[wwbirds]

The good part about the pheasant hatchery was they gave day old chicks to any family who wanted them. 25 your first year and 50 if you had experience raising and releasing on your land. I am near positive that is one of the greatest factors of finding small pockets of pheasants in areas such as camrose. Putting them on a release site would never build the population as it is rare for the roosters to survive and roosters dont produce eggs and chicks like the old straight run (hens and roosters)releases of 25 poults used to on private land.

As far as Brooks being closed to save a few bucks they raised at one time 125,000 pheasants, now if you can feed and care for those birds on a little bit of grain and a few students you are a better producer than I am as I go through over 10 tonnes of feed a year raising a handfull of birds compared to brooks hatchery. I used to hunt with 3 full time biologists and scientists that worked at the hatchery and they weren't working for summer student wages. Myself and a couple other producers looked at Brooks when it came up for sale and decided to steer clear as you would lose 1.5 million dollars in fixed expenses before and if and when you ever turned a profit in the first 5 years.