A pheasant chick making good use of a Solway modular nipple drinker

Of our many new products for 2012, we are particularly pleased with the Solway Modular Nipple System, a versatile and adaptable method of watering medium to large numbers of birds. Supplied with three nipple sections (housing six nipples in total), a level tube and a pressure regulator, the modular nipple system has a variety of accessories which allows you to build a system to suit you, and the fact that corner pieces are also available means that they can be made in a variety of shapes to fit any shed or brooder enclosure.

The yellow tubes are easy to maintain and can be suspended at any height to suit your requirements. Removable drip cups prevent spillages onto sawdust or cardboard flooring, and it's easy to fit these as and when they are needed.

The nipples are 180 degree style, offering a free and easy flow of water with every peck.

The feedback we've had on the Solway Modular Nipple System has been very positive, so please call or email us for more information if you are interested.

This bag of soil should reveal some important information for game cover crops.

In 2012, we plan to experiment with a new range of game cover crops in an effort to find the best mixes for shoots in a variety of different circumstances. Before deciding which crops to try, it's important to get an idea of the soil we plan to use. Soil tests provide a handy starting point for game cover crops, and laboratory tests reveal important information such as pH and NPK contents.

Using a trowel, we took samples from a number of areas around the field and placed them in a sample bag, ready to be sent off to the lab. It could be that the soil is a little acidic, so if the results confirm this, we can begin to plan the application of lime, as well as fertiliser and supplements.

We should have results back in the next few weeks, so we will soon know more.

Red legged partridges are vulnerable to a variety of diseases.

We've been keeping red legged partridges for the last week, and it's been a very interesting experience. Despite the fact that these little birds are native to the south of France, they have stood up well to the wild Galloway weather, and the little enclosure of thirty birds is withstanding wind and rain on a daily basis.

Despite their hardiness, partridges are vulnerable to a variety of diseases, and these are compounded by being kept in close quarters. As soon as they have learned where their home is, they can be released and they shouldn't wander too far, but given that they have only been out for a week, they need to bear the pen for a few more days.

On Friday, we spotted that at least one of our partridges was scouring - producing runny yellow faeces which would indicate some degree of nasty enteritis. Enteritis is usually caused by stress and is not helped when birds are being kept on wet ground. Left unchecked, it can get worse and worse, usually ending with an outbreak of the hexamita bacteria which can cause huge and devastating mortality rates.

Caught early enough, enteritis symptoms can be treated with concentrated electrolyte tonics or mixtures designed to combat stress which can be mixed in to a water supply, but once the symptoms get out of control, your only hope is to call the vet as quickly as possible.

A bad sign: foaming frothy droppings are a sign of enteritis or hexamita in birds

We currently stock three different types of non automated feeder attachment, and each one has characteristics which make it more or less suitable for feeding gamebirds in different situations.

The Solway Spiral (pictured left) is a classic design which is suitable for feeding all types of whole cereal and pellets. It's very easy to teach birds to use the spiral, and all you need to do is flick the coil each time you pass the feeder for the first few days of use and they will soon get used to feeding below the hopper. It's then an easy step for them to reach up and peck at the coil which will scatter feed everytime it is touched.

The flow of feed is high, and the cereals are freely available to a variety of other woodland bird species while being protected from vermin such as rats and mice.

It sometimes happens that badgers and deer learn to steal from spiral feeders, and spirals are sometimes damaged by strong tugs from below. To avoid this, SBD Guards and T Bars are available which prevent marauding wildlife from dismantling these efficient and versatile nozzles.

Wright feeders (pictured centre) are designed mainly to feed whole grain cereals such as barley and wheat. The way the feed is held beneath the hoppers means that grower pellets can get damp quite easily, and while this is not a problem if you visit the feeders frequently, blockages can go mouldy and cause problems in the long run.

Pheasants and partridges find it easy to feed on cereals held inside Wright feeders, and the limited amount of feed scattered by each peck means that birds have to work very hard to fill their crops. When used in conjunction with some of our Aniseed products, this can mean that birds will be less likely to stray.

Mac Feeders (pictured right) offer a great middle ground between the generosity of the spiral feeder and the closed inaccessibility of the Wright feeder. Four slots run vertically down the outside of the nozzle, and another two run around its base. Not only is the feed protected from the weather to such an extent that pellets do not become damp, but the layout of the slots means that birds certainly do have to work for their feed, meaning that, like the Wright feeder, they are less inclined to wander.

Both the Wright and the Mac feeder are made from powder coated metal, making them almost indestructible by badgers and deer.

Different feed nozzles will suit different situations, and for more information on all of our feeder accessories, why not call us on 01557 500 253?

Wiping the inside of feeders with aniseed oil will flavour huge quantities of wheat.

As pheasants start to roam from their pens and explore the wider world, it's vital that you keep their interest and stop them wandering too far. By using spiral feeders, birds are forced to work for their feed, keeping them in one place for longer and using up spare time which could otherwise be spent getting into trouble.

Gamekeepers have known for generations that pheasants like the smell and flavour of aniseed, and by mixing some aniseed oil in with your wheat or pheasant feed, you greatly increase the appeal of your feed hoppers. Pure aniseed is so strong that a little goes a very long way, and a 50Kg capacity hopper only needs to be given a smear with a rag soaked in aniseed to taint and flavour the food for an entire season.

Once your pheasants get used to using your aniseed feeders, they are far more likely to stay put on your patch, and you will also find that visiting birds from neighbouring shoots are more likely to stay put with you.

The new pheasants arrived in a game crate and inspected their release pen with a critical eye.

Now that we're in to September, the date for releasing pheasants is almost past. After all the work that went into building our release pen in June, it seemed only right that we should get hold of some more pheasant poults and put them down on the hill. Sure enough, a crate of fifteen pheasants arrived on thursday last week, and we released them into their new home with hardly a hitch.

The first batch of pheasants has been in the pen for almost two weeks, and it turned out that it is not easy to mix two groups of pheasants. The resident group were more than a little put out to have to share their quarters with the incomers, and during the first hour of their arrival, there were more than a few squabbles. The established birds had found all the best places to keep warm and dry, so as the first night crept in and the rain started to fall, the newcomers were forced to sit out in the open areas of the pen. After a couple of days, they seemed to resolve their differences and the division between old pheasants and new pheasants became harder to notice.

Before releasing the new batch of pheasants, we put a 12mm red leg ring on each bird so that we would be able to tell the difference between them and the old birds, and it's interesting to see that already, wild birds are starting to visit the pen and confuse things. All of the pheasants are still feeding on grower pellets, but over the next few days, they will switch to a diet made up exclusively of wheat. A wheat diet is not only good for the pheasants, but it also supports a wide variety of songbirds throughout the winter, precisely when they need it the most.

Clipping a pheasant's wings is painless and serves an important purpose.

Before the pheasant poults went out to their pen last week, it was important to clip their wings. Since it doesn't have a roof, the theory is that the pheasants will be able to fly out of the pen once they are ready to do so, but  they do need a certain amount of training before this can happen. They need to learn that the pen is a safe and comfortable environment which is always worth returning to. Releasing them into the pen without their wings having been clipped would mean that they could just fly straight out, feeling no allegiance to the pen and losing themselves in the wilderness. Wing clipping is an easy and temporary way of keeping the poults together inside the pen for about two weeks, after which stage they will be able to leave with the understanding that the pen is where they will be fed.

At seven or eight weeks old, pheasant poults will have developed some flight feathers, but these are soon to be moulted out into adult feathers. By clipping the juvenile primary flight feathers on one side, any attempt by the bird to fly will result in little more than a toppling motion as one wing out-powers the other. Within a fortnight, the adult flight feathers will have grown sufficiently to allow flight, and the process of wing clipping will have achieved its end. Painless, straightforward and temporary, clipping a pheasant's wings may be slightly annoying for the bird, but it is surely for the best in the long run.

An electric fence outside our strategically positioned release pen netting should keep the fox at bay.

Releasing pheasants into the wild always brings with it a whole variety of concerns and problems. Young birds cheep constantly to one another, and this sound is like music to the ears of any passing fox. Needless to say, thousands of pheasants must come to grief in the mouths of foxes every year, and it is the duty of the gamekeeper to defend his birds as well as he can.

Release pens need to be extremely secure, and in order to house our pheasants this year, we built a pen using a variety of materials. Galvanised chicken mesh forms the foundation of the pen wall, being strong and flexible. Folding the mesh up from the ground creates an overlap which prevents foxes from digging in at the base, and if you have access to sufficient quantities of mesh, you can afford to be generous with how much overlap you leave. We left just under half of a four foot high sheet of mesh pressed to the ground so that any passing fox would have real difficulty getting through or under it. 

In the weaker areas, we laid logs on the mesh so that it was pinned to the ground by the weight, and this should dissuade foxes from even trying to dig in.

The actual walls are made out of reinforced plastic release pen netting, which is extremely strong and durable. It's important to remember that the walls should not be too tight or the mesh too taut when building a release pen, because while a tight wall looks good, it can provide support for a fox who is willing to try and climb over it. A floppy wall will sag back and forth if a fox tries to climb it, and this will give him trouble.

We sell a variety of different electric fencing products, and it seemed sensible to build an electric fence around the base of the pen. Using Pigtail outriggers of various sizes and lengths means that you can build a fence with electric wires at different heights and distances from the wall of the pen. This means that any fox trying to get through the fence will struggle to avoid touching the wires as he does so, causing a severe electric shock and teaching him not come back.

After a great deal of preparation, the pen is almost ready. The pheasants will be clipped and put down tomorrow, so we all have fingers crossed...

These six week old pheasant chicks, hatched in our office, are almost ready to go into their release pen.

After the excitement of hatching pheasant chicks last month, we've followed the progress of the young birds as they've moved from the incubator into the brooder, and from the brooder into the rearing field. For the past two weeks, they've been living outside in the inclement Galloway weather, and they appear to be going from strength to strength. 

Living on fresh grass, they seem to take great pleasure in hunting insects and picking at seeds and vegetation, and the time is fast approaching for them to go up to their release pen. There is still a great deal of work to be done on the pen, so the next week will be spent building an electric fence and reinforcing the chicken wire walls. As always, the project will be followed on the Solway Feeders blog.

Capercaillie can be kept in captivity, and this may be the secret to their long term survival.

We sell a great variety of poultry and game bird keeping equipment to customers across the world, and we thought that over the last twenty years, we'd more or less seen it all. Everything from guineafowl to geese pass through the doors of the Solway Feeders warehouse, but we weren't prepared to hear what one of our customers has been keeping and breeding for the past three years.

Capercaillie are huge birds. Weighing on average almost fifteen pounds and measuring more than three feet from beak to tail, cock birds are awesome. Thousands of years ago, capercaillie were found across the north of Britain, where they lived in ancient scots pine forests full of wild bilberry and heather. As man felled the trees and civilisation expanded, the range of the capercaillie contracted, until they were isolated into a few pockets of Scotland by the mid seventeenth century. Just a few years later, they had become extinct in this country.

Thanks to some ambitious and progressive work by early nineteenth century highland landowners, capercaillie were brought over from Scandinavia to replace their lost cousins, and after a great deal of work, Britain had a population of these giant grouse again.

Over the next one hundred and fifty years, capercaillie returned to their former prosperity, until changes in the way commercial woodlands were managed started to tip the balance against them again. The fact that the birds love nothing more than picking the tops off young pine trees didn't endear them to foresters. The past thirty years have seen wild capercaillie reduced to ruins in Scotland, with only around two thousand birds still alive.

A handful of people across Britain keep capercaillie, and by doing so, they might be saving this fascinating species from extinction. Breeding captive birds with a view to one day releasing them into the wild might buy conservationists some time to save these grouse before they become extinct for a second time.

Keeping capercaillie is not easy, and there are many difficulties associated with breeding these birds. However, the rewards are surely worth it when you get the chance to work with the largest and most spectacular species of British grouse.