Pleasant Pheasant Egg Hunt...

Countryside Management students recently successfully completed a project rearing Japanese Quail but keen for more experience they have now started to prepare a batch of Pheasant eggs for the incubator.

In January the students caught wild pheasants on the college estate just as keepers all around the country would have been doing in preparation for rearing the next season’s pheasants. These pheasants were then housed in pens built by the students and fed a high protein diet to ensure they produce good quality fertile eggs. The birds have been laying since the beginning of April and about 80 eggs have been collected over the last ten days. These eggs have been washed and sterilised and are now in the incubator and will hatch in 24 days’ time. You can see Greg and Dan carefully putting the precious eggs through this process in the pictures below.