I have a pet chukar named Zebra, who I got in a rather unusual way.
I'm a wildlife rehabber, and one day this summer I was working at my group's intake center when two very unusual intakes came in from the Yuba City animal shelter about an hour away.
The first one was a large snapping turtle, about two feet long!
We don't even have snapping turtles in the wild here (at least not native ones), so this was very unusual indeed. One of my fellow rehabbers ended up taking this large fellow and keeping him in her horse stall with some ponds she made for him until she found him a home with proper licenses and other snapping turtles. Poor guy had been stuck in the animal shelter for two weeks in a tank of water with no way for him to get out of the water at all.
It's amazing he even survived!
The other was a chukar, who I automatically decided to adopt. I had been thinking about raising some chukar as it was, and this guy was very friendly. The strange story is that he walked into someone's house in a suburb, and the woman whose house he walked into was afraid of him, but managed to catch him and bring him to the animal shelter. The shelter had no idea what he was, so they sent him to my wildlife rehab group. His wings had been clipped with scissors and he is an agreeable little guy, so I assume he had been someone's pet and then escaped. I decided to put him in my chicken coop and see how he did, and he's lived in there happily for months now! He regularly takes dustbaths, he socializes with the chickens (even tries to mate with some of the bantam hens sometimes!), wanders around, makes his chukar call... He's happy as can be! I want to get him a mate of his own species, but I don't want to end up with a bunch of chukar either, so I'm kind of just waiting for another adult chukar to show up on Craigslist, BYC, at my wildlife rehab group, or just somewhere at random. In the meantime, he just hangs out and enjoys himself.
Here's some pictures of Zebra:
When he first came in, missing some feathers on his head.
And more recently, in my coop:
Just thought I'd share his odd little story.
I quite like this guy!
He's very charming and cool-looking!
I'm a wildlife rehabber, and one day this summer I was working at my group's intake center when two very unusual intakes came in from the Yuba City animal shelter about an hour away.
The first one was a large snapping turtle, about two feet long!
The other was a chukar, who I automatically decided to adopt. I had been thinking about raising some chukar as it was, and this guy was very friendly. The strange story is that he walked into someone's house in a suburb, and the woman whose house he walked into was afraid of him, but managed to catch him and bring him to the animal shelter. The shelter had no idea what he was, so they sent him to my wildlife rehab group. His wings had been clipped with scissors and he is an agreeable little guy, so I assume he had been someone's pet and then escaped. I decided to put him in my chicken coop and see how he did, and he's lived in there happily for months now! He regularly takes dustbaths, he socializes with the chickens (even tries to mate with some of the bantam hens sometimes!), wanders around, makes his chukar call... He's happy as can be! I want to get him a mate of his own species, but I don't want to end up with a bunch of chukar either, so I'm kind of just waiting for another adult chukar to show up on Craigslist, BYC, at my wildlife rehab group, or just somewhere at random. In the meantime, he just hangs out and enjoys himself.
Here's some pictures of Zebra:
When he first came in, missing some feathers on his head.
And more recently, in my coop:
Just thought I'd share his odd little story.
