v. PHEASANT READING (PAKT IV) 75 



You may calculate on ten coops to the acre, each 

 coop containing fourteen to sixteen chicks. For 

 example, a square ten-acre (220 yds. x 220 yds.) field 

 will nicely accommodate 100 coops, twenty yards 

 apart, and none of them within 20 yds. of the hedge. 



Arrange that the grass is short, from being 

 cropped close by stock or sheep previous to placing 

 the coops and chicks in the field. You can then keep 

 the birds well under notice at a helpless age, and they 

 will not be soaked to death in long herbage. 



Whatever be the field chosen, it is most important 

 that vermin traps be set all round its boundaries from 

 the day you decide to employ it for rearing, which 

 will be several weeks before it is in use; and a keeper 

 should of. course continue to trap incessantly during 

 its occupation by the young pheasants.* 



THE TREATMENT OF PHEASANT EGGS BEFORE SETTING ' 

 THEM UNDER THE HENS 



It is not always possible to set pheasant eggs just 

 as they are gathered from the aviary or from the 



* Work away at the vermin in the spring ; slay and kill, slay and 

 kill. Partridges, especially, are said to be drowned in wet weather 

 (particularly in that one famous thunderstorm), and to have all 

 tumbled into cracks in the land in dry weather! Don't believe 

 it ; if you see a pair of old birds with a brocd of three to five, it is 

 much more probable that the missing youngsters have supplied a 

 dinner from time to time to weasels and stoats, or that the eggs were 

 taken from the nests by jackdaws, magpies, or jays. 



