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How do you work out how many feeders to put on each drive later in the season? At the minute we have seven drives and have two feeders on each drive each end of the cover crops, to me this doesn't seem a big amount, i have found an extra 10 from another farm who no longer needs them so will be adding these to my collection... Just ned to know roughly how many and where are the key areas to put them out

 

shoot info

 

7 drives

 

1000 birds

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Not enough in my opinion, I would have at least half a dozen in each drive, all depends on how many birds are typically in the drive. On mine, being very much a DIY shoot, in addition to my normal small drums I try to have at least one 55 gallon drum feeder in each drive. This is as insurance in case for whatever reason the feeders cannot get checked when they should I can be confident there is at least some food available. Do not forget about drinkers either. Nearly all my feeders have a drinker next to them.

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At present I have 20 out spread over 500acres,at a good distance and nesting areas, in the season these are drawn closer to 3 drives, the thing with feeders is if they are out and not getting used they are only costing price of feeder, food is always present.

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I always work on the more the better principle. Most of my drives have 4-5 in them, plus a few leading in on surrounding hedges. I aim to have 1 45 gallon steel barrel in each drive, hold 4-5 bags and mean that there is always good available, even if the others get knocked over or run out. That's for 1000 birds over 600ish acres

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There's no prescribed number of feeders you need. One law of keeping that will never be broken is that no matter how many feeders you've got you always think you need a few more! The balancing factor is the amount of wheat you can (a) afford, (b) store and © spend time lugging around. Time consumption tending to feeders really builds up the madder you go putting feeders out! Don't forget also that X amount of your wheat is wasted to things other than pheasants so the more feeders you put out the more money you throw down the drain.

 

Out and about round the shoot you may need to use a series of them if you're trying to move birds from one area to another, along a hedge for example. When you put your birds in the pen, start off with a line of 3 feeders very close to the pens on the route you want the birds to take toward a drive. As the birds start getting out and about, monitor wheat consumption closely. As soon as the furthest feeder starts getting used quite well, leap-frog the one from nearest the pen past it and stretch the line out evenly over a number of weeks, so eventually you string out a line of feeders from pen to drive.

 

In the drives you generally want to have the feeders in the area you want to flush the birds from, common sense really. I'll try to spread a line of feeders parallel with the gun line to try to spread the shooting out as evenly as possible, but obviously it all depends on the geography involved. In an L-shaped plantation we shoot, the gun line is L-shaped so the feeders are mimicking the L-shape around the edge of the plantation.

 

Another bit of advice I'd give you is try to stop things like deer from getting to your feeders, which will cost you a lot of wheat and pulled springs. Sometimes you think "Wow these birds are hungry" but in actual fact it's anything but your pheasants eating your money. Badgers are a nightmare too. Only thing I can suggest for that is pheasants are thinner than badgers.

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