TORRINGTON – On Wednesday, November 26, the Goshen County Historical Society welcomed Ben Milner, Wyoming Game and Fish Downar Game Bird Farm Coordinator to the podium for a presentation on the bird farm, located near Hawk Springs. 

The meeting was called to order by president Mary Houser and then election information was announced. With no open nominations from the floor, Marge Myers was nominated by the board as president. There were no floor nominations for vice president. The board nominated Houser to serve and assist Myers. After a presentation of flowers for Houser’s service to the society as president, the board moved on to the presentation.

Milner was introduced to the crowd in attendance by Houser. 

“Does everybody know, where the Downer Bird Farm is, by chance?” Milner began. “So, we sit just south of town, just between Yoder and Hawksprings, right off the highway. It’s a Wyoming Game and Fish Department facility, so I work for the State of Wyoming.” 

Milner went on to provide some history on the bird farm noting the state bird farm program began in 1938 at the Sheridan Bird Farm with a purpose in mind. 

“The whole purpose of the bird farm was to created just to allow put-and-take hunting for game birds. There was a lot of this new agriculture land that was popping up as people spread out and started farms and ranches and everything else. They decided we needed to have a program, because everybody wanted to have birds that grouse were kind of in limited supply and wouldn’t sustain hunting pressure,” Milner explained. 

The department tried to raise several different species of game birds, trying to find the ideal bird to survive the new environment. 

“They started with pheasants, Ring Neck Pheasants. They tried chuckers. They tried Hungarian Partridge. They tried a bird called a Franklin. They tried a bird called the Himalayan Snowcock. They went through a variety of different game birds and they finally settled on raising pheasants, because they were pretty close to raising chickens,” Milner said.

According to Milner, raising pheasants is easy, hunters enjoy the sport of hunting them and they are easy to release, thanks to technology. 

“That’s what we raise. We only raise pheasants at both farms, but in 1938, it was just the Sheridan Bird Farm. It predated a lot of incubators and stuff that they used to incubate eggs. They would gather laying hens from the surrounding farmers and they’d pay rent, $2 per chicken, they’d gather the eggs from the pheasants and stick the eggs under the laying hens and they would hate out the pheasants that we would release into the wild,” Milner explained. “Thank goodness, we don’t do that anymore. We have great big machines and everything that do it for [us].”

The Downar Bird Farm was built in 1963 because a portion of land had been donated to the department from the Downar family. 

“The game and fish personnel actually built the pens. There were some houses built and it started out relatively small. The initial plan for the Downar Bird Farm was just to stock the Spring Wildlife Habitat Unit that’s right there next to the bird farm,” Milner explained. “They started out only raising about 5,000 pheasants a year and they’d release them right there for hunting.”

Milner expressed the farm also releases the hatched pheasants to establish the species in new areas.

“So, not only would we release them for hunting but we’re releasing them out in suitable habitat around the state to try and get wild populations established. It became evident back in the early 80s that pheasants were established wherever they could be established. Then we changed to a complete put-and-take hunt,” Milner explained. “Every bird we raise we expect to be harvested by hunters.”

According to Milner, without this program, hunting in Wyoming would look much different, with basically no public pheasant hunting.

“We went from the 5-6,000 birds that we raised in ’63 to today we’’ hatch out right about 22,000 chicks,” Milner said. “The funny thing is, there were two full-time people that raised 5-6,000 birds in ’63 and there’s two people that raise 22,000 chicks in 2024.”

Milner explained they do hire additional help during their busy season from April to the end of August. 

“They help us with egg collection, raising the chicks and that’s really the most labor-intensive part,” Milner said.

Milner brought a collection of pheasant “goodies” with him and he explained the importance changing the equipment as the birds grow. 

The meeting continued well into the evening where it concluded with a short discussion on future meetings from Marilyn Pettit. An announcement was made noting there would be no meeting in December.