During July most of our young pheasant poults are going outside for the first time, although we do have some early hatches out in June. It can be tricky finding space for lots of young birds but as the adults have mostly finished laying they can be moved to different pens to help accomodate the youngsters.
It is vital that the young poults who will not yet be very hardy (although they will not have been with heat for at least a couple of weeks) can go into an aviary with a good shed where they can be closed in if the weather is bad. The feathers take a few weeks to become waterproofed so the birds will soon perish if they are allowed to become soaked. Another consideration is the amount of greenery in the aviary. If there is too much it can be difficult to keep an eye on the young birds so although it is nice for them to be able to eat some grass and have a little amount of cover it is also necessary that they should be easily seen in case of problems.
All going well, in a good summer, most of the chicks will be outside by the time they are a couple of months old. This is of course very weather dependant and we have sometimes had to keep them indoors much longer. Normally when they go out they will still be eating "early grower" pheasant pellets which they will stay on for a few weeks before changing them to "grower" pellets.

Many of the plants in the aviaries need trimming back in July as they will start growing through the top netting. Not only is this likely to damage the netting eventually but it does make it difficult to see any holes appearing. Another danger, and something we have had happen in the past, is that the pheasants will roost on the shrubs close to the roof netting and become prey to owls during the night. A few years ago we found three headless pheasants in the space of four days or so before it dawned on us what was happening. An owl very quickly realised the pheasants were easy pickings even if it could not manage to get the bird out of the aviary completely. The pheasants would be sleeping so really wouldn't have much of a chance if they were so close to the net.
Enough doom and gloom though. We wouldn't be without the plants as they are so much better for the pheasants than bare pens or only artificial adornments and in July hopefully we have a good crop of currants, cherries and barberries as well as rasberries and strawberries if the slugs and wild birds don't get them first.

Indoors things are quietening down dramatically as there is very little left to incubate. Things are being switched off, cleaned and packed away until next year. Although this always seems a little sad it also brings relief as we have such a huge amount of work to do with the eggs and the chicks when they are very small.
I tend to summarise my incubation notes now so that at a glance I can see what changes I intend to make the following year as, although it feels like I will remember exactly what went wrong or right, when the next year comes around I always have to check up on my notes and it does help tremendously to write down exactly what is happening, when it happens.

By the end of July we are getting things ready to sell our earliest hatched birds of the year which is just a warm up for the next few months when we are always very busy as we have many visitors collecting birds and many more pheasants leaving with the courier. July is a great month though and when the weather is good we are always extremely happy to have a job where so much of our time is spent outside wandering around in the sunshine.