two words...Food Chute. Although I don't have her freelofted in the mews, I do have her in the weathering area on a dog trolley line and I when I started throwing food out to her she started in "attack mode" every time I open the door now. Although she's on the zip line and can't reach me, it still can be a potential threat to her feathers, with her juping/flying and being jerked around. So, when I pick her up 10 days from now (she's at a hawk sitter falconer friend's house while I'm on vacation this next week in Orlando). I'm going to put a little food chute in the back of her weathering area so she won't be so agressive whenever I go in to get her. -Joe
there is a 'reptile swap' about 30 minutes away from my home. at this swap people bring all the reptiles and stuff the breed, they also bring reptile food they breed! so i can get live/frozen rats/mice/rabbits the mice/rats i can get -depending on size- from about 25-50 for 20 bucks. and the rabbits for 5 each they also sell birds suchs as dove and i think i saw pidgeons. im not sure how much these cost though. I figure i should be able to rotate these foods sorces and create a nice diet ontop of what is caught in the hunt or traps.
also, i was wondering how long these can stay frozen while remaining good for the bird. I have a boa right now which i feed full grown frozen mice too, but after two or three weeks the mice seem to go bad by bleed from the mouth, developing an even more wretched smell, and she loses intrest in them. The mice are always completely frozen and kept in the freezer. Am I going to get the same 3 week shelf life out of the frozen raptor food too? or am I maybe just freezing them too much / not enough?
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Post by Falcon Boy on May 31, 2006 11:45:51 GMT -5
I am not sure why your mice start bleeding after 3 weeks in teh freezer. If they are frozen they will not have any liquid, everything will freeze, meaning nothing can ooze or anything. Are you sure you dont mean refridgerated?
As for prices, it is cheaper most times to order online, than pick up @ teh show, becuase they jack the price for the shows in most cases!
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im positive i mean freeze :-p we have a big arse freezer in my basement that i keep them in, def not a fridge, im guessing then its either they just arnt frozen enough or they defrost a lil on the ride home?
but from what ive seen this is a lot cheaper than ordering online, paying 20bucks for 25 full grown frozen mice seems pretty cheap to me. And i know shipping and handling is a killer too.
Also, keep in mind that these guys arnt from big company's, most of them dont have websites you can order off of. They are just home grown-local dealers. Which makes me question the quality sometimes, but ill worry about checking up on that once i actually have a bird.
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Eel, fish, snake ? What is your partner an osprey ?
I feed a mixed meal of whole body mice, gutted rats with Provital in cavity to make up B vitamin loss, and whole quail. I am lucky to have a gal close by who raises rats, mice and rabbits, so no shipping costs.
Post by goldcountry on Sept 4, 2014 16:00:21 GMT -5
So I have been looking to start into falconry for a few years. During this time I have started raising bobwhite quail. I hatch 370-450 eggs per hatch. Would this be sufficient to sustain a RT along with its quarry? Or better still to keep a varied diet?
I have raised BWQ as well and It is a great addition to a varied diet. It's not as rich a meat as a cortinix quail but can be close depending on their feed quality. Added to their catch cache and some frozen mice it will serve your hawk well.
It is good to have an end to Journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the End. - Ernest Hemingway
Japanese quail grow out faster and with the proper food for feed quality quail, grow richer as well. A 6-9 week old CQ will be approaching maximum size and maturity when a BWQ at that age is half the size and maturity can take 4-6 months. That's a big price difference in quality feed.
I prefer the BWQ because of wild release on my property . If I were raising purely for feed I would go with CQ.
Best of luck to ya in your endeavor .
It is good to have an end to Journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the End. - Ernest Hemingway
I was raising Coturnix quail for a while but I recently switched over to rabbits, and more recently rats. I breed on small scale with the rabbits, mostly for family consumption- but it works for my other animals, and now the RT as well. With the rats I plan to have a constant supply, but I'm not trying to overwhelm myself or fill a freezer with rats either.
As far as using my rabbits for baggies, I can see that it wouldn't be practical. But on the other hand I have a few rabbits that have 'escaped' and haven't been recaptured (or killed by a predator or myself) and they have turned very wild very fast- so I have decided to leave them be and when Skunk is ready we will go out and get us some feral bunnies from my land.
As far as using my rabbits for baggies, I can see that it wouldn't be practical. But on the other hand I have a few rabbits that have 'escaped' and haven't been recaptured (or killed by a predator or myself) and they have turned very wild very fast- so I have decided to leave them be and when Skunk is ready we will go out and get us some feral bunnies from my land.
This reminds me of an anecdotal story I had read one time from a magazine my father had bought me during one of his long overnight trucking runs passing through Nevada.. I haven't discovered if it's true or not however, so take it with for what it's worth:
I read that a group of four hunting buddies all got together and decided they were going to breed rabbits on a small scale so they can release them into their shared nearby forest in the hopes of "upping" the game available there. One thing led to another and before long they had bred hundreds, and eventually thousands of bunnies. As the days went on and the group waited for the opportune time in the season to release the rabbits into the wild, they quickly discovered that they had a slight population problem with the four of them all breeding rabbits at the same time. Talk of 'culling' the horde of bunnies spooked spouses and children into setting them free into the forest before they were ready - and before the hunters knew about it.
By the time they learned of the great rabbit prison break, the damage had already been done. Thousands and thousands of bunnies loosed into the forest. The resulting bunny population explosion actually caused the local state game and fish department to raise a few eyebrows in the direction of that forest. I don't think the hunters were found guilty of any crimes or anything and if I remember correctly, the state ended up starting a trapping campaign in that forest to help relocate hundreds of bunnies to more applicable hunting sites lol.
All that said, I certainly have considered breeding a few hundred mice to escape into the fields that I frequent. I would never do it, though. I just dream about the sweet, sweet quarry, without the afterthought of all the potential host of predators I'd be inviting into that land.