Cereal numbers
How quickly should we be switching from grower pellets to wheat, and what is the best way to do this? We seem to waste a lot of wheat in the pens every year.
Marc says: On our syndicate shoot I feed 3 tonnes of 5108 pellet (Marsden’s 20% protein) per 1,000 pheasants and most of my customers do likewise. It is worth noting we get poults mid-July to start shooting the last week in October. Where poults arrive early August, I recommend 2 to 2.5 tonnes of pellets per 1,000 birds due to the dampening weather. A thousand pheasants will consume approximately
16 x 25kg bags of pellet per week. When I’m down to enough pellet to last 10 to 14 days, I empty half the feeders in my pens and put the now empty ones next to ones with pellet in them and then fill the empty feeders with wheat, a pinch of kibbled maize and our liquid Easykeep (a unique blend of aniseed and spices). I find doing it this way the birds don’t waste even half as much wheat as they switch over naturally at their own convenience. They also learn what aniseed is and get hooked on kibbled maize before they even leave the pen. This in turn helps with bird retention (returns/performance) and manipulating them around the shoot.