PHEASANTS 283 



is for this that daily movable pens are the best, because they 

 allow the pheasants to get grass shoots, which, however, are not 

 the most suitable kind of green food. Onions, lettuce, cabbage, 

 turnip tops, turnips themselves, and apples are all useful ; but if 

 the grass is full of clover none of these will be necessary. 

 Naturally everything depends upon the quality of the grass and 

 whether the birds eat it or not. Boiled nettles are useful, but 

 vegetable is best given to old birds uncooked, except when 

 potatoes are used. They have been known to eat the fresh 

 uncurled sprouts of the bracken, but the pheasant farmer who 

 relied on this kind of food would not be likely to make his 

 fortune. Fresh smashed-up bone seems to be necessary for the 

 well-being of laying birds, and of course grit that is, small 

 gravel, and if this has its origin in the seashore it will probably 

 contain enough shell of sea-fish to make a supply of bone 

 unnecessary. 



The choice of food for penned pheasants will depend largely 

 upon prejudice and circumstance. Of necessity grain of some 

 kind will be the stand-by. If it is desired to keep the same hen 

 pheasants for laying for several years, but little Indian corn will 

 be employed in the best regulated establishments. It does not 

 matter that this food, like acorns, spoils the flavour of the flesh, 

 but it does matter that the birds become too fat inside for health. 

 Probably the first season they do not show a loss of egg pro- 

 ductiveness, but later they do. Maize in the coverts, to keep 

 the birds at home when they scramble for food in every field, is 

 less objectionable than for birds that do not get much exercise 

 and live in want of it. Barley, oats, beans, peas, and wheat are 

 all useful in turn ; and besides, as the breeding season comes on, 

 a warm breakfast of cooked oat or barley meal is useful. 

 Greaves are remnants from the soap boilers', and are not very 

 reliable foods ; but if fresh meat can be obtained, a little of it 

 stewed to rags in the water in which the food is afterwards 

 cooked is distinctly useful in egg-producing time, but is not 

 necessary then, and certainly is not so at any other period after 

 the birds are half grown. At the same time, to make up for the 

 absence of slugs to the penned pheasant, the author would always 



