Reeves Information

Scientific Information

Class: Aves

Order: Galliformes

Family: Phasianidae

Subfamily: Phasianinae

Genus: Syrmaticus

Species: Syrmaticus reevesi

Species English Name: Reeves Pheasant

Common Name: Reeves

CITES Status: CITES Appendix II

IUCN Status: Vulnerable

Distribution: China

References: William Beebe’s A Monograph of Pheasants Volumes III & IV, CITES status search, & IUCN status search.

Description

• Male - White head with black bandit mask and black ring around the neck. Golden yellow body marked with black scale pattern. White replaces gold on most of the wing. Chestnut belly. Gold and white long tail marked with black and chestnut barring. Red wattles.

• Female - Body is mostly a light brown with golden buff markings. Light chocolate crown and bandit mask. Golden buff face and neck. Long light brown tail with tan and darker brown barring.

• Chicks - Golden balls of fuzz with an orange hue. Dark eye streak and other dark markings. One of the cutest pheasant chicks.

• Very hardy birds. 

Diet

• We feed our breeders and young adults 17% poultry layer pellets, our tiny chicks 21% poultry starter crumble (fine crumble), and our growing chicks 16% grower crumble (coarser crumble).

• They get a handful of mixed grains every second day during winter. They also get fresh greens (lettuce, chickweed, dandelions, grass) and fruits & vegetables (tomato, grapes, berries, etc.) when available.

Breeding

• Done in pairs or trios.

• Reeves are first year birds meaning that the female will lay eggs the spring after she is hatched. The male is fertile the first year.

• They start laying eggs around the middle of April and will lay every second day until they lay approximately 30 eggs.

• They lay a small round olive-tan egg.

Incubation

• Eggs are collected twice a day and marked with the date and breeding pen number and set daily.

• Eggs are set in an automatic turning Lyons Roll-X (RX2) with grid 109 or a Brinsea Ovation 56 with the standard egg carrier.

• Temperature 99.8°F, humidity-wet bulb 84 with humidity adjusted periodically depending on development of the air space shown by candling

• On the final day of incubation, each egg is placed in its own oval wire mesh hatching basket (6" x 3" x 3") and set in a Roll-X incubator converter to a hatcher.

• Incubation for Reeves is 24 days.

• After the chick hatches, it stays in the hatcher for a minimum of 8 hours.

Chicks

• When the chicks come out of the incubator they remind you of a pale version of an Elliot chick with less facial markings.

• They start out in our round 18" brooder pen with a mixed assortment of chicks. After a few days they are separated into a 2' x 4' baby Reeves pen for about a week. They are then transferred to all Reeves 2' x 6' pen for the next 7-9 weeks. They stay with this grouping until they go outside. All of these brooding pens have wire bottoms with a heat lamp at one end and feed & water at the other end. The heat lamp is attached to a dimmer switch so we can turn down the amount of heat as the chicks get older until it is turned off completely. Reeves chicks are debeaked often and are moved off of the heat quicker than the other varieties.

• After they are off of the heat for a few weeks, they are moved outside to the pheasant house (has outside grassy pens and a heated inside house part where hey are blocked in for the night). After they are toughened up, they are moved to an outside chick pen.

• Chicks are quite easy to raise with their own kind. You can mix both sexes, but once they are near maturity, the more dominant males tend to harass and eventually kill the less dominant males. At this point it is wise to separate them into one male per pen with either one or multiple females.

Pens

• 25' long x 10' wide x 6' high with a 4' x 4' x 4' house in the middle.

• Pens are covered with 2" diamond top-rite.

• Pens contain grass, which needs to be mowed occasionally because they aren't very big grass eaters.

Behavior

• Are generally calm birds. Males can be either quiet or aggressive. Aggressive males will attack and stalk you when you enter the pen and can be quite dangerous with their large spurs. I prefer the aggressive males because they are normally the most fertile.

• They make a hard to describe continuous chirping noise. Kind of like an old school Romulan cloaking device on Star Trek.

• They are relatively easy to tame and are friendly birds that come running when you have treats.

Article By Krissy & Donna Bush Pheasant Ridge (updated by Krissy Bird - 2025)