Studies on Pheasant Nutrition

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS on the nutrition of pheasant chicks presented in an earlier report (Scott and Reynolds, 1949) showed that excellent growth was obtained up to five weeks of age with diets containing 28% of protein. No effort was made in these studies to determine the age at which the protein level in the ration could be reduced. Previous studies by Callenbach and Hiller (1933), and Norris, Elmore, Ringrose and Bump (1936), indicated that the protein requirement of Ringnecked pheasants is approximately 28% for early growth, but also failed to show the age at which the protein requirement drops to a lower level. Although most of the diets used in the earlier studies by Scott and Reynolds were high in available energy, indications were obtained that pheasant chicks may develop better on diets containing appreciable amounts of fibrous, ingredients such as ground whole oats and wheat standard middlings. Diets containing the higher …