436 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



element to be considered, and if, with the best possible materials 

 in an unspent hen, his second effort at fertilisation is 60 per 

 cent, less efficient than his first, what will it be when he has 

 to deal with the resources of a hen already half exhausted ? 



The most certain way to avoid disease is to encourage the 

 production of strong, early, robust, well-grown, and well-fed 

 birds that can meet and survive the privations of a hard winter, 

 that can, if necessary, fly far afield for food, fight successfully, 

 breed early, moult quickly, and put on new feathers without 

 a check and without exhaustion. Such birds, if they are 

 cocks, should weigh from 26 to 30 ounces, should have large 

 red combs, full voices, and thick white-stockinged feet and 

 legs ; if they are hens they should weigh up to 27 ounces, 

 should moult rapidly and efficiently almost in mid-winter, 

 and after hatching out their broods should be fit to moult again 

 without still showing bare legs and weathered plumage in 

 the shooting season. 



And the other side of the question : " cheepers " too small 

 to rise twice on August 12th, hardly three parts grown when the 

 winter is upon them, barelegged, and with a scanty growth 

 of feathers replacing the chicken down, permanently undersized 

 by the following spring, forced to mate with equally undersized 

 fellows on the lower and less healthy beats where the food is 

 soft and the water laden with the unwholesome washings of 

 the hills around ; beaten and often killed in their fights for 

 the more desirable mates, they are forced later on to be content 

 with the undesirable. One can imagine such a pair losing its 

 first nest of eggs, and attempting a second. The hen is 

 already a confirmed " piner " exhausted by the production 

 of half a dozen eggs. If she attempts a second brood she is 

 likely to succumb to the intestinal parasites that infest her. 

 At the best she appears in the August bag as a dull-feathered, 

 shabby, undersized bird weighing 12 or 15 ounces instead of 

 22 or 24, or she is picked up dead with hundreds of others in 

 April and May as a " piner " which has never bred. 



This is no exaggerated picture of the life of more than 



