Reproduction performance of the adult pheasants, bred under the intensive system

Abstract

Although pheasant breeding under the intensive system is an ancient practice, the morpho-productive performance achieved until now is limited by certain biological peculiarities, typical of this species, and because the scientific research focused less on this field of activity. In this paper, our goal was to study the performance registered by breeding and exploiting a stock of reproduction adult pheasants, belonging to the common hunting pheasant subspecies (ssp. Phasianus colchicus colchicus L). The management of the 1397 studied pheasants was done according to the principles of the intensive breeding system, under conditions ensured by one of the most efficient pheasant farms from Moldavia. Our results have shown that the intensively bred females could achieve mean yields of 40, 60 eggs/head, under conditions of a food conversion index of 204.54 g mixed fodder/egg. The viability of the studied flock was good and the rate of mortality was of only 2.59%, very close to the internal norms, established for pheasant farms from Romania, which is 2%.