20 



THE GAME BREEDER 



hardier, grow and develop quicker, and 

 the adult male bird averages about half 

 a pound more in weight, and of course 

 they are perfectly fertile hybrids. 



Our worst enemies are dogs, cats, 

 'possums, etc., which do a great deal of 

 ' damage sometimes and keep us busy. To 

 give an instance of the way the o'possum 

 multiplies, we once captured an old fe- 

 male and kept her in a pen where she 

 gave birth to 13 and raised them all. 

 When they got to be of goodly propor- 

 tions, we chopped them up and fed them 

 to the pheasants. Another occasional 

 loss is when you find that a setting hen 

 has killed all the little pheasants as soon 

 as they hatch. This is more than you 

 asked her to do and causes a slight 

 strain on the temper. With best 

 wishes for The Game Breeder. 



Breeding Pin Tails, Teal and Other 

 Fowl. 



One of our Illinois readers, Mr. C. 

 H. Harris, in answer to our inquiry 

 about the breeding of pintailed ducks 

 writes: "In regard to raising pintail 

 or sprigtail ducks, I have had them for 

 three or four years and never had one 

 , to lay an egg. A Mr. Walter Evans 

 tells me he has one once in a while to 

 lay. The same may be said of teal. I 

 have a few black or dusky mallards and 

 have had them four years but I have 

 never seen an egg from them. Tiger 

 Brant and Snow geese have never bred 

 for me. They will mate and the goose 

 will get big behind like she was going 

 to lay. A Brant gander will mate with 

 a tame goose and their eggs will hatch. 

 Wild geese breed well but they will have 

 to be three years old before they will 

 breed. Egyptian geese the same. I 

 have had very good success with them 

 but find they are terrible fighters. One 

 gander killed a sprig and two green- 

 heads the other day. I have to keep 

 them in pairs during the breeding sea- 

 son. If one of their young gets away 

 for a day or so they will kill it when it 

 gets with them again. They lay from 

 6 to 8 eggs." 



Since variety in shooting as well as 

 on the table is pleasing, it is to be hoped 

 that the breeders will succeed in breed- 

 ing sprigtails, teal and other water 

 fowl. The fact that the green-head of 

 the barnyards is a common duck, des- 

 cended evidently from the mallard, 

 would seem to indicate that our ancestors 

 found this the easiest duck to domesti- 

 cate. One mistake some breeders make 

 in beginning their experiments is, they 

 do not give their ducks enough conceal- 

 ment. The wild duck requires cover just 

 as the quail and grouse do. The black 

 ducks, teal and pintails have been known 

 to nest and hatch their young in captiv- 

 :iy about secluded marshes and ponds , 

 where the ducks could conceal their 

 nests. Eggs taken from ducks nesting 

 in such places can undoubtedly be hatched 

 under hens and the young ducks should 

 be comparatively tame and it would 

 seem that their descendants should be as 

 easily handled as mallards now are. One 

 of our Long Island readers had no trou- 

 ble with the black ducks. 



It is true in England also, that com- 

 paratively few teal and other ducks be- 

 sides the mallards are hand-reared. It 

 is to be hoped that our readers will get 

 busy and see what they can do with the 

 species which thus far have not been 

 reared abundantly. There is a rare 

 chance for experimental work in Louis- 

 iana and Florida, as well as in the Da- 

 kotas, and in fact everywhere, since the 

 teal and Florida dusky ducks and some 

 others nest in a wild state in the South 

 and many ducks should be reared from 

 New England to Oregon and Washing- 

 ton, when we have the secret of how to 

 handle them. 



We hope this subject will be discussed 

 by our readers and that we shall have 

 some interesting reports during the year 

 of successful experiments. 



Most gamekeepers advise starting with 

 eggs and hand-rearing the young birds 

 We have had very tame black ducks pro- 

 duced in this way and they nested in 

 the grass beside a pond and furnished a 

 lot of eggs which were lifted and 

 hatched under hens. 



