Never enough Chukars

[chickenwhisperer]

I just got back from the Gamebird Breeders place.
I bought some chukar and pheasant eggs off him about a month ago, and got a great hatch.

I talked to him over the weekend, and he said he was gearing down on chukars for the year, but he had a couple thousand eggs stored for hunting ranch orders.

He said I could definately get another flat if I wanted, so I went down this am.

When I got there, we talked gamebirds for about an hour, he told me lots of secrets and his opinions, great info!
He had to get back to work, so I pulled out my cash, and he went into the cool room to grab my eggs.
He comes out with 5 flats, and tells me I can have em all for the price of 1 flat . . .
I jumped all over the offer.



So I got 250 chukar eggs for the price of 50

 

[turkaholic]

Hope you have a big incubator!

I raised Chuk's ........ONCE! Nasty little demons Might get the nerve to try again someday, now that I know what I did wrong.

Good Luck on the hatch!

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
so what did you do wrong? tia

 

[holachicka]

Sounds like you have a good friend there!!!

 

[turkaholic]

Quote:
so what did you do wrong? tia

Had no problem hatching and rearing. When they were older, I kept them in a colony and next breeding season they killed one another in short order.

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
so what did you do wrong? tia

Had no problem hatching and rearing. When they were older, I kept them in a colony and next breeding season they killed one another in short order.

So they were all right through the winter in a colony situation ? They just need to be paired off for romance

?

 

[turkaholic]

I should have paired them come spring. I might try them again sometime, but right now pheasant ,quail and turkey keep me busy enough.

 

[Riffecreek]

Quote:
one sure fire way to tell males from females is to put them all in the same pen in the spring... all the dead ones will be the roos!!
I put a roo and 3-4 hens in a pen and they do fine.

 

[chickenwhisperer]

My plan is to follow UC Davis PDF recommendation of 3.9 birds to a pen that measures 60"w x 24"d x 20"h.
Im going to make 2 or 3 of these cages as a stackable unit, and thats how they will always be kept.

The guy I got them from keeps them on raised wire pens, but his are enormous, prolly like 100 x 100, with little walkways thru them to help collect eggs, really neat setup.

 

[chickenwhisperer]

I ended up selling 100 of the eggs and set the other 150, just about filled the incubator . . .

My plan is to raise the chukars according to the recommendations in the UCdavis pdf, 25 chicks to a cage.
At the 12-16 week mark Ill offer some for sale, butcher some for a bbq with friends, and keep some for breeders.

Like I said above, Ill keep 3.9 in each breeding cage, but if I end up with 2.6 or 1.7, so be it.
I plan to have 3 cages, 2 for breeders and 1 for grow-out.

This is all my first attempt at chukars, and the chicks I already have now are doing great.
I sold some on CL, and havent gotten any callbacks about them, so thats good.

I really like these chukars so far, the eggs have great fertility, the chicks are strong and healthy, and from what I hear they are very very tasty.
Depending on the ease/difficulty of care, Im hoping they are a sustainable meat project for me, and I already know other people around here want to buy them as well.

I thought I liked valley quail, but these chukars are quickly becoming my favorite birds.