Family-owned business. Erica and Marty with their children.
The Short Version by Marty Malloy, Owner Malloy Gamebirds
Gamebirds have always been a part of my life ever since I was old enough to do chores. My family kept chickens for years. One season, Dad and I decided to order a few pheasants. Let’s just say we tried! Pheasants weren’t easy and it became a challenge for me to produce a nice looking and good flying bird. After several months of reading books and searching for answers, we decided to give it another try. This time with better results, we had our first birds to actually release to hunt. The years went by and I slowly kept experimenting with birds in different pens. This would be what I considered the start of Malloy Gamebirds!
High school came and it was time to get a real job that made money, so I went to work for a quail farmer nearby. Basically scooping you-know-what and cleaning pens was the extent of my work there at Hawkeye Quail, owned by Delos Honeck. It was a small scale quail operation of about 6,000 to 7,000 annually. Far more than my 20 pheasants! After many years of helping Delos with chores, cleaning, and some sales, I thought this could be a great side business to start up.
Future hunting buddies.
While attending college at Iowa State University, I received a bachelor’s in Animal Ecology with a minor in Horticulture. The business on the side slowly kept growing throughout those years. I increased to about 300 pheasant a year and still helped Delos with his quail business as well. Then came the year when Delos told me to try some quail, the only stipulation was that I couldn’t sell any of mine until he sold his first. Another year of no profit!
In 2002, Delos was ready to retire from his quail business so I purchased the farm and business together and started expanding operations. In 2003, I was selling nearly 8,000 quail annually and 1,500 pheasant. My lovely wife Erica, who also has a degree in Animal Ecology, joined the craziness in 2008. We added Scout, a labrador in 2009, our son, Garrett came along in 2012, and daughter Keira in 2014. In 2015 we raised 20,000 mature quail, 10,000 mature pheasant, and 1,500 chukar along with shipping out over 40,000 eggs.
With expansion on the farm every year, we’ve set our goals to raise over 25,000 mature quail, 14,000 mature pheasant, 3,500 mature chukar and to ship 100,000 eggs. We continue to set goals annually and strive to produce great flying, healthy birds for all of our customers to enjoy. Give me a call at 641-485-9053 and let me know how we can put our experience to work and meet your gamebird needs.