Hunting season for pheasants in most areas doesn’t begin until fall. But the work begins now to make sure there are plenty of pheasants available when the season starts. One state’s environmental conservation program makes pheasant chicks available to anyone who wants to raise them for later release. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak has more on the program’s rather unusual partner:
Transcript
Hunting season for pheasants in most areas doesn’t begin until fall. But the work begins now to
make sure there are plenty of pheasants available when the season starts. One state’s
environmental conservation program makes pheasant chicks available to anyone who wants to
raise them for later release. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak has more on the
program’s rather unusual partner:
There are plenty of people you’d expect who are interested in raising the baby pheasants.
Farmers, hunters, 4-H club kids and wildlife lovers, certainly. But for the last two years, the
program has gotten a lot of help from… Attica prisoners. Inmates at the upstate New York
correctional facility raise a couple thousand of the chicks each year. James Snider is a state
wildlife biologist. He says, hardened criminals or not, they’re giving these baby birds lots of
TLC.
“Basically you’re taking a day old chick, which was hatched the day before, out of an
incubator, brought in and certainly you know, those first two or three weeks some
of the critical things are keeping them warm, because they don’t have a mother to take care
of them. You know, it’s a continuation of food and water all the way up until finally
they grow their adult flight feathers.”
Snider says it’s also a beneficial program for the prisoners, who take a lot of pride from their role
as nurturers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.