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o}OK0 PHEASANT FARMING reais 
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A correspondent in a recent sporting magazine says: 
“A mistake was made with the first attempts to 
raise pheasants in captivity in supposing them polyg- 
amous, but the failure which resulted of grouping 
seven hens to a cock soon taught a lesson. Even on 
the trial of two hens to a cock, the eggs lacked vitality, 
and of the chicks hatched many died. A breeder in 
Oregon uses but one hen to a cock, and this is said to 
be the habit of their wild state.” 
Nothing could be more misleading than this. Captivity seems 
to change the habits of the bird entirely. The hen rarely ever makes 
a pretense at laying in a nest, much less set and hatch a brood of 
young pheasants. The cock becomes decidedly polygamous. He 
will instantly kill a young bird, if placed in the same enclosure. The 
percentage of fertility of all pheasant eggs is remarkably great. It 
is not at all uncommon for every egg to hatch, and the writer has for 
many years mated from four to six hens with one cock, the latter 
number invariably when the yard is sufficiently large. 
In captivity, a single Chinese pheasant hen has been known to 
lay 104 eggs in one season, extending from April Ist to September 
Ist, but sixty eggs is perhaps a fair average. In the wild state, the 
pheasant seldom roosts in a tree, and then only in one that is open, 
so it is in confinement. While they may stay in the shedded part of 
their pen in the daytime, just at dusk they select a place with an 
open sky above them in which to pass the night, and this, too, re- 
gardless of the inclemency of the weather. They seem to be indif- 
ferent to snow and rain and after a night out in the rain, appear 
none the worse for the drenching. They commonly roost on the 
ground with feathers drawn down tight to the body. 
The charge is occasionally made in opposition to stocking with 
Chinese pheasants that the pheasant kills off and drives away the 
native game birds. I have made many inquiries 
Effect on extending over a considerable period of time, of men 
DEN ey CABO “ho would be in a position to know, and the facts 
: G : : 2 ng . facts 
Birds W 10 \ ( « } sie c 
as I find them disprove this charge, except to a 
very limited extent. 
I recently received a letter from a lawyer friend who has made 
a study of Chinese pheasants and who, I feel, has the situation sized 
up correctly. In speaking of the indictment against the pheasant 
as being responsible for the death of the quail, the native pheasant 
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