweaking of the hatcher came about after a visit to a friend’s hatchery. We have the same make of hatcher and while I have, up until now, always used hatcher foam he doesn’t. He is convinced air flow is restricted by the foam, even though it is recommended by the maker. I tried it without the foam and my hatches have improved, nor did I get any chicks with splayed legs as I feared I may.

Whether the improved hatching is down to my no longer using the hatcher foam or not is impossible to tell, as there are so many variables and the year itself has produced such good eggs. I think it has helped; what my friend said makes sense and it certainly hasn’t made the hatches any worse. I will hatch without foam again next year and see if the improvement in hatch rates continues. I’ll keep you posted.

Bird flu outbreak

As I write, DEFRA has just confirmed a new case of the H5N8 strain of bird flu in a small flock of chickens and geese near Diss in Norfolk. It has put 3km protection and 10km surveillance zones in place to limit the risk of the disease spreading. Within the zones, the movement of kept birds — which includes game birds — is against the law without a licence from a Government veterinary officer, and game bird releasing is not allowed within either of them under any circumstance.

As you can see, a summer outbreak is far more problematic for gamekeepers than were the outbreaks earlier in the year with rearing and releasing at its peak, and the zones are expected to be in place for the next two to three months. Let’s hope this is an isolated incident, though, hand on heart, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was another outbreak before the summer was out.

For further information on this and any other outbreaks of bird flu, visit www.nationalgamekeepers.org.uk.

“Plenty of goodquality eggs, good hatch rates and little mortality in the birds”

Same strain of pheasants, same food and same pen, but there has been a definite improvement