QUAIL PROPAGATION METHODS 41 



he considers a cause of indigestion. Only enough for one 

 feed should be scalded at a time, as it sours very quickly. 

 Sometimes he uses instead Spratt's pheasant meal No. 12, 

 fine, but prefers the chick-grain for this purpose, and thinks 

 that breeders are doing this more. He does not use flies or 

 maggots, believing that they spread diseases; both, he finds, 

 are going out of fashion. In England they use boiled rabbit, 

 chopped up, for animal food, mixing it with boiled broken 

 rice just cooked through, not mushy. Rice has a constipat- 

 ing effect, and rice-water is also used to secure this. Chopped 

 suet he finds good to bring birds to proper condition. He 

 advises against sudden changes from one food to another. 



He is one of the school which does not believe in having 

 water left standing before young pheasants or quails. He 

 says he has seen young pheasants drink from a dish of sun- 

 heated water and fall dead. Until his birds are ten days 

 old they are given no water except what is in their food. 

 After that he fills their water dishes twice a day, and empties 

 them again in a short time. Ludwig Seidler also follows 

 this plan, and there are others not a few. On the other hand, 

 Wallace Evans always keeps water before his young gallina- 

 ceous stock, and raises them by thousands, without any 

 such trouble. 



Table of Feeding. For convenience I give a table for the 

 feeding of young quails, or other species, rather as a line of 

 suggestion than to be slavishly followed: 



FOOD TABLE FOR YOUNG QUAILS OR OTHER 

 GALLINACEOUS SPECIES 



First Week. Four or five meals a day, or every two 

 hours in minute quantities : 



1. Egg or custard. 



2. Same, or curd. 



