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Kent
and Sharon Matherne, who at the time lived in Cedar Hill, south of Dallas,
purchased a 50 acre wooded tract north of De Leon in 1994. They fell in
love with the property and knew they wanted to make it their full time
home. Sharon had family in the area. In fact, she is the great-great-
granddaughter of Charles Culpepper Blair, reputed to have been the first
man to farm in Comanche County.
There was just one
question, however. What can you do to make a living
on rural land such as the Mathernes now owned? The main reason the area
was still wooded is that the soil was not well adapted for agriculture.
However, a long time love of outdoors and hunting, as well as a strong
entrepreneurial instinct, propelled Kent and Sharon to aggressively search
for some activity that would return a living.
What the Matherne’s eventually settled upon is farm raising “wild”
quail. They decided to call their business “Fly Bye Birdie” to play upon
the wild nature of their quail product.
Kent had first read about farming quail in an agricultural magazine in
1997. For the next three years they continued to gather information,
attend meetings, and get to know those already involved in the industry.
Farm raised quail and pheasant are somewhat common in Texas and other
states where hunting is a popular sport. As the wild quail population has
declined throughout the region in recent years, the importance of
supplementing the wild population with farm-raised stock has grown. There
are many farm-raised quail and other game bird producers in Texas and other
states that release several million quail and other species of game birds
each year.
An
observed incident can be noted with some farm-raised quail. They
don’t flush and fly nearly as readily as their wild cousins, unless they
are properly raised.
Fly Bye Birdie takes extra precautions in raising their birds in
isolation to insure they will have the same flight characteristics of
natural wild quail.
It seems that typically,
immature farm-raised quail may
“imprint” upon their human caretakers, very similar to “imprinting” upon
their mother quail in the wild. As a result, after they have been released they don’t get so excited
when another human shows up soon after their release into the hunting area.
It is
also said that, while a convey of wild quail
flushes in sudden bursts of take-off flight to flee the
hunter, farm-raised quail will tend to run and hide in the first available shelter.
Kent says this is not correct. Running for cover is inherent with all quail, wild or farm-raised,
due to the fact they are territorial rather than migratory.
When the Matherne’s decided to get serious about raising quail, they
contacted Dr. Fred Thornberry, State Extension Specialist in the
Department of Poultry Science at Texas A&M University. Dr. Thornberry is
widely recognized as an expert on what Kent and Sharon were interested in. He
consulted with them and even assisted in designing a wild quail farming
facility. Theirs was the second of his design to be built.
Construction began in
September 2000, when Kent Boswell Construction was hired to do the dirt
work for the two-acre site. Later, Cloyd Teague and company were hired to
pour the slab and construct certain portions of the facility. Kent Matherne
(who earlier was a project manager for a construction company
that specialized in building service stations) along with his father Weldon Matherne, first cousin Lefty Adams and friend Bobby Frantom completed
the remainder of the facility.
The
farm consists of five parallel production tracts, each of which has
a 12’x12’ chick room, a 40’x12 grow pen and a 120’x12’ flight pen. A
portion of the flight pen is sheltered, however, most of it is open to the
sun and sky, and thus the birds are “weather conditioned”. The length of
the flight pen allows the birds to get a long flight accomplished, so the
quails
are also “flight-conditioned”. Each of the five parallel tracts can
accommodate as many as 1,000 quail.
The chicks are purchased
from the hatchery when only hours old, and shipped as soon as possible to the De Leon area farm. The first
batch of 1,000, approximately 50/50 male and female, Bob Whites arrived on
May 21, 2001.
On Wednesday, August 8, the Mathernes hosted Dr. Thornberry for a visit
to their new quail farming facility. He apparently liked what he saw.
The secret to farm raised “wild” quail is for the birds to never see
their human caretakers. If that is the case, they will be just as
frightened of humans when released as wild grown members of their species.
During their 14-16 week stay on Matherne’s farm, the quail never see,
or catch only fleeting glimpses of humans. The baby chick rooms are solid
walled with only a small one-way window allowing the Matherne’s to check
in on things. In outside screened enclosures for pullets, a no-visibility
nylon fabric surrounds the sides of the pen, preventing the immature birds
from seeing outside comings and goings. Small openings on the doors allow
their caretakers to look in and check on things.
Particular care is taken during the first month of the bird’s life to
avoid “imprinting” on humans. Much of the work is done at night, in the
dark, when Kent and Sharon wear headlamps that allow them to see to work
inside the baby chick room, but do not give the baby quail a view of them.
The facilities designed by Dr. Thornberry are set up so that little
work inside the holding pens is required. Watering is done by a
suspended piped dispenser, which produces a drop of water when tipped by
the beak. The plumbing system is designed so that antibiotics can be
placed into the water to keep the large flocks from catching communicable
diseases. Feeding systems can hold sufficient quantities so that frequent
refilling is not required. Only top quality manufactured feed is fed to the
quail.
The Matherne’s first batch of birds will be available for purchase on
August 27. Fly Bye Birdie has already sold roughly half of the first
flock. They will have successive batches available on October1, November
12, and December 31, 2001.
Matured quail are sold to land owners wishing to restock their land,
game hunting ranches, bird dog trainers, and even to those who fancy quail
on the menu, but don’t wish to hunt them. The live quails sell for current
market prices.
When asked about the reasons for the recent decline in the wild quail
population in Texas and throughout the South, Dr. Thornberry said it was
from a combination of reasons, none of them solely sufficient for the
phenomenon. The loss of good quail habitat from the clearing of fence
rows, the replacement of native grasses (a favorite quail nesting place)
with coastal Bermuda grass, clearing of timber and the increasing
development of rural farm and ranch land have all been unfavorable for the
game.
Fire ants are another factor. Dr. Thornberry described how a mother
quail will pick off ants that find her hatchlings until one ant gets away
and lays a marker trail bring large numbers of ants back to the nest. At
that time the mother, and however many hatchlings are able to follow her,
are
forced to flee the nest, leaving the remainder of the hatching eggs to
voracious ants.
The decline in coon and varmint hunting has paradoxically had a
detrimental impact on quail. Raccoons are probably the biggest threat to
quail nesting success. The loss of habitat has tended to concentrate the
quail nesting areas so that nest robbers have an easier time of finding
all quail nests.
Dr. Thornberry also believes that agricultural chemicals have played a
role. The chemicals commonly applied are insecticides and herbicides. The
insecticides tent to wipe out the population of small insects, the main
food for young chicks, and the herbicides tend to kill the forbs that
older quail consume.
Regardless of the cause, or causes, the decline of wild quail in most
sections of the state, including our own, is undeniable. As long as Texans
continue to enjoy getting out in the wilds of the state and hunting quail,
and as long as they are willing to pay handsome hunting lease prices,
there will be a demand for “wild” farm raised quail. Kent and Sharon Matherne hope to be there to help meet the demand. |
FLY
BYE BIRDIE, established in 2000, is located in an
isolated area of Comanche County, Texas——far from the sounds of
civilization, and human contact. Specializing in raising mature,
flight-conditioned Bob White quails, our facilities includes large flight
pens, with natural cover. Views of Our Farm are available by
clicking above.