84 Practical Game Preserving. 



Of course, partridge rearing is never so extensive a 

 business as the production of a stock of pheasants. If you 

 rear a dozen of the latter, and turn them out on a farm or 

 estate of 100 acres or so, by the end of twelve months 

 they will probably have reached the commanding total of 

 six ; but if, on the other hand, you put away a pair or two 

 of the " nut-browns," they will make a twelve-monthly 

 increase of three or four times their number, so that a 

 stock of partridges being once established, very little addi- 

 tion to their numbers is necessary. For the same reason, 

 the arrangements for the hand-rearing of partridges never 

 require to be on the same scale as those for the more 

 aristocratic game bird. Hand-rearing partridges may be 

 undertaken by the large preserver or the farmer of a fifty 

 acre holding. In the former case, we have all our appliances 

 for the annual pheasant breeding on hand, and can utilise 

 them accordingly. The first step is, of course, the acqui- 

 sition of eggs. These can be bought from a recognised 

 reliable source, arranged for with the neighbouring pre- 

 servers not their keepers, be it remarked or taken from 

 the nests on the place. We are speaking now of large 

 shootings. Like the pheasant, the partridge invariably 

 hatches from 25 to 50 per cent, more birds out than it 

 rears. The remainder die off from various causes, rarely 

 purely natural ones. Consequently, if at nesting time we 

 search out our partridge nests, and relieve them of the 

 superabundant eggs, they stand a much better chance of 

 producing full-grown partridges eventually, and the hen bird 

 can expend all her maternal energies on the less numerous 

 progeny. At nesting time a thorough keeper and an 



