Close your eyes for a moment and think about a pheasant. I'll guess 99 percent of you conjured up images of a flushing rooster, and the one percent that didn't were keyed off by this blog entry's title.

The rooster pheasant gets all the pub. He's flashy, sexy, wanted. The Pheasants Forever logo bears his resemblance. Local Pheasants Forever chapters coin names like "Longspurs" and "Longtails" and "Tailfeathers" and "Rooster Boosters." We haven't had a hen pheasant on the cover of the Pheasants Forever Journal in four years, and even then, she shared the stage with a front and center leading man.

For the hen ringneck, it's a rooster's world and she's just living in it. The ultimate single mom, she gains weight for nesting, lays eggs, and raises her young – without any help from those deadbeat roosters. All the give and none of the glory.

Thankfully, Pheasants Forever's actions speak louder than the words waxed poetic and glamour shots devoted to the celebrity rooster. Winter food and cover habitat projects help hens make it through the winter, and grassland nesting cover projects give them places to reproduce. In a sense, wildlife habitat projects and the hen pheasant have a lot in common. Nothing flashy or sexy.

Just the dirty work.

Hen Pheasant Facts

  • Average hen weight is 2-2.5 pounds, and hen length is 20 inches.
  • Hens, because of their smaller size, are easier targets for most predators.
  • Hens must actively gain weight through mid-winter in order to replenish weight lost during the previous nesting season. Hens that undergo a great deal of stress during the winter months suffer their highest mortality rate the following spring during nesting, and there is a strong correlation between spring body weight and successful chick production.