All the most important thing about breeding partridges at home

Partridge - is quite common in our latitudes bird of the pheasant family, relative of the chicken, possessing a very tender and tasty meat. However, not everyone knows that you can get such a game not only as a hunting trophy. Partridges have long been domesticated and can be successfully grown as poultry. About how to breed partridges at home, and will be discussed below.

For what partridges are bred at home

The main reason for breeding this variety of pheasant is the exceptional taste of meat. However, the eggs of this bird are of no less interest. They have a truly unique composition of vitamins, and potassium, iron and phosphorus in this product is much more than in our usual chicken eggs.

Until recently, the eggs of partridges were almost impossible to obtain, and even today they are rarely found in retail chains. Being about three times smaller in weight by chicken, it costs a dozen of such eggs at least four times more expensive. If we talk about meat, then compared to chicken, depending on the region, the price in some cases may differ by an order of magnitude (10 times) and even more. Breeding such a bird at home is troublesome, but very profitable.

Where to start

Of course, any business requires careful preparation. It is important not only to know what a partridge looks like and what it is eaten with, but to study in detail what partridges eat, what conditions are optimal for them and how to create such conditions in their own house. So, the first thing that “gadget” breeders advise to keep in mind is the careful protection of the enclosure. The fact is that the bird that you are going to breed has many natural enemies and is a desirable prey for many predators, including birds.

Partridges are much smaller than chickens, the weight of one individual is about 0.4 kg or a little more, so it is not surprising that such a bird may become a victim not only of a fox, a wolf or a stray dog, but even an ordinary crow.

Of course, it is important to study what partridges eat at home, because, as will be discussed below, feed suitable for chickens and other habitual poultry is not suitable here.

When conditions are created, the diet is studied, the feed is prepared, a dilemma arises where to get the bird.Experienced breeders caution against two major mistakes: an attempt to tame a feathered bird caught in the wild and acquisition of chicks for divorce (or eggs from which they will hatch). The first option is bad because it is not entirely clear how to get a sex-sex couple on the hunt without harming any of the animals, because, as we understand, this is the minimum necessary for breeding, and it is not known how such birds will live in captivity.

Growing chicks is a painstaking and risky business., you only have to master it in the future, so if you start with such experiments, it is likely to lose the young. As for the artificial incubation of eggs, it is generally “aerobatics” in the poultry industry, and not exactly what to start with.

It is also important to decide on the view of the partridges, which are actually many. It is logical to proceed from where those or other partridges live in natural conditions, choosing the form for which your climate zone will be the most suitable.

Most often in agriculture are used gray, less often - more exotic for our broad red partridges, on one of these species you should stop your choice if your goal is meat and eggs, and not a home zoo.

Do not forget to worry about the legal registration of a new business, so that later, when it comes time to sell the products, you will not encounter unexpected problems and fines.

Conditions of keeping partridges

Our bird lives in nature in the forest, and not in an open area, it is very bad for drafts, but it should not be indoors, too, around the clock.

Therefore, in advance you need to worry about the presence of a closed house (make sure that all the holes in its walls were thoroughly repaired, the cold night breeze did not disturb the feathered family), as well as the open area for walking birds, well protected from a possible predator attack. In order of each of them. Partridges, unlike chickens, fly beautifully, therefore, firstly, the shed should be quite high (at least 2 m), and secondly, when arranging the house, care must be taken to ensure that the bird is not injured and not tangled.

Breeders recommend to stretch around the perimeter of the shed and under the ceiling a fine mesh of cotton thread or capron with cells of 1 sq. M. see to prevent bird strikes on hard surfaces.

It is also useful to provide a small corridor at the entrance to the poultry house, so that its feathered inhabitants will not scatter when you enter. An important condition is good sound insulation in the barn: these birds are very sensitive to noise. Light should be enough, in the dark, especially in the spring, birds are uncomfortable, they reproduce poorly.

With regard to the size of the house, we must assume that the larger such area, the more birds you can keep per square meter: if there are no more than three birds in a small barn per meter, then this is a large area can be increased to five. In the room where partridges are kept, in addition to feeding troughs and drinking bowls, you need to place boxes with coarse sand or pebbles, into which you can add a little ash.

It is good that such containers have an irregular shape and a ribbed bottom, about which birds can clean their paws. The presence of a small amount of pebbles in the stomach helps all chicken to digest grain food, and bathing in the sand and ashes helps get rid of ticks, small insects that eat feathers, as well as other parasites.

An underlay is made from hay or straw, which changes in about a day. The bird walking area must be equipped with a large number of shelters in order to create conditions for the partridges similar to natural ones.

For these purposes, bushes, small trees, hay ricks, etc. are used.It is also important to provide a place where birds can hide in case of unexpected rain, snow or just a gust of wind.

The diet of adult partridges

If you feed a partridge with chicken feed, the bird will suffer from a serious lack of vitamins.

The basis of the diet of this relative of the chicken is cereals, it is better that they are raw oats or crushed corn (you should not boil the grain at all, because it is much better digested by the bird's stomach). You can also give wheat, barley, meal (for young stock - sunflower and soy). To meet the need of birds for protein food, which they satisfy in the wild due to eating insects, fish and meat and bone meal should be added to the diet.

Fodder yeast, fresh greens or grass meal, table salt, crushed chalk or shells are also added to food (can be replaced with regular calcium gluconate, it is sold in a pharmacy and is inexpensive).

Both the lack and excess feed in general and its individual elements are equally harmful to birds. Meals should be balanced and sufficient. All components are used only fresh, clean, without any signs of infection, rot or mildew. You also need to remember that in the summer, the nutritional value of feed should be about 30% higher than in winter.

Breeding and offspring

Procreation - the main point in the breeding of partridges, because for the sake of this, as they say, everything is being started. The sacrament in the form of laying eggs in these birds in the wild begins in the second half of spring, but in a well-organized poultry house (including mandatory artificial lighting) can last from March to mid-summer. If in natural conditions the partridge lays up to one and a half dozen eggs, then with artificial breeding this number can be increased four times. A little less than four weeks elapse between laying eggs and chicks.

To obtain offspring, it is also important to know some of the habits of these relatives of chickens. The first and most important difference from the usual for us poultry is that partridges during the period of tokania create families (simply speaking - are divided into pairs), which imposes additional obligations on the breeder. Each family should be provided with its own territory both in the aviary and on the range, otherwise fights between males cannot be avoided.

It is necessary to help families to create seven birds: after a while, a male is planted to a female squatted in a separate cage and observe the behavior of the birds. If the pair does not fold (the birds perceive each other with hostility), the male is changed to the next.

A month before the predicted egg-laying period, partridges add vitamins A and E to the feed once in an amount of 60 and 10 mg per individual, respectively, which stimulates the sexual activity of the bird and accelerates the appearance of long-awaited offspring.

Content of chicks

When the chicks finally hatched, the first day neither touch them nor their mother. Then the bird is recommended to move to the "two-room" cage, partitioned so that only kids can move into the second compartment. The ideal size of such a room for young stock is one and a half meters per half meter, the length of the walls and about half a meter of their height.

Directly with the cage on a nice day, you can organize young chicks walking in the open air, preferably putting a structure in the middle of low grass. Sun, fresh grass, cleanliness and dryness are the main attributes of healthy offspring.

The youngsters are ready for independent walks around the 30th day of life, however, it’s still not worth walking along with the adult chicks. By this time, the chicks are almost adults, independent and even begin to fly gradually.

Rules for feeding and caring for the young

The first days after birth, the chicks can be given boiled chicken yolk, mashed into mush, gradually adding to it finely chopped fresh greens - cabbage leaf, dandelion, yarrow, nettle. After a few days, you can switch to white bread, and after some time, to lean, boiled meat, chopped into very small pieces.

It is useful to add low-fat and unsalted cottage cheese to the feed, or a quail egg and cow milk talker.

Water should be given only in the case when the room is too hot, and quite a bit - the chicks should receive the main amount of liquid from feed in which there should be a lot of fresh greens.

Therefore, the watering bowl for the hen should be organized in such a way that it is not accessible to children. During the day, you need to feed the young partridges twice (in the morning and in the evening), as the perennians grow, the volume of food gradually increases.

Partridge - quite unpretentious birdTo grow it as a whole is easy, but very profitable. Carefully study the habits and rules of keeping these birds, then your business will be successful and profitable.