We did manage to get the quail pen done though. It was a priority because we had about 500 six-week old Georgia Giant bob whites in our neighbor's brood house, and they needed to be moved. These are quail we hatched from ordered eggs, and they will become our breeder birds for Georgia Giants this spring.
The old quail pen, made out of PVC, needed to be enlarged and didn't look that good anyway. We added 8 feet to the width and replaced the PVC with treated posts. It looks much better now, and the birds have almost twice the space.
Yesterday morning, we spent an hour and a half catching the new birds and bringing them home. It's pretty tricky combining birds with ones that are already established in a pen. This pen previously housed about 50 - a mix of Georgia Giants, native bob whites and a few Mexican Speckled quail. We'd closed them up in the shed during the 3 days it took us to rebuild. We'd hoped that releasing them into a "new" flight pen with the babies and being outnumbered 9 to 1 would eliminate any territorial behavior. But it didn't. We've only lost 5 of the new birds so far. Hopefully they will all learn to get along.
Our next quail plans will include replacing the other PVC pen
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and building a shed and flight pen between the two to house chukar.
That will probably be on the list for Big John's next "vacation!"
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