FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF CHICKS 



pay sufficient attention to this matter. If a coop is shut 

 up at night, it ought to be provided with proper ventilation, 

 as no birds will ever thrive when they are compelled to 

 inhale for hours air that has been practically poisoned by 

 their own breathing. As previously stated, the open-air 

 coop, with covered-in run attached, if produced at a reason- 

 able price, is the sort that ought to be used, provided that 

 it is made portable, light and easy of transference from one 

 part of the rearing-field to another. A fault with some 

 gamekeepers is that they allow their coops to remain too 

 long on one site. Coops should be shifted daily. 



Healthy Pheasant chicks ought to grow like cucumbers, 

 and, given sound stock to start with, and proper feeding, 

 serious losses ought not to occur. Every Pheasant-rearer 

 is bound to have a certain number of weakly chicks as well 

 as a certain number of deaths, both being features inseparable 

 from the art of Pheasant-rearing, but when chick after chick 

 begins to die, the keeper should make an effort to ascertain 

 the cause and cut short the loss in its initial stages. 



For the first three days. Pheasant chicks should be fed 

 four times per day, commencing the first feed early in the 

 morning, say at six o'clock, and subsequent feeds at intervals 

 of three hours, the last one being at a corresponding time 

 to the morning feed. These hours of feeding should be 

 continued until the chicks are a fortnight old, when they may 

 be slightly modified, the first feeding in the morning being 

 given at seven o'clock, and subsequently every three hours, 

 up to the end of the second month, when it will only be 

 necessary to feed three times a day, namely, early morning, 

 midday and early evening, the last feed being given before 

 the chickens begin to go to roost. 



Regularity of feeding is a sine qua non, therefore the 

 keeper must always endeavour to be up to time in this 



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