28 PROPAGATION OF WILD BIRDS 



have thought that cocks occasionally mate with two hens. 

 The few times when I confined a cock and two hens together 

 in a small pen, no more eggs were obtained than the normal 

 number laid by one bird. Further experiments should be 

 tried, or the results published of past experiments not yet 

 made public. 



Privacy Essential. Privacy is of primary importance for 

 the successful breeding of bob-whites. They are exceedingly 

 secretive in habits, particularly in mating and breeding, and 

 skulk nearly all the time under cover, unless convinced that 

 no observer is near. It is essential that they should always 

 have abundance of brush or other thick cover, else they will 

 breed very little. Strangers should be kept away from the 

 breeding-pens, and even the keeper should approach with 

 caution and no oftener than necessary. 



Breeding in Covies. Though pheasants breed readily 

 when there are a number together in a field, it is quite differ- 

 ent with the bob-white. In an experiment which I tried, I 

 kept six pairs a whole season in a pen 30 feet square, with 

 half a dozen brush-piles. They produced only two or three 

 clutches of eggs, and that not until July and August, too 

 late to be of value. I had other bob-whites also, which de- 

 layed breeding in the same way till I caught them up and 

 put a male and female, selected at random, together in a 

 small pen or coop, as described below. Only two out of 

 eighteen hens failed to produce any eggs, and the rest each 

 laid from one to three clutches. 



A. G. MacVicar, however, has secured a good number of 

 eggs from bob-whites by both methods. For single pairs he 

 had pens 10 by 12 feet. For collective breeding he used 

 enclosures about 35 by 50 feet, about a dozen pairs in each. 

 One third of the ground space was covered with cedar brush, 

 and the rest grew to a tangle of orchard grass. It was rarely 



