Johnny House

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Travis79
Rank: Just A Pup
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2018 12:46 am

Johnny House

Post by Travis79 » Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:32 am

I have a question. I built a Johnny house, and this is my first experience with one. I had my neighbor hatch me 25 northern bobs, and I put them in there at 6 weeks old which was on may 27th. I'm down to 5 now. I left them in there for several weeks before I started letting some out. Here are my ISSUES. for one the little dudes won't hardly fly. Some still act like they cant fly to the top of the Johnny house. When I let them out I'm lucky if the fly 3 feet high. Most wont fly at all. the other issue is if I turn out 4 I MIGHT get 2 back. The ones in the house wont whistle so I went and got a automatic call. that doesn't seen to help much either. I really hate to scrap this idea because I feel like it will help me be able to get my dogs steady to wing and shot which is why I built it, and bought the birds. However if they wont fly, or come back its going to be useless. Thanks for the help.

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zrp
Rank: Junior Hunter
Posts: 95
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 9:16 pm
Location: Oklahoma

Re: Johnny House

Post by zrp » Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:27 pm

There are folks with much more Johnny house expertise than I have on this forum. My experiences would say begin releasing those much earlier. Give them a couple days to learn where the food is and pick a dry weather day and release those 6 wk old birds. Caging quail of any age for more than a few days never works well. Those flight muscles atrophy quickly, or in this case, don't develop quickly enough. This is compounded further if they're not on the best quality game bird feed

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mm
Rank: Champion
Posts: 347
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2007 5:12 am
Location: Long Island, NY

Re: Johnny House

Post by mm » Tue Jun 25, 2019 2:33 am

I keep the food on the floor and have shelves at the top where the screen is so they can look out. the rest of the house is closed. The birds fly up to the shelf and down to the food. This develops good strong flight. I have birds who have never been out of the cage who fly like rockets. Also I dont use birds until they are at least 15 to 20 weeks old.
mm

Pedro
Rank: Junior Hunter
Posts: 94
Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:11 pm
Location: Kansas

Re: Johnny House

Post by Pedro » Tue Jun 25, 2019 8:07 am

I've always bought adult flight conditioned birds for the johnny house. Like MM my house has a shelf with wire mesh around top 1/3. Feed/water tubes at floor level, they fly up and down all day. They fly great. You'll always lose some but 20 birds will last me 2-3 months, enough time to break a dog.

Honestly prefer pigeons but I don't have a loft and have gotten lazy about trapping them.

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