In the early part of our marriage, when our children were 6 and 7 years of age and due to my husband's poor health, we decided to turn my husband's hobby into a family business. This way when he was sick or in the hospital, the family would not suffer financially. We started out with 100 quail chicks. As they matured and began laying eggs, we built a 12'X 16' building and set up a small incubator in the garage. To make a long story short, the 100 chicks ended up to be 68,000, which we raised out to maturity; of course that was with a lot of add-ons to the buildings. This was a learning experience for the entire family. As the birds got sick from time to time as they always do, the children and I went from lab to lab trying to find out what was wrong with them and what to do for them. We were really fortunate to have doctors in those labs that would allow my children to sit up on the counter and watch him dissect the birds to find out what the problem was and stop the disease. Each of us learned from one sickness to another what to do for the quail and finally my husband was able to meet with someone in Raleigh and get approval to put certain medications into the feed to prevent some of the diseases that were more common. The family ran this business until we were burned out of our home and had to close the business down and move into one of the quail houses that we remodeled to make our home. We were out of the business for over 20 years. It had always been our dream to buy land and retire on it. We later purchased well over 100 acres in Harmony, NC where we had already helped get started a hatching business for quail. The next year after finding out that we could not live on social security alone, we built our first quail house then the next year built another larger one. We now have our own breeders, hatch our own chicks, and raise them for use on our shooting preserve (Quail Haven Shooting Preserve and Farm). We sell to other preserves through our agent Ronald Cass as well. We pride ourselves on the best quality quail that are really good fliers. Some of our hunters say that they are more like wild birds because they get up and fly out of the field, so you had better not miss them. My husband Lloyd builds most of the equipment used in the hatching part here on the farm. Our son Tip also helps out on the preserve part time. The quail business that we had years ago was all done by hand; now everything is automated.
Update:
We have added two single stage skeet platforms which are pictured on the site. We have also added a pistol range as well with a couple of early pictures of it, too.
In the future, we will be offering horseshoe pits, and an archery range as well. Keep visiting, as we are often updating this site with more pictures and information.