The Neely chronicles..pt 1

[hank77]

Finally, after 4 months, I took Neely my 4 month old Llewellin Setter to "play" with some live quail my friend and mentor Jay procured for us Sunday morning.
Jay, his son Hunter and his GSP "Yogi" were great with the pup, Hunter was the bird tender..great job for 6 years old!
Neely as expected took a little while to get the jist, but once he got it, he got it! He locked onto the quail that Jay and Hunter planted for us and I just let him go and have some fun...get him excited and used to the birds. Lots and lots of praise!
He did some small flash points for us and Jay gave us some training tips...he gave us the the 6 quail and even let me borrow his quail pen...the hunting brotherhood is a strong bond..thanks Jay!!
After noon brought a honey do list and a break for Neely...I wanted to show the wife and kids the birds and Neely locked on to the quail I planted in the yard..this is going to be a fun year of training!
The quail are rather fertile...2 eggs laid yesterday...buy 6, get the rest free! ;D
I will post pics when my daughter shows me how again...computah retahded.
HANK

[mjflores]

The great thing about quail is, they taste GREAT when you're done training. Flighty buggers though lol, I switched to homing pigeons last year and like them a bit better. Can't eat em but they come back home and hatch their own chicks.

I'm looking forward to seeing pics of this young setter...I bet he's handsome. Nothing like working a puppy!

[NHGriff]

Where are you finding homers? I was looking for some on craigslist and haven't found any in a while. I did buy pheasant @ $8 each not long ago and chuckar for about the same. Training a bird dog can get really pricey when you have to buy the birds, but there's just no other way to get them up to speed like real birds.

[mjflores]

I got my homers from a guy that used to raise them. I got a few chicks and have been letting them hatch their own ever since. Some just disappear or get taken by hawks but most make it. I wish I knew about this site over the summer, I would have hatched a bunch to share. They lay like crazy and hatch and raise their own chicks so it's really easy to end up with a coop full.

Years ago I used to raise quail for training. Quail lay really well too but I had to use a incubator, then brood them, and once they're six weeks old they're grown but you can't put them in with the other adults because they'll be attacked and killed. I used to have an adjustment pen to put the youngsters and adults in for 2 weeks, then the whole group would go back to the main pen and then I'd start all over again lol. Its a lot of work raise game birds. They can fly at a week old and are flighty suckers...I've chased them all over the basement many times because they'd escape while cage cleaning. I had fish tanks and grow lights down there...from the sky at night my house probably looked like a marijuana farm ;D ;D ;D

So now, its no wonder that I'm a homing pigeon advocate lol.

I do miss the quail though. I'd use 6 for training and 6 breasts are enough for a pot pie

Boy, $8 pheasant. I would have bought some of those. That's a great deal.

Someday when I'm ready I'll admit to, out of desperation, using a chicken in a pillow case for training. Bird doggers can get a little crazy when they're lacking live training birds ;D ;D ;D