Quail Hunters…. Buy Your Birds Early!

Give your “Bird Man” a break!

For the sake of all that is good and holy “Buy Your Birds Early” for the upcoming Quail hunting season!

Not just for yourself…but think of your poor Bird Man!

Now I’m not telling you to build a flight pen out in your mom’s backyard and buy day old chicks to keep under lights….hell, on second thought…..that’s not a bad idea!…. I’m just saying to get with your bird guy early and make a commitment so he can do his advanced planning.

I know that quail farming to most is just an aside to their favorite past time…. but I will assure that it is a very serious and involved agricultural endeavor.

Think about what he is having to deal with…. First of all, he has to start planning his season at least one full year in advance to keep Quail Hunters in birds. He has to figure out how many breeders he needs to hold out, at the end of the year to produce enough eggs to raise thousands and thousands of birds the next year….

This causes a problem in and of itself…. that is exactly the time of year his phone starts to ring with people offering him down right obscene prices for any birds he can scrape together because they have some big wigs in for their year end shoot and got no birds!

So, your bird man has to make the decision to either take the $20 a bird and go out of business…. or hold on to his breeders so that he can provide you with a limit of 12 for opening weekend.

Also consider this, Quail Season starts around October and ends around February. Quail start laying eggs in April or May. It takes 24 days to incubate and hatch eggs and 16 weeks for Bobwhite Quail to grow to maturity. So, if your bird man keeps 1000 breeders let’s say he hatches out between 30,000 and 40,000 birds…. feeding lets say 35k birds for a minimum of 16 weeks means that your feed bill is gonna run somewhere around $1.50 per bird before bird season even hits!

That’s a little over $50,000 Grand in expenses that your poor bird man has to float out there every season!

So…. let me reiterate!…. Buy your birds early…. Buy them often…. Buy more than you need…. Tell your bird man you would even be willing to pay another $.25 per bird…..And commit to buy more next season!

This is not the time to be chincy! Whether you realize it or not, his decision to stay in this business and your ability to find good quality birds in the future are directly related!

If you found this informative, be looking out for our next article in the series….“Support Your Local Bird Man” where we look a little deeper into how the success of these Quail Farmers will have a direct effect on your Quail Hunting future…. and how you can help him out tremendously by setting up a few Johnny Houses around your property and buying birds early and often!

Thanks for reading…if you have any questions or comments please contact me at al@northgeorgiaquail.com.

God Bless Ya! Support the Troops! And keep on Shooting!