I’m pretty new to pheasant but am learning about them pretty quickly in Kansas. Today I saw a hen with a whole brood of chicks that were really small, about ping pong ball sized. Is that a second brood? What happened to the first brood? What are the survival rates for a brood that small this late in the year?
Fifty or more years ago before radio-telemetry (radio-tagged hens) the "second hatch" was a big debate. Radio-telemetry proves that it does happen, but it is rare and the conditions must be right.
The second hatch or "Double-Brooding" is rear, but it has been documented in two publications. I will give the two references just for back ground information.
1. "A Natural History of the Pheasant" by Peter Robertson. Read page 66 of that book and the author explains that in areas of the world where spring starts early and summers are long and mild a second hatch can occasionally happen. A Danish biologist in New Zealand (using radio-tagged hens) found that hens can very occasionally rear two broods in a single year.
2. "Experimental Pheasant Restoration Project" Go to page 49 of that study under the Nesting section. Two radio tagged hens in the wild in that study produced a second brood after successfully hatching the first nest.
Texas panhandle farms have for years said that their pheasants have a second hatch, in wet grassy summers. But in dry years (like 2008 poor dry land wheat) poor hatch or no hatch at all.
2010 was an El nino year in Texas wet snowy winter and wet spring (when I say wet not the kind of wet that drowns chicks but the wet that produces green vegetation and insects).The panhandle wheat was tall and green (lot of vegetation) in late March with warm weather in March and April. The wheat was not cut until mid June.
The hen pheasants could have easily hatched a brood by the first week of May 2010.
I am sure that parts of the mid west had a mild wet spring.
Main point the second hatch is rear but when conditions are right it can happen.
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