PHEASANTS IN COVERT AND AVIARY 



broods begin to die in a wholesale manner, one is naturally 

 forced to the conclusion that some specific, though un- 

 determined, infective disease producing agency, is at 

 work, and that its channels of communicability either 

 reside in the food, water, feeding vessels, coops, hands 

 of the attendants, or the ground upon which the birds 

 are reared. 



It is only by what may be termed a " process of exclusion," 

 isolation and disinfection, that such specific maladies can be 

 curtailed, more rarely stamped out. It is impossible to 

 dissociate heavy mortalities either in the rearing-field or 

 on the removal of the birds to the covert from specific 

 infectious causes, and as previously stated, the determination 

 of the actual causative agency is, as a rule, one of great 

 difficulty ; therefore, the moral is, to aim at prevention, and 

 if this fails, to attack the disease, by what the writer has 

 previously termed a "process of exclusion," which implies 

 thorough disinfection of all articles capable of being treated 

 by such disinfectants ; the immediate removal of the birds 

 as yet unaffected to fresh ground ; the destruction of all 

 sickly ones ; a change of food, also of the water supplied ; 

 together with strict personal supervision of the birds, which 

 really constitutes one of the first duties of a head-keeper 

 in spite of the fact that his under-man may be thoroughly 

 reliable. 



There are so many details in connection with Pheasant- 

 rearing that any single individual may easily overlook 

 some of these, and the most trifling causes not infre- 

 quently form the nucleus or starting-point of what sub- 

 sequently turns into a most disastrous season for the 

 Pheasant-rearer. 



Most Pheasant-rearers will admit, I believe, that the 

 best aviaries are those which can be shifted every season, 



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