Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Do we need a school
Why do so many game bird chicks die? An important new study by researchers at Exeter University looks at how losses could be reduced
In what other sector of agriculture, or business, would we tolerate losses of 65 per cent? Yet only 35 per cent of the 40million pheasants released into the UK countryside each year are harvested — the purpose for which they have been bred. Around 25 per cent of them are probably dead before the first trigger is pulled.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. For wild birds in general, 80 per cent die in their first year, with the majority of deaths occurring in the first few weeks of life. Wild pheasants are similar, with around 60 per cent dying in their first couple of months. But the point of rearing pheasants is to protect them during these first dangerous weeks of life. Careful breeders achieve death rates below five per cent over the same period.
It is what happens next, after release, that is concerning. During a period where both wild-born and captive-reared poults of the same age are faced with the same predators, same risk of starvation and the same chance of being killed on the road, the wild poults that have made it through the first weeks of life have a likelihood of survival that is three times greater than their captive-reared counterparts. This stark difference raises the question, why are captivereared birds more likely to die?
Throughout history, there are reports of human children being raised by other species. A common feature to such stories is that the children find it difficult to adjust to life in their “natural” environment — human society. So too for pheasants reared by humans.
Naturally, pheasant chicks start life in small broods. They stay with their mother for several weeks. She gradually leads them from the nest and indicates good food sources and chicks learn to catch and process a range of food types. She calls them to roost each evening. She gives alarms when she spots a predator so chicks learn to identify threats. Generally, she prepares them for life in the wild.
In contrast, reared pheasant chicks have no access to such life tutors. They are reared in (increasingly) large groups of hundreds or even thousands. No adult introduces them to the world. They start life in a darkened shed, empty except for a heat lamp, drinkers and some plastic feeders where they peck at nutrient-rich but monotonous crumbs. They move out into a barren open pen. If they see a predator, the chicks are safe behind fences and perhaps start to lose their fears as such threatening encounters are inconsequential.
This is not to say that the chicks are poorly cared for. They have warmth, protection, food and clean water and are medicated if disease occurs. Consequently, they put on weight, thrive and survive, indeed at rates better than those for human children in many societies. But after a few weeks they are thrust into a far nastier place, for which they are ill prepared.
In a recent peer-reviewed paper, Mark Whiteside, Andy Hall and
14 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE I from Exeter University, scoured UK and international literature to ask what practices demonstrably reduce mortality of released pheasants. Opportunities for improvement arise at all stages of the rearing and release process. They include the conditions under which eggs are produced, the way young pheasants are reared and the management of the environment into which they are released.
Little evidence
Perhaps surprisingly, there is little evidence that predator control or supplementary feeding improves pheasant survival, in contrast to the benefits that these can offer to the breeding and survival of other species. This may be because predator control and feeding is practised everywhere that pheasants are released, so it is hard to have a “control” area to compare it with.
Rearing and releasing birds at lower densities may bring disproportionate benefits. Lowdensity rearing reduces stress and physical aggression, so the young birds enter the wild in better conditions and are less susceptible to disease and so on. Low-density releases reduce both risk of disease and the distance that (males) disperse from the pen. If gains from rearing
“Chicks have protection, food and water and are medicated if disease occurs”