Housing ruffed with ringnecks

[rittert3]

I was just wondering if ruffed pheasant (goldens/amherst) could be housed in the same pen with ringnecks? The design I've come up with would allow 36sqft per bird if I put a quad of each (8 birds) in each of the 2 pens. I want some Alaskan snow, Manchurian X, Red Goldens, and Lady Amherst but I don't want to house varieties/species that will interbreed together.

 

[deserthotwings]

Sounds like you got a great plan going for some beautiful birds. But, you will need to seperate them. They will cross breed and the coxs will fight to the point of killing each other as long as there is a hen amongst them. If you were to seperate the cocks from the hens there would be no problem. But, you would have to have some sort of breeding pen to get the fertile eggs from whichever species you wanted to hatch at the time. Hope this helps.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

All of those will interbreed. I have seen some awesome taxidermied ringneck x amherst pheasants before. The ruffed species will mix, the ringneck types will mix, all producing fertile offspring. I dont think the hybrid ruffed x ringnecks will be fertile but not sure. Either way its better to keep them seperated.

 

[birdboy15]

I used to keep red buff ringnecks in with my yellow goldens in the winter. They never fought and the pen was 7' x 14'. But the red buffs that I had were far more docile than any other ringneck I have ever seen. Also, Michigan winters are hard and they don't do much but sleep and eat.

 

[rittert3]

guess I'll just have to modify the plan to 4 6'x24' run instead of 2 12'x24' (I might make them a little shorter like 16' or 18') runs. I know a guy that has a mixed pot aviary but his birds kind of look like crap and he loses alot and has really low fertility, I don't want that.