THE LUCK OF PHEASANT- REARING 87 



duck for pheasants would be saved to-day by the ever- 

 ready incubator. 



While pheasant-rearing is chiefly a matter of skill, 

 luck plays a part in success, and of course a light 

 warm soil, a good situation, a good supply of natural 

 food, and good weather make all the difference. 

 If eighty eggs hatch out in a hundred this is con- 

 sidered good ; if less than seventy hatch, this is bad. 

 A keeper may congratulate himself if he turns a 

 thousand pheasants into covert from fifteen hundred 

 eggs set ; anything below one bird turned into 

 covert from two eggs is considered a poor result. 

 Keepers believe that chicks cannot be hatched too 

 late in May or too early in June. 



After about twenty-four days the eggs hatch, 

 and the little chicks are taken with the hens to coops 

 placed in readiness in the rearing-field ; a place so 

 jealously guarded by the keeper as to be in his eyes 

 sacred land. Four or five times daily the chicks 

 must be fed at first on eggs, to which is added later 

 a mixture of biscuit-meal, rice, greaves, and small 

 bird-seed, until boiled corn becomes the staple food. 

 Every night the chicks must be shut carefully into 

 their coops a long and tiresome task. The danger 

 of enteritis looms up ten thousand chicks may be 

 swept off in a week. When five or six weeks old, 

 chicks, hens, and coops are carted away in waggons 

 to the woods, where the chicks must face the dangers 

 of vermin by night as well as by day until they learn 

 to go to roost. 



