CHAPTER YII. 



MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN CONFINEMENT (CONTINUED). 



LAYINe AND HATCHING. 



r the laying in aviaries there is but little to he said. The birds 

 usually drop their eggs about at random, consequently they should 

 be looked after, and collected frequently, so as to prevent as far 

 as possible their being broken, which is alpapst certain to establish 

 the destructive habit of egg eating. Sometimes, however, hen 

 pheasants will take to concealed nests, and instances are not 

 unknown of their sitting and hatching successfully in confinement. 

 A correspondent states : " In 1852 I had a cook and three hens in a 

 small place (I will not dignify it by the name of an aviary, for it is 

 open at the top, and the birds are pinioned or have their wings cut) ; 

 one of the hens made a nest, and sat and hatched five young ones. 

 These, unfortunately, the other pheasants MUed directly they came from 

 under the mother. In 1853, the same hen sat agaia on eleven eggs, and hatched 

 seven, when I let her out into my small garden, and a better mother I never 

 saw; she would allow no strangers to come near her without flying at them. At 

 the end of seven weeks, the gapes killed them all. It was a curious sight to see 

 the old pheasant make her nest of ivy-leaves and hay, the former of which she 

 always used to cover her eggs with when she left her nest, doing so by standing 

 on the edge, and throwing the leaves over her back. The same hen sat again 

 in 1854" 



Mr. G. P. Woodrow (Keeper to the Earl of Denbigh, Newnham Paddox, 

 liutterworth), writing on the subject stated : " I have half an acre of young 

 plantation inclosed for a pheasantry and open at ' the top, so that the wild cock 

 birds can go ia and out. I had over thirty hen pheasants and three cocks, all 

 with their wings cut. About ten weeks ago a hen pheasant wanted to sit on the 

 last egg that she layed; I took it from her, and disturbed her every day, but she 

 persisted in sitting without an egg for more than a week; at last I took pity on 

 her. One evening when I had gathered the eggs I put sixteen under her, and she 



