The pheasants persist in laying when their eggs are stolen, and 

 by hatching the eggs under barn-yard fowls it is an easy matter 

 to have a big lot of pheasants on suitable ground. The birds 

 thrive better on valley farms, where there are good fields of 

 grain and grass, than they do in the mountains, where the 

 young birds often are decimated by cold rains and where the 

 older birds are more given to straying to seek more agreeable 

 surroundings. The dealers in pheasant foods issue small 

 booklets telling how to rear the birds, and while skilled game 

 keepers, no doubt, produce the most birds, many small breeders 

 who understand poultry have been very successful. I recently 

 have heard from some small breeders who have been very 

 successful. One says he sold three thousand eggs this year and 

 had orders for several thousand more which he could not fill. 

 The eggs sell for $25 and $30 per hundred. The live birds sell 

 for from $5 to $7 per pair. Many birds were sold as food last 

 season in the New York markets for $2.50 each. 



The methods of hand-rearing pheasants are very similar to 

 the methods of poultry rearers. Some breeders confine the 

 stock birds in large pens which contain a hundred or more 

 hens and about twenty cock birds. Little brush covers are 

 provided and the eggs are gathered daily and hatched under 

 barn-yard hens. Other breeders use many small pens each 

 containing five or six hens and one cock. 



When the young pheasants are one day old they are taken 

 with their foster mothers to a rearing field where the hens are 

 confined in coops and the chicks are permitted to run out in 

 little yards or runs inclosed by boards or wire until they are a 

 week or ten days old, when the fenders are removed and the 

 little birds are permitted to have a wider range and to chase 

 grasshoppers and other insects in the field which is inclosed with 

 chicken wire to keep out vermin. Traps are placed on poles 

 set in and about the field and the keeper shoots any hawks, 

 crows or other vermin which mav endeavor to take his birds. 



