CALAP TE Rayer. 
MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN CONFINEMENT (CONTINUED). 
REARING THE YOUNG BIRDS. 
UCCESS in the rearing of young birds, it cannot be too strongly 
impressed on the inexperienced pheasant rearer, is never the reward 
of those who practise perpetual intermeddling with the sitting hens. 
Wee § All interference at the time the eggs are hatching is injurious ; 
©, nevertheless, there are fussy people who cannot imagine that 
anything can progress rightly without their assistance; when the 
eggs are chipping they disturb the fowl to see how many are 
billed ; this is generally resented by the hen, who sinks down on 
her eggs, and most probably crushes one or two of them, and 
Ve thus renders the escape of the young birds almost impossible. It is 
2 perfectly true that sometimes an unhatched bird that would otherwise 
be unable to extricate itself, may be assisted out of the shell and survive, 
but it is no less certain that for one whose life is preserved in this manner a 
score are sacrificed to the meddling curiosity of the interferer. 
The chicks should be left under the hen till they are twenty-four hours old 
without being disturbed; by this time the yolk which is absorbed into the intestines 
at the period of hatching will have been digested, and the young birds become 
strong enough to run from under the parent hen. If the fowl is set in one of the 
coops with a wire run, such as I have recommended, she had better be left alone, 
_and will leave the nest herself as soon as the chicks are strong enough to follow 
her. The ridiculous practice of taking the young birds as soon as hatched, dipping 
their bills in water or milk to teach them to drink, and forcing down their delicate 
throats whole pepper corns or grains of barley, is so opposed to common sense that 
it does not need to be refuted. When young pheasants and fowls are hatched in 
a state of nature, they are usually much stronger and more vigorous than those 
reared under the care of man (unless, indeed, the season be so wet as to be 
injurious to the wild birds), although they are not crammed with pepper corns and 
other nostrums, but have to seek their first food for themselves. Nature is far 
cS, 
