To: MRP participants and Banders
Pick up will be Saturday August 3, 2002
Time 8 AM Caney Creek Farm near north Sauty Waterfowl Refuge (See
Map)
Balance due on pick up; make checks to Alabama Waterfowl Association, Inc.
Bring your own cages a big dog box or chicken coup will hold about 25-30 ducks
AWA is very sorry to announce that all 2002 AWA orders will be cut by 50 percent due to mother nature, Frost Waterfowl ran into an unforeseen problem caused by a drought this summer. The drought caused egg reduction at Frost Waterfowl Trust's facility in South Carolina. Many waterfowl biologists had always explained to me, that when North America experienced a drought in the reproduction areas of the United States and Canada that the reason the reduction occurred was because of lack of suitable nesting habitat and less water means that, the ducks or more susceptible to depredation. A duck without water is a dead duck. Jim Hills a waterfowl biologist and owner of Frost Waterfowl Trust stated "A wealth of information was learned from this experience at Frost. Frost's biologists found that the egg production decreased if the hens did not experience rain on them and wet condition in their environment. The last few weeks to get any egg production we have had to turn sprinklers on the hens to get them to increase their egg production. This has been a learning experience and we plan to offset this unforeseen problem by increasing our brood hens in the future. I can assure you that Frost would have preferred to fill all orders this would have increased our return on this tremendous investment at our new facility.
This is another example of the Mallard Restoration Projects that are teaching our waterfowl scientists about effects of dry cycles and other beneficial information on our North American waterfowl. This condition would have taken a lot of funds and research to find this out in the wild. I think it is time for our waterfowl managers to listen and learn from the states the have been working with hand reared mallards (Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina)
This is beyond AWA's control.
Thanks for your continued support of AWA's Mallard Restoration Project
Sincerely,
Jerry D. Davis, CEO