July 2008 Archives

When we moved the pheasant chicks out to the big flight pens last week I decided to gather the remaining hens from last years batch and a couple of big healthy roosters and bring them back to the barn. After a few hours of settling in they were laying eggs all over the place. I tried to create some better nesting spots in the barn to encourage laying in the same spot. The first day I gathered eggs I got 23 from thirty something hens. I'm gathering them twice daily and getting them ready to incubate. I ordered some trays today from Cutlers Supply that will double the capacity of my GQF 1202 Sportsman incubator.

I got this old wheat grinder for making my own quail feed. I have a custom feed producer close by that mixes great feed but he can't chop it fine enough for the baby quail chicks. So I take the feed and run it throug the grinder to make a finer feed for the first few weeks. After 3-4 weeks the quail can transition to the heavier feed that I am feeding to the pheasant chicks. It's hard to grasp how much smaller the quail chicks are compared to the pheasant chicks. I am looking for recipes on grinding my own feed from scratch.

After looking at several designs on the web and talking to Dave Walker about quail recall pens, we decided on this design. This is my friend Chris Colt of Cove Mountain Kennels helping me build the recall pen. The frame is out of 2x2 lumber and we screwed the joints together with 3" exterior grade screws. The overall dimensions are about 36" X 18" X 72". I had some 36" tall 1/2" X 1/2" wire on hand or we would have built it 96 inches long.

We glued the joints and used 1" screws and finish nails to apply the 1/2" plywood back, top and sides. With the frame finished and the plywood on we wrapped the wire around the front half of the pen and stapled it with 1" staples. We have a trap door on top for inserting food and water and the whole front end is a giant door for releasing the quail. We hope to attach a string-pull mechanism for lifting the release door.

We were pleased that the finished product was fairly light and easily lifted by two guys. It should be easy to move around with my Polaris Ranger or by tossing it in the back of the truck. We hope to build another pen just like and set them both in the training fields nearby. We added a perch inside the pen but the quail don't seem to have any interest in using it. The cost for all the materials was less than $75 and it took us about 6 hours to build it. We will apply some paint or wood sealer before moving it outside to the training grounds.

At approximately 5 1/2 weeks we put blinders on all of the pheasant chicks to help with pecking problems. Pheasants are very canabalistic and will peck each other to death every chance they get. These blinders are a simple way of solving the problem with minimal impact on the health of the pheasants. It took us about 4 hours to put these blinders on about 4,000 pheasant chicks. We had 8 guys to do the job, two were catching chicks with nets while the other 6 guys applied the blinders.

The first 24 hours after the birds have their new blinders installed they are a little clumsy. We try to help them out by placing more feed and water pans out where they basically trip over them. After a week of transition time I remove a few of the additional pans as they learn where the main feed and water troughs are located.

With daytime temps reaching close to one hundred degrees the birds were in desperate need of shade. Usually the weeds and grass in the flight pens are grown up high enough to do the trick. Because of a late spring we had to provide some additional shade and shelter via a tarp and several peices of plywood set up as lean-to shelters. After a week or two of transition time the care and feeding gets a lot easier. The water troughs have a float and auto-fill system providing plenty of fresh clean water.