Country Egg?

[MtBullion Gamebirds]

Anyone know what is up with Babs at Country Egg?  Their website is down and unable to get ahold of anyone by phone?

[Pheasant Hollow Farm]

Anyone know what is up with Babs at Country Egg?  Their website is down and unable to get ahold of anyone by phone?

Welcome back from your vacation! I hope you had an enjoyable time.

I haven't seen Babs around since April of this year. I hope all is well on her end.

Steve
Pheasant Hollow Farm

[MtBullion Gamebirds]

Thanks, vacation was bad.  No water in the lake, had to carry our camp gear 100 yards up granite just to get out of the sun, 105 degrees.  Fishing was non existent.  We just happened to go to the parking lot to get something out of the truck and found that the boat ramp was completely out of the water.  We had to build our own ramp below the now dry one in order to pull out two boats.  We were suppose to stay Wed thru Sun and we had to leave Thur night, or we would have never gotten out.

We have been going to that lake (Mammoth Pool) for 15 years, never have we encountered the water so low.  And the fact that it was dropping so rapidly.  There was very little snow pack this year in the Sierra Nevada's and that is how the lake is fed.  So no snow = No water.  It was a drag.

Then get home to find that while I was gone, the GFI tripped on my incubators and the power also went out in my brooder house.  My brother in law tried, but got there too late.

Lost:
250 Valley Quail chicks
25   Red golden Pheasant chicks.
100 Ringneck Pheasant chicks.
54   Mountain Quail chicks:    This would include the 10 chicks, that's eggs got rescued.
62   Chukar chicks
7     Button Quail chicks.


18   Bourbon Red Turkey Eggs
24   Valley Quail eggs
2     Peafowl eggs
24   Chukar eggs
100 Bobwhite eggs
10   Duck eggs

It was a very bad week.  The temps here got to over 112 on Thurs the 5th.  Thankfully all my adult birds in the pens are doing fine.  Did not lose a one.  The misters on the pheasant worked great. 

So if anyone has any extra eggs, especially Valley Quail, or Red Golden Pheasant.  I would do just about anything to get them.  We lost a lot of money this last week.  I am just sick.

I am really upset the most about my Mt. Quail that were rescued.  I was really looking forward to releasing them back to where they came from.   And I lost all my Red Golden Pheasants, I just wanted to cry.  Well to be honest, I did.....

Hope your week went better than mine.

If anyone knows what happened to Babs, let me know.  I was getting some quality eggs from her.

Teresa

[TopKnot]

So sorry to hear about your vacation disaster.  It was definitely hot last week and I lost one of my scaled chicks from the group which I put out the week before.  I felt bad just losing the one, I can only begin to imagine the pain and frustration at all that you lost.  Best of luck getting things back on track in the coming months. 
Regarding Mammoth Pools, my family used to do a ton of fishing up in that area - Upper San Joaquin, Granite Creek, Willow Creek, Chilkoot Creek, and Ciquita Creek - some beautiful country and great fishing.

[Pheasant Hollow Farm]

Thanks, vacation was bad.  No water in the lake, had to carry our camp gear 100 yards up granite just to get out of the sun, 105 degrees.  Fishing was non existent.  We just happened to go to the parking lot to get something out of the truck and found that the boat ramp was completely out of the water.  We had to build our own ramp below the now dry one in order to pull out two boats.  We were suppose to stay Wed thru Sun and we had to leave Thur night, or we would have never gotten out.

We have been going to that lake (Mammoth Pool) for 15 years, never have we encountered the water so low.  And the fact that it was dropping so rapidly.  There was very little snow pack this year in the Sierra Nevada's and that is how the lake is fed.  So no snow = No water.  It was a drag.

Then get home to find that while I was gone, the GFI tripped on my incubators and the power also went out in my brooder house.  My brother in law tried, but got there too late.

Lost:
250 Valley Quail chicks
25   Red golden Pheasant chicks.
100 Ringneck Pheasant chicks.
54   Mountain Quail chicks:    This would include the 10 chicks, that's eggs got rescued.
62   Chukar chicks
7     Button Quail chicks.


18   Bourbon Red Turkey Eggs
24   Valley Quail eggs
2     Peafowl eggs
24   Chukar eggs
100 Bobwhite eggs
10   Duck eggs

It was a very bad week.  The temps here got to over 112 on Thurs the 5th.  Thankfully all my adult birds in the pens are doing fine.  Did not lose a one.  The misters on the pheasant worked great. 

So if anyone has any extra eggs, especially Valley Quail, or Red Golden Pheasant.  I would do just about anything to get them.  We lost a lot of money this last week.  I am just sick.

I am really upset the most about my Mt. Quail that were rescued.  I was really looking forward to releasing them back to where they came from.   And I lost all my Red Golden Pheasants, I just wanted to cry.  Well to be honest, I did.....

Hope your week went better than mine.

If anyone knows what happened to Babs, let me know.  I was getting some quality eggs from her.

Teresa

Teresa,

That is some massive loss! I am truely sorry to here his. Did you have any insurance on the business?

Steve
Pheasant Hollow Farm

[MtBullion Gamebirds]

Nope, no insurance.  I will show it as a loss on the taxes, but I am really mad at myself for not leaving the generator hooked up.  We are supplied by power from two directions (towns).  We never lose elect in the summer.  I didn't think about a internal elect problem.  Both the incubation room and brooders are all on the same breakers.  So something happened with the breaker and it popped a GFI.  (or something like that, I don't know much about the elect part of it).  My husband said it had something to do with the extreme heat. 

The temp in the brooder house got up to 130 degrees.  My brother in law got the brooders cooling system back up after he discovered the loss.  But he didn't know to check the incubators, the GFI was not reset and the temps in the incubators got up to 121 degrees.  Or that is the temp that I found it at on Thursday, so who knows how high it actually got.   Some of the eggs made it, or at least they are candling alive.  Don't know what kind of hatch I will actually have.  Several different hatch dates, starting next week.  So I will keep my fingers crossed for the ones that are left.  But, I don't think it will be much of a hatch and most of it is poultry.  I have some orders for day olds that I don't know if I am going to be able to meet.   

We also had UE 3 months ago, lost a large amount of bobwhites.  My husband is not happy, he is about ready to pull the plug on our bird business.  I told him when we began this last year, to give me two years to start to make some kind of profit, or at least break even.  But between last year and this year, things are just not looking good. 

Just so you all know, I take a lot of pride in my birds.  They are very well taken care of.  We have been raising birds for a long time for our personal use.  We are just not having the best of luck.  I keep telling him that we are learning every time something like this happens, but it is so frustrating.  I don't think we will be getting too far from home anytime soon.  I am not giving up yet.  Hopefully I can convince him to hang in there. 

[Pheasant Hollow Farm]

T,

The way the industry is going around here in WV, I lost over $7,000.00 last year. I also had an over abundance of birds left over from last year that people didn't buy, and other businesses that went out of business. You can only sell so many to guides and to individuals that have scheduled hunts, and even these people have also dried up, along with the field trials and shoot to release.

I just love it when people call for a pick-up and you have all the paperwork and birds ready, and they never show up. Nothing like restocking your pens!

This year with sales so low, I didn't even do any hatching. I gave away over 1000 dozen eggs as consumables, and release more then 300 birds within my area and more birds to follow.

The feed prices haven't dropped enough to keep these birds in the pen and I am getting tired of eating pheasant. There is only so many way's to cook a bird, and one can only eat so many eggs before you start to grow feathers!!

So, I am planning on down sizing and no longer go commercial.

Raising over 1000 birds and selling hatchable eggs and chicks just isn't worth the effort any more when the market has disappeared.

I could be using my capital in other ventures that may provide more gains.

I will continue to raise my Ring-necked and Melanistic’s but in a very small volume just to suite my needs and some of my friends.

So T, keep the faith, what ever you decide I know will be in the best interest for you and your family.

Steve
Pheasant Hollow Farm

[WHITNEYPLU]

Thersea and Steve I am sorry to hear about both of your problems and I wish you both the best of luck. Just remember what doesnt kill us makes us stronger. I think a lot of us have felt a strong pinch this year, feed prices, lack of people wanting birds, hunters seeming to vanish, gas prices and the list is endless. We released last month 100 ringnecks, 200 Bobwhites and 75 Rio Grande Turkeys as well as 35 Mallards. This was a must for us and we hated it, but my dads land and ours is pretty stocked up right now. We also filled up the neighbors freezers and some of the familys' as well. I figure we have lost about 3700 this year already. The poultry did well this year as did the guineas but the game bird side of it suffered. So I wish you both well I can feel the pain. I am just glad I do it more for the love of having the birds around than just for the money of it, I own a growing plumbing company that pays the bills, or we would have been really struggling this year to just feed them and us.
Best wishes,
Dusty

[MtBullion Gamebirds]

We both (husband and I) have full time jobs.  I am a 911 operator for the California Department of Forestry and my husband runs a small construction company.  If we were living only on the birds, we would never make it.  We started raising them several years ago for our own training needs, as we have GSP's.  But we started to get a overwellming interest in trainers, hunters and ranches wanting to buy the birds.  So we thought we would give it a go. 

It is a lot of work.  Seems on our days off and every weekend, there is pens to clean, birds to band, eggs to move ect....   Not to mention the every day tending.  It never ends.  Don't get me wrong, we love it.  We also have horses, chickens, pigs, goats and a very very large garden.  We really love our life and the birds are a pleasure.  But when it starts coming out of our pockets.  And the price of feed keeps going up, well we may just go back to raising them just for our own needs.  We will see, I will get though pheasant season.  I just don't want to have to feed too many birds through the winter. 

It is just is frustrating to get slapped twice in a matter of about 4 months with losses.  I just have to convince my husband not to give up to soon.  We have orders still needing to be filled and have orders all the way to next spring.  So for now, we will still be here.  I just don't want to loose anymore birds.  That is the worst, to find them dead and know you are pretty much responsible. 

[WHITNEYPLU]

I totally understand that. I have been doing this locally for 15 years now and this year has been by far the hardest. Next spring we are going to do the whole internet sells if I can ever figure out how to do the web page lol. We mainly sell to the local feed stores, locals, hunting perserves and taxidermist.  A lot of nights I am building pens or cages, water systems, etc. till 3 Am and up again at 7 and it takes it toll on you.