WIZARD LAKE, Alta. – Even Evelyn Dickhout admits she needs a marketing plan.
A kind way to describe her poultry and baking business would be “scattered.”
What started as raising a few pheasants on the central Alberta farm turned into an octopus of a businesses with Dickhout stretched in every direction.
On the farm are 2,000 pheasants, pens of wild turkeys, partridge, cornish game hens and jungle fowl. At one point she raised quail to sell the eggs at farmers’ markets.
She also baked pies, cakes, breads and buns to sell at the markets and through local restaurants and stores. She delivers pheasant meat to high-quality restaurants. And she’s perfecting pheasant patŽ and soups for local delis.
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During it all Dickhout took a three-year chef’s course at Edmonton’s Northern Alberta Institute of Technology to learn more about food. And now the grandmother wants to step back, take a deep breath and figure out which part of the business she wants to focus her energy.
“Last year I was so swamped and feeling like I needed to cut back and decide which way to go.”
With a second house in the yard, full of industrial baking equipment, walk-in freezers and coolers, she is loath to give up baking altogether. Yet there is no point continuing the business if it doesn’t make money.
Profit is important
After six years Dickhout admits pheasant raising isn’t a money-making business, but she still feels it has potential.
“You can make money, I’m sure. You just don’t need to be so spread out on everything.”
When a new business begins it is easy to get sidetracked trying a product here or selling a few pheasants there until you’re running all day. By stepping back for a few months Dickhout can see there may be more promise for the value-added products from pheasants like the pheasant patŽ or the soup stocks.
Dickhout says one of the main stumbling blocks for the industry is the lack of a federal slaughtering plant for birds. The only federal facilities for smaller operations like hers are in Manitoba and British Columbia.
“That really holds us back.”
Without the federal facility, Dickhout can only sell her birds within the province. Now she gets up before dawn and drives the truck and trailer full of birds in crates to Lakeland Poultry in St. Paul, Alta.
“I leave at 4 a.m. It’s quite the adventure, to say the least.”
Dickhout is sure there is potential for a larger pheasant industry in the province but at times she would rather not be the trail blazer for the industry. She has learned about raising the touchy birds by trial and error and government officials send potential pheasant entrepreneurs her way.
“A lot of people get into the business, but don’t last too long because it’s a lot of work. Pheasants are just such a tremendous amount of work. Soon after, the glamor goes out of it.”
