What can I feed this stray pheasant?

[Blimeyitscold]

I live near a country house that hosts game shoots. A pheasant has been resident in my garden all week and I think it escaped the guns. However, it seems almost domesticated and keeps looking in at the windows and sitting on the door step.

I’m sure it’s hungry and doesn’t know how to grub for insects etc.

What can I feed it? I know I shouldn’t but I feel bad for this bird.

@Blimeyitscold
if it's reared for the shoot you should contact it owners .

Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl.

They are basically chickens so will eat pretty much anything high protein stuff they’ll love, scraps of ham or bacon, scrambled egg , sweetcorn grapes etc

@Blimeyitscold

It's usually way more than £1,000, more like £2,000-£3,500 depending on the bag.

How does it mess things up?

Ps I’ve lived in the country don’t whatever you do ring the shoot they’ll be round with a shot gun

Because they become reliant on human involvement. It's not a domestic pet and it doesn't belong to op and she thinks she does know where it comes from where they probably employ a gamekeeper, who does know what to do
In the same ilk you should not feed someone elses horse/pony.

I had no idea. This is incredibly sad.

Ah right makes sense

We do too. They soon learnt how to work the treadle feeders!

They are domesticated
They eat grain - any chicken food or cracked corn is fine

@murasaki ah yes that's it , thankyou .

One of my favourite stories still ❤️

It’s a better life than a lot of animals raised for meat get and definitely a better death than nearly all. If should be totally able to feed itself but I don’t think it would suffer from being fed by Op either.

Having said that, I’m not a fan of the shoots and any pheasants that wander onto our land are welcomed and get to live a lovely, truly, free-range life along with our chickens & ducks.

We have a pheasant that visits the garden and pinches chicken feed and wild bird seed. It flies off when we're in the garden during the summer but is staying put more and more over the winter now. It knows where to find food and isn't going to risk missing out!

I don't think you need to purposely feed it but if you decide to feed the wild birds this winter and some seed falls to the ground, the pheasant will clean that up for you.

Don't feed it anything. We also live next to an estate with a shoot and when we moved here my kids used to chuck bird seed out for the stray pheasants. One got really nasty whenever we didn't feed it - chasing us, 'rearing' up at us (they are massive when they 'stand up'), pecking on the glass. Our own stupid fault but I didn't anticipate it.

It disappeared all of a sudden so either it wanted back to the estate and got shot or became roadkill.

Pheasants reared for shooting are extremely docile (and stupid) but that doesn't mean they can't feed themselves.
I don't much like the taste of game but they live a pretty decent life until they are shot, much more so than battery farmed chickens.

I temped once for a month at Cancer Research one summer and the CEO of it then was a rich, posh older man who owned a huge country estate and arranged pheasant shoots every weekend. I went off him a lot after I found that out.

My DM once ran over and killed a pheasant (accident) a few years back. My stepdad wanted her to go back and pick it up but she refused. Maybe it was escaping a shoot.

I don't think there are any wild pheasants in the countryside really. They'll have all come from an estate or a shoot.

Why did you feel the need to post this? It’s not funny and it’s not relevant to the OP.

They don't. Pheasant tastes awful. Prefer chicken

It's true though, sad battery chicken is just more socially "acceptable" .
Mmmmmm mechanically retrieved chicken yummy

Pheasant used to visit the allotment if always give him some.of the chickens corn.

Because it's the kindest thing to do with what is essentially a battery farm animal.

Do you have any frozen veg, peas, sweetcorn etc? I would be buying from Amazon with Next day delivery and do everything I could to persuade him to hang out in my garden and nit head off to get shot by some rich arseholes.