I am working with a six month old german shorthair named Ace. He has had little training, and doesn't even respond to his name most of the time. He is well-bred and has a very easy-going personality. My hope is to get him started on birds as I work at the pheasant farm this fall. Ace should be a fun dog training project for me.

This morning I took him out with a clipped-wing pigeon to begin his formal introduction to birds. Pigeons are a good choice for a first bird contact because of their small size and availability. I clipped about 2-3 inches off of this birds flight feathers. I wanted him to flap his wings and make a lot of action, but not be able to fly very far away.

Ace loved every minute of this first introduction to birds. He chased and played with the bird for a minute or two then brought me the bird. I threw the pigeon out a couple of times more and he gave chase and brought the bird back. I was pleased with the results and after about 10 minutes we ended the session. I'll try to have a daily touch with birds of some kind for a week or two until he is pointing and holding his birds.

Abby has come a long way since I first took her chukar hunting at six-months old (her first hunt). Now, two years later and heading into her 3rd full hunting season she is showing real signs of greatness. This year Abby is getting a lot of birds by working with me as a hunting guide at a pheasant hunting preserve. She is holding her points well and is steady to shot about 60% if the time. She is learning to run down winged and wounded birds and is getting better at finding dead birds that she didn't mark when multiple birds go down.

One thing that she does well is retrieving. Abby has a soft mouth and loves to bring birds back. She seems to know who shot the bird and often delivers the bird to the hunter who made the kill. Abby is quite agressive for a female and will try to steel a retrieve from another dog that beats her to the downed bird. We are working on this.

I've been reading this great dog training book by seasoned bird-man Ben O. Williams. He lives in the heart of upland game hunting heaven in Montana and has logged more days in the field than I can even dream of. He's also a Brittany dog breeder and famous gun dog trainer. Google has an electronic version of the book online for free - check it out. If your like me you'll find that it's a worthy addition to your book collection and swing over to amazon.com and order the real deal. Better yet, you can mail a check to Ben at P.O. Box 628 Livingston, MT 59047 and he'll send you an autographed copy of "Bird Dog". He has authored several other great titles about bird hunting and brittany dogs that I can't wait to check out in the near future. Ben also writes some great articles for the good folks at "The Pointing Journal" if you subscribe to that great magazine.

Had a great hunt yesterday with George and his son Chaz and his son-in-law. They were the first hunters of the season at Rooster Valley Pheasant Preserve where I am helping out as a guide. It was Chaz's first time hunting pheasants and I think we got him hooked. They ended up with about 15 pheasants and they picked up a couple of dove along the way. George was hunting with his two labs "Blue" and "Sophie" and they did well together. I enjoyed putting the birds out and keeping an eye on their progress throughout the day.

My friend Chris and I got out a little late on the morning of the dove hunt opener. There were quite a few hunters around where we live so we tried to get away a bit and find some open space. We worked a canal that had a lot of wild sunflowers growing along the banks. The weather was beautiful although a bit windy as a cool-front was moving in from the north. Chris ended up shooting 2 dove and I ended up shooting at about 6 dove and never hit one. It was still a good time and fun to watch the dogs work. Chris' lab goes crazy at the sound of a gun shot and is a retrieving machine. Abby, my shorthair was just glad to get out and run. We are anxiously awaiting the chukar season which has been moved back a few weeks here in Utah.

It won't be long now before the fall hunting season kicks off here in Utah. Firs off is the dove hunt which opens on September 1st. I have been trying to get my dogs into shape after a lazy summer of doing nothing. I can tell that they are a little soft and will take a few weeks to get the fat burned off. I took some quail out today and let Abby point a few and she was holding real nicely. I hope to get her a lot of birds this year as I plan to guide a lot more for Rooster Valley Pheasant Hunting Preserve here in town. It seems like nothing brings a dog along faster than birds, birds and even more birds.

We ended up with 52 chicks hatched out of 80 eggs set in the incubator. On day 29 we cracked the remaining eggs and here is what we found. 3 eggs began to hatch but were too weak to finish, they died in the shell from general weakness. 14 eggs had somewhat developed embryos that did not grow to full term for one reason or another. 11 of the pheasant eggs had yolks and were infertile. I felt pretty good about the results of our first try hatching pheasant eggs with an incubator.

The birds are one week old now and are settling into a routine. We lost 4 chicks on day 2 but haven't lost any since. They are eating well and staying nice and toasty in my insulated shop. I like to use paper plates for feeders for the first week or two so they have plenty of eating opportunities. After that we switch to the small trough-style feeders. For water I am just using the simple quart jar waterers. With such a small batch I didn't want to set up the big brooder rooms with nipple waterers and the whole nine yards. There are 63 more eggs in the incubator but I doubt we will have great numbers since we are so late in the season. The roosters seemed to lose interest towards the middle of July.

Today when I was checking the birds in the flight pens I noticed this old Mutant Hen sitting pretty tight in the weeds. I thought it was odd that she was holding so tight while the other younger birds scattered as I approached. This hen is a hold-over from last years hunting stock. I gathered most of them up and put them in a breeder pen, but opted to leave the mutants out of the mix.

Upon further inspection I found the reason why she was holding so tight. She was sitting on a nest full of her own eggs. I got in for a closer look and felt that the eggs were quite warm to the touch. The nest site was in some heavy weeds that were over 3 feet tall. You can see the stalks are bare where the pheasants have been grazing as high as they could reach.

I was thrilled to hear a little peep while I was down on my hands and knees inspecting the nesting site. I had heard that sometimes hens will actually set on their nest with enough commitment to get a hatch. Most of the time though, these captive birds just lay their eggs and never come back to them. This mutant hen obviously was doing a great job. I found this little chick a few feet from the nest, and then the mutant chick about 20 feet further in the weeds.

My daughter Hannah helped me gather them up and take them back home to the brooder where we are caring for some pheasant chicks that are about the same age. Before throwing them in with the rest of the chicks I marked their legs so I could keep track of their progress. I always wondered if mother nature did it better. We'll see if they turn out to be stronger or healthier than the chicks that I hatched out.

Today marks day 23 on my incubator calendar. I went out this morning to check on the eggs and noticed a few with small crack forming on the tops of the shells. Out of about 80 eggs I only noticed about 25 that were starting to crack. I went about my chores and did some weeding around the garden.

I came back two hours later and couldn't see any change. I was getting ready to go to work when I heard a bird cheaping. I opened my GQF 1202 incubator and way in the very back row there was this guys busting out early. He is the guy in the video, my early bird pheasant chick.

I came home a few hours later during lunch and there was a second bird out of his shell. I moved them both into the hatcher where they could dry off and get some fresh food and mostly rest. When I went to bed there was some progress but no more hatches.

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.

After attending the Dave Walker dog training seminar, I decided I wanted to buy some quail for dog training. Quail are a great bird for training a dog to be steady to wind and shot as they hold as a covey. If your dog creeps in on a point the birds usually flush all together and hopefully your dog learns to be ready for more birds after the flush. I bought these little guys at 3 weeks old from a local Utah breeder named Travis Proctor. For now they are surviving in my small brooder table. Hope to get a bigger pen built for them in the next week or so.

The pheasant and chukar chicks are 15 days old now and are starting to feather out nicely. Yesterday, I removed one of my circles in the brooder room since some are able to fly over it now. I will leave the remaining circle for a couple more days to give the smaller birds a chance to catch up. Also, we had a cold snap last night and we awoke to snow on the mountain. It is supposed to be Summer right now but at least it didn't freeze last night. I did light up the propane heater during the night. I haven't used it in nearly a week since the weather has been warmer.

I have had to raise the nipple waterers up a bit each week as the birds grow. I think it is important to make sure they have to reach a bit to get the water. I think it helps them build up their leg strength and muscles which should all make for better flying birds in a few months. This theory is not very scientific but I do think it helps to keep the birds strong. It is still very difficult to tell the difference between the chukar chicks and the pheasant chicks. As the feathers grow in the distinction will become obvious.

Here you can see the feather coming in nicely. Most of the birds are starting to try flapping their wings a bit and practicing 2-3 foot test flights. It is pretty funny to watch as they are a bit clumsy at this age. As I remove the next circle and give the chicks full access to the brooder room they will start to fly a little more each day. At 5 1/2 weeks exactly we will put the blinders on them and release them into the large outside flight pens.