Actually, the stories are the ones that didn't.  Nothing quite like a dog with dead-fish breath, or worse, Dead-fish smell from rolling in it .  Lake-house is a good 3 hour car drive, and it always seemed like we were caught in traffic around Chicago when she got one...  Sophie never did have good manners...

Back to the topic - no real issues hunting the dogs on pen-raised birds, or is the OP comment about his buddy that only hunts on wild birds (I think 10 - 15 birds in the dogs lifetime was the comment...) the preferred.  I don't think that (only wild birds) is a good thing for the dog.  I would rather keep my dogs on pen raised birds more often than wild birds that occasionally.

The Brit did not do well she has no idea what she is suppost to do as far as I could tell. I found several things interesting for one Bill asked me like he could not believe I did it, why I didn't hunt my dogs on a check cord. Then he could not believe I let Murphy range out the way I did, He acted surprised when Murphy locked down and held point for four or five mins till we got there. On the way to Murphy we found Greta on point so stopped and picked up the single she had found with Murphy staying on point through the shot and Greta's retrieve. I explained to Bill that I try and shoot between 100 and 200 birds over my dogs every year (In my area this could not be done with hunting only wild birds because of their numbers).

   As to my two pointing non game birds Murphy ignores everything except quail, pheasent, and chuckers in fact he even has a pecking order for them. To Murphy quail trumps pheasent and chuckers in fact once or twice I have seen him leave a point on one of those two when he has winded quail in the same area. Greta points all three equally and also pigeons and of all things turtles (she is one of the great turtle hunters of the bird dog world even though she gets bored pointing them after awhile and picks them up and brings them to me since I won't walk over and flush them) also rabbits but unlike birds or turtles you can tell a rabbit point cause her tail wags ever so slowly when pointing a rabbit. While hunting in my area I have ran into a few woodcocks both dogs will point them but encounters are maybe one or two a year and I refuse to shot them since I would feel like I had to eat it then.

So, I guess then the conclusion would be that Wild birds are prefered, where available. Where not available, experience with birds is preferable to no experience.

Is there any risk associated with hunting pen-raised birds? In thinking about this last night, I believe this may be a hard question to answer definitively. I realize that a dog raised on pen-raised bird hunting will probably not have the finesse necessary to immediately hunt-up wild-birds as effectively as a dog brought up on wild birds only, but is there increased confidence that they could learn such skills? What are the risks associated (if any) to bringing-up a dog on pen-raised birds, and are they able to be over-come?