Feeding Pheasants

[LandDr]

If you want to help the birds...get yourself and your friends together and innitiate some projects on your own. Work on your own land, land you hunt on or even land you don't hunt on. You can actaully get a lot more done with a small investment with big results. Often the investment is just your time and some elbow grease. If you need some ideas for projects or things to focus on, give me an email or call and I would be happy to discuss options.

Seeing birds in the winter...it is actually better "not" to see birds in the winter. If you don't see them, that usually means they are tucked away in their winter core areas with sufficient food and cover. When cover gets blown in and food cover up, winter stress increases and the birds have to venture out in search of food...that is when you start seeing them up on the roads and out in fields far away from cover. DNR studies show the further a pheasant has to go away from its cover in search of food, winter mortality goes up exponentially.

It is a myth that birds need grit during the winter and that is why they are up on the road. Grit can last up to 8 months in a pheasant...reason they are usually up on the roads is to get spilt grain from the fall and early winter harvest.

Retired on Osakis...you are doing the right thing by putting the food near cover instead of along the road or out in the field. Keeping the food by the cover will definately reduce exposure to ground and avian predators. If you are going to feed, make sure you are doing more good than harm...place food "in" the cover or under thick cover such as willows and cattails. That will make it harder for avian predators to pounce on them and also provide quick escape cover from ground predators. Also, create more feed stations and spread your feed stations out...this will better prevent predators from concentrating on one feed station.

What to feed? Corn and beans are high in protein but are actually very difficult to break down and process...that is why farmers "grind" their corn before feeding it to cattle in an attempt to increase digestability. Cracked corn is definately better than whole corn. What is even better are "cereal grains" such as millet, Milo and sunflowers. These are softer grains and much more digestable as well as very high in protein. They are often more expensive than a bag of corn...but your results are much better. Pheasants around my feeders will usually eat the sunflowers first, then the millets/milo and lastly the corn.

But what ever you feed them...get the food into the cover...and then make sure you keep feeding them. Drawing birds to an area, potentially away from better cover, means the birds will often stay. Since you have drawn them to that area, and if it is good cover, stay with your feeding program until spring.

Projects? Winter feeding, if done right, can really get a lot of hens thru the winter. We have a saying..."Dean Hens Don't Lay Eggs"...gotta get the hens thru the winter. There are many many great habitat programs available...some that pay very well and some that cost share very well...or even both. If you would like to look over some aerial photos of your land or where you hunt...I would be happy to brainstorm with you on some spring projects that could really help "winterize" your property as well as greatly increase your pheasant and deer management.

Fish On!
info@HabitatNOW.com

[MTCOMMER]

Definitely a great tidbit! 
We are feeding our Pheasants ground corn and then a mixture of a feed mix with millets.  No sunflowers, but our land has some natural seed plants that they can feast on!  The birds love it, when we walk in the willow patches for deer hunting we always spook up a few!
We have taken a break from hunting them, its been 2 years now, they were hunted pretty heavily before that.  The population is booming now, cant wait to get out there with the dog!
 

We keep a good stock during the winter, but we take less care of the feeders during the spring and fall, it seems they have alot to eat out there when there isnt any snow on the ground!