Non traditional birds for training?

[fabsroman]

Originally Posted by Mr. 16 gauge

The dog in question is a Labrador retriever.....she is a flusher (as opposed to a pointing lab). All I've trained have been flushing dogs (prior to this, an American water spaniel & two chessies). All the dogs previously would run in and flush sparrows/song birds from cover, even though I never used those species for training.....I just figured a bird smells like a bird! Don't really mind too much, either, as I figure their nose is telling them "bird", and to try and correct for a certain species might mean having them pass by pheasants for fear of correction.
I do plan on raising a few quail this summer....bird prices are going through the roof around here. Hope to have some training birds by late summer/early fall.

The prices of the birds is the main reason we aren't "hunting" any game farms around here. They want $10 per quail and $20 per pheasant. Hard to think about putting out 40 pheasants for $800 to be split amongst 4 "hunters" and then to pay to have them cleaned. It is just astronomical. Might start raising game birds myself because I cannot imagine how it could cost that much. Used to be something like $5 per quail and $10 per pheasant some 6 years ago. It really is hard to believe that the cost has increased that much.