Thank you! That helps a lot. What I will do is set some chicken chick eggs also, so they all hatch at the same time. Maybe the pheasant chicks will stay when the chicken chicks stay with the moms.
We have our main garden and vineyard fenced form the deer and rabbits, that are used temporarily every year for chicks and roosters. If the pheasant chicks run away from their moms, I can put them in one of the fenced areas until they grow. What may happen is they all decide to live in the marsh (we have the perfect habitat here for them). If they stay we have a 2 story chicken tractor with a roost that they can use at night.
No, it's not covered, but the fenced vineyard has support wires for the grape vines which would be very difficult for a hawk to fly in. The problem I had in that area last year was one chick was eaten by a Blue Racer I'm pretty sure. One day one chick was missing, so I moved them all to a different area. I couldn't figure out how a hawk swooped down and picked one off. Then the next week I saw the Blue Racer dead in the fence trying to get back out, but he had a bulge and was too big to get back through and had gotten tangled. He was good sized snake.
Yes, I plan to set them at different times so they will all hatch close to the same time. There could be issues with them not getting along with the chicken chicks. I plan to do more research before actually going through all this. Thanks
Thanks for your replies cmom. After more reading about raising and keeping the pheasants and chickens together there are people who have had issues, and some who have had no problems at all. One would just have to experiment and see what happens, but I'm not going to experiment with little lives. I'm not set up properly to keep them separate, so when my hens go broody this year they'll be given just chicken eggs to hatch.
