Farmer's Market

Bird business soars

Quail and pheasant - which can't survive in the wild in our climate - are raised on a Sydney farm and then sold to hunters.

By JAY CRIDLIN
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 7, 2003

SYDNEY -- Advertising, Gary Timbes says, can really put a dent in the checkbook of a fledgling business. Some billboard companies ask for thousands of dollars, and for a rural farmer like Timbes, that just isn't an option.

Hence Timbes' sign: "Sportsmans Quail & Pheasant Farm, 719-6041."

Drive west on State Road 60 toward Brandon, and the hand-painted, stencil-block letter sign, Timbes' sole foray into advertising, jumps right out.

"My best bang for my buck has been that sign down on 60," he says. "I've done real well off that sign."

Indeed. Within two years of opening Sportsmans Quail and Pheasant Farm, Timbes has already agreed to supply more than 6,500 quail and pheasant for hunters across the state next hunting season.

In Florida, quail and pheasant hunting isn't as simple as taking your bird dog out to the woods. The climate is not conducive for the birds' survival in the wild, so in order to be hunted, they must first be bred and raised.

"Then you just turn them loose, and take your dogs out and hunt them," says Timbes, who is licensed by the Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Timbes' handmade quail and pheasant pens are the centerpiece of his 12-acre Sydney farm, just a couple of miles from that sign on S.R. 60.

"It's a fairly simple operation, but it takes a lot of time," he says. "It took me every day, eight to 10 hours a day, six days a week, for about three months, just welding and putting that material up."

Owning a quail and pheasant farm had been Timbes' dream for decades. Back in the late '70s and early '80s, he tried to start one, but it wasn't until two years ago that he finally had the resources to open Sportsmans Quail and Pheasant Farm.

Soon, word spread throughout the hunting community; now he has customers from as far away as Stuart. Some even buy single birds for dinner.

"In younger days, I was a quail hunter, so I love to eat 'em," says Gary Crossfield of Brandon. "There, I can get fresh birds and actually clean them myself. That way, I know how they're handled and prepared."

Crossfield says he's bought about 15 pheasants and 50 quail from Timbes. In December, he prepared them for friends at Christmas dinner.

"The birds are very good, very well taken care of, very fresh," he says.

Timbes has two pens, each about 75 feet by 25 feet, and an incubator -- replete with fan, heater and humidifier -- that stores about 2,400 eggs at a time.

By November, the start of the four-month season, he'll have up to 5,000 birds. Already, he's under contract to produce about 1,500 pheasant and 5,000 quail.

To ensure a healthy crop of birds, Timbes separates the egg-laying birds from the non-layers, and minimizes human contact with all of them to prevent any possible illnesses.

As they're raised, he puts them through a workout. Walls in his pens force the birds to exercise their wings as they fly from food to water.

This makes the birds act more like wild fowl, a quality not lost on Timbes' customers.

"I was raised on wild birds, and they fly like rockets," says Fletcher McKinney of Auburndale, who has hunted with Timbes a number of times. "Oftentimes, when you buy these released pen-raised birds, they don't get up and fly off like they should.

"But I've found that Gary's birds really do get up and move on. That's impressive to someone that wants to quail hunt."

The quail grow to about 10 to 15 ounces; the pheasant, three to five pounds. When they're full size, Timbes sells them to hunters and hungry customers.

Timbes also takes groups of hunters out to leased property on the eastern edge of the county to hunt both kinds of bird. A quail hunter himself, Timbes says running the farm is the perfect job.

"It's like any other business," he says. "If you don't want to get up and do it, it isn't worth doing."

And as long as that sign down the road is still standing, he says Sportsmans Quail and Pheasant Farm has a good chance of expanding.

"Every day it grows a little bit," he says. "You pick up a new customer here, a new customer there.

"I've not taken on any companies yet, but that'll come. It's just a matter of time. The word gets out, and people will realize that I'm close by."