Most clutches hatch by early July. Hens brood at night until young are able to roost in trees. Foxes, raccoons, crows, weasels, house cats, dogs and hawks prey on the young. The hen guides her chicks in food-finding insects, plentiful and high in protein, are a good early food. Young roosters can be told from older males by the length and hardness of their spurs, appendages growing out from the backs of their legs.
Older roosters have hard, sharp spurs up to an inch in length from spur tip to the front of the leg.
In winter, pheasants may form flocks. During inclement weather, they stick to thick protective cover of conifers, brushy sloughs or forests overgrown with vegetation. Flukes, tapeworms and roundworms parasitize some individuals. There is an annual removal rate, from all causes, of 90 to 95 percent for roosters and more than 60 percent for hens. The first successful pheasant introduction to North America was a release of about 30 birds in Oregon's Willamette Valley in 1881.