The young pheasants

Six alleged chicken chicks were handed in at a veterinary practice in Carinthia. The owner said that the chicken had been run over by a car. The six chicks were doing well and were lovingly raised until it turned out that they were not chicken chicks, but pheasant chicks.
Now a few weeks old, they had become accustomed to cats, dogs and humans at the vet’s surgery and were very tame. The “little dwarfs“, as they were affectionately called, unfortunately couldn’t stay here. An enquiry to Gut Aiderbichl’s animal emergency centre went in favour of the young pheasantsand they were taken in by Gut Aiderbichl in Carinthia (Fritzi unfortunately passed away).

The pheasant’s home ranges from the Black Sea to the east of Asia. The pheasant has been introduced to Europe, the USA and other parts of the world for hunting purposes.
Even in ancient times, the pheasant was considered an ornamental bird and was also kept for its tasty meat. The Romans brought the pheasant to Central and Western Europe. At that time, pheasants lived freely or in so-called pheasantries. Today, the European pheasant population lives in Germany, France, Denmark, Hungary, Romania and Great Britain.

The natural habitat of the pheasant

The pheasant lives in sparse forests and prefers reed-covered wetlands that offer it shelter. Its diet consists of plant food, such as berries and various seeds. Insects and other small animals, such as the Colorado potato beetle, worms and snails, are a particular delicacy.

Hunting the pheasant

The hunting season for pheasants is in autumn and winter. Although the free-ranging population of pheasants in Europe’s cultivated landscapes is stable, pheasants are bred and released after hatching in order to maintain the pheasant population in the long term.
In so-called breeding pheasant farms, eggs and young birds are produced under artificial conditions. In wild pheasant farms, eggs are hatched by chickens, turkeys or in incubators. The young birds are reared in a natural environment.

Hunting for released pheasants

Pheasants are bred, then “released” into the wild and released for shooting by hunting organisations. (Source: vgt.at/en/news). Before the hunt, the pheasants stay in a fenced-in area for a few weeks, where they are then shot during the driven hunt

Pheasants don’t like to fly, they prefer to run. (Source: David Richter, Fasanenjagd, 2024). They fly flat and in a line. The flying pheasant is shot with 200 poisonous lead pellets per shot. The pheasant is hit in flight and brought to the hunter by the bird dog. The senseless circle of pheasant breeding for hunting has now come full circle.

The senseless circle ends with the shooting of the pheasant

The circle begins with the pheasant being reared in the manner of the domestic chicken and then released into the wild, with which the little animals have absolutely no experience. There were no parents who could have introduced them to the dangers of nature. So the pheasants starve to death in the wild, becoming easy prey for their natural enemies or for their human enemies on the day of the hunt. Screaming humans and hunting dogs bring them out of their hiding places, forcing them to fly until they are killed by countless lead bullets.
For ethical reasons, such treatment and killing of an animal is absolutely unacceptable.

At Gut Aiderbichl in Carinthia, Ferdinand, Fiona, Flora, Franz and Frieda are protected and feel at home among the chicken birds that live there. The pheasants can walk there with their heads held proudly high and are never forced to take flight to be killed because of screaming humans who want to kill them.

– Albert Schweitzer

By: Gisela Pschenitschnig, Gut Aiderbichl