Hello Tweeters, Gail Aslanian wrote me privately to tell me that the Cowtown
farm owner is Maynard Axelson who is a founder of the Washington Brant
Foundation (www.washingtonbrant.org). As such I'm assuming that those in
the WBRC are in contact with him about escapes in the Skagit area (as in the
Falcated Duck from 2002). He must have a game farm license from the WA WDFW
or maybe some sort of special license since he's involved in the Brant
Foundation.

Just for the sake of knowing, I found that you must have a game farm license
to raise these birds legally (I'm not completely sure, the website is kind
of patchy on this issue) and also it is limited to: "pheasant of the genus
Phasianius; gray partridge of the genus Perdix; chukar partridge of genus
Alectoris; quail of the genus Lophorthyz Colinus, Callipepia (sic.), and
Oreotyx (sic.); and water fowl of the family Anatidae."
(http://wdfw.wa.gov/lic/special.pdf) It goes on to mention there is some
criteria stated in the WA Administrative Code, so there may be some
stipulations. The inclusion of Anatidae would make it legal to raise any of
the "puddle ducks" such as: Mallard, BLACK DUCK (of which Cowtown also had a
few, forgot to include in previous message), Wigeon Sp., Garganey, Baikal
Teal, etc... The included game birds would be (assumed since the genus
names are slightly different from my books): Mountain Quail, Bobwhite,
Scaled Quail, California Quail, and Gambel's Quail.

Interesting stuff, especially since it's very difficult to find info online
about raising exotic waterfowl. If you go to some of the association pages
they have links pages, but most are broken links. I eventually signed up
for the Yahoo groups International Waterfowl Breeders just to see what they
are discussing and also how many people are into this (217 members).

Jason Paulios
Jpaulios at earthlink.net
Olympia, WA