FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF CHICKS 



A Keeper s Opinion on Feeding Young Pheasants 



"It is astonishing how few keepers take the trouble to 

 think out for themselves a system of feeding young 

 Pheasants. The usual way is to do just as others did before, 

 and to follow the old methods. Many of them never take 

 into account any peculiarities of climate, soil, kind of produce 

 on surrounding fields, quantity and quality of such produce, 

 the many differences of the seasons as they come and go, 

 sometimes even being more conspicuous by the absence of 

 their usual accompaniments of heat, cold, moisture, insect 

 life, etc. Of course, it needs intelligence in reading, study, 

 comparison of books, reasoning out writers' opinions, one's 

 own observation, experiments, conversation with others, 

 exercising one's own originality in ideas, adopting new 

 methods, studying sciences which might indirectly affect the 

 subject in question, as the geology of the district, and other 

 means of obtaining the best results. One finds many a 

 keeper feeding his birds in cold, wet weather, and making no 

 difference between wet and dry or cold and hot seasons 

 which occur at the same periods of the year in different years. 

 No one ought to expect that the same methods will answer 

 satisfactorily to suit different requirements in feeding and 

 rearing young Pheasants as in treating other things in natural 

 or artificial life. Some alteration of treatment must surely 

 be necessary under different circumstances. One must adapt 

 oneself to one's surroundings and become master of one's 

 circumstances and not allow circumstances to master us and 

 render us like straws floating on the ocean. Any practical 

 man will very soon learn what is really wanted on different 

 rearing-fields, for such fields differ very much in supplying 

 natural food for young Pheasants. There has been a great 

 deal of talk and writing during the last few years about what 



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