Every year the boys and I sit down around Christmas time and come up with a list of things we want to do the following year. We call this our Farm Goals list. This year was a bit messy and honestly we never got around to writing a formal list. However one project we did decide to take on was to try raising chukars,

For those that don’t know, myself and my family all enjoy hunting. We have a lot of family traditions and we are teaching the twins to hunt as well. Farmer Brad’s family does a lot of bird hunting and while I have done a little I’m very out of practice and it’s something the kids have never had the opportunity to try. With that in mind and the fact that I’m the crazy bird lady we decided this would be a good learning experience for the kids and we would be able to use them to work on our bird hunting skills as an end result.

I did my homework and picked out where to order out chicks from and figured out what we would need housing wise. Game birds are more fickle than chickens and need some extra gear and specialized housing.

As a result I got to pick up a hover brooder which I’m not gonna lie I have wanted for a while. This this is awesome and provides a much more consistent heat which I was glad of considering how tiny the chicks were when they came

We also needed a bit of a different flight pen because well I’m stubborn and from all the reading I did you have two options: you can raise the birds off the ground or you have to medicate them. I don’t like to medicate anything long term… I get treating as necessary but forever in an animal that I’m going to eat, not so much. So I sat and googled and google and googled some more. This is what I ended up presenting to Farmer Brad.

We combined the two ideas and then made modifications along the way based on supply prices. We finally got it finished and the birds moved outside last week.

We have a little finish work to do as it still needs some batten boards on the house and in the corners where the wire wraps the posts. We will also have to make some modifications this fall once we move the birds we plan to over winter out but for now. But overall we are pretty happy with how it turned out.