With One Year under Our Wings, Jail Accepts 650 Day-Old Chicks

Buffalo, NY – Erie County Sheriff Timothy B. Howard announces the Jail Management Division accepted delivery of 650 day-old chicks from the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) Monday.

The chicks, a mixture mostly of Hungarian and Ring Neck Pheasants, will live in the brooding house for a few weeks and then be transferred to the flight pen. A few weeks later the Sheriff’s Office will accept another shipment of chicks.

The DEC provided the pheasant chicks and selected inmates will be responsible for all aspects of care from the day of delivery to the date of release. 

The brooding process is approximately 22-weeks long, and the chicks will receive supervised care designed specifically for pheasants.  Once the pheasants are mature enough to fly and survive in the wild, the DEC will coordinate the timing and location of the release, currently estimated to be in early October.

In 2016, the Sheriff’s Office performed two releases onto New York State managed properties with nearly 1000 birds split between the locations.