Our “main” farm (where our office is located and our maintenance shop, etc) was acquired by my dad from John Lasse in 1953. Right across the highway is another farm, purchased by my dad from John’s brother Alfred Lasse around 1957. In the 60’s and 70’s we had breeders and also many small brooder houses located on what was Alfred’s farm. But we tore down the brooder houses, and removed the breeder pens and the land has simply been farmed for about 30 years.
Day 1- before posts were pounded in
We now call what was Alfred’s farm, the Center Farm. It is a 65 acre piece of land. The Center Farm has the best soil profile for raising pheasants of any farm I’ve ever seen. There is about 4” of topsoil on top of hundreds of feet of sand. The land is gently rolling. Last year we constructed a Hungarian Partridge brooder barn and about 8 acres of pens on the west part of the Center Farm.
This year we are constructing 20 acres of pheasant pens on the Center Farm. We had a surveyor come out and layout the pens with Chris Theisen and me. Then Chris and I met with a gravel contractor (Bjoin) and made decisions about moving some soil around before we built the pen. We contracted to have an irrigation well dug (that can pump 300+ gallons per minute) and installed underground irrigation pipe to not only the newly constructed pens, but to the Hungarian partridge pens too.
All the posts for the 20 acre pen are in the ground. 5 acres is fertilized and planted, and will be completed by June 15th. We went with our standard dimensions 80’ X 150” pens with perimeter posts 4’ in the ground spaced every 10’ on center. With these new pens, we now have over 200 acres under net.
Day 18- after the posts were in
Day 18- the main road through the pen