Proprietors: Alan Downie & Zoe A. Hunter
E-mail: zoeah@btconnect.com
Much of what we do during February is checking all the birds are ready and the necessary equipment is in in working order and on standby for the coming breeding season.
Our incubation room should be set up with a couple of incubators running so we can use them for our first eggs whenever they are laid. Our other incubators will have already been checked to make sure they are working and then switched off again for a few weeks. Any spares we need are ordered. This always includes tubing for our humidity modules to pump water into the incubators. We also like to buy an extra thermometer or two as it helps to have plenty of these so that it is easier to see that they're reading accurately, which is of vital importance for a good hatch. Another item we need is an absorbent material to soak up the water being fed into the incubators to keep the humidity correct. Brinsea do sell some which is similar to blotting paper but it is a thick card however we now use "interfacing" bought from a fabric shop. The thickest type which can be used for hat making and bodices etc. is perfect as it is rigid, absorbent and washable. Unlike the card it will not start to tear and as it can be washed and disinfected can be used again and again.
The next thing on our list to be ordered is leg rings. We always buy both split rings and closed rings. The split rings are mainly used while the birds are still very young usually being taken off when we are putting their closed rings on at which time the numbers will be added to our records. We can then be sure we sell unrelated birds and keep back the occasional bird from the best parents, or we can see what parents the best birds are from. We will buy a few hundred closed rings which will ring many of the birds but not all - the others make do with split rings either until they are sold or put in to aviaries in the groups they will be sold in (the hens unrelated to the cock pheasants with them).
The best part of February is the planning what we intend to do throughout the year. We will make a list of which birds we would like to keep that we don't already have. We might also need new bloodlines with some species we do have. We will probably have to build more aviaries and maybe a few extra chick pens. We could go on and on so it's just as well there are only 28 days to go.