114 



THE GAME BREEDER 



NOTES FROM THE GAME FARMS AND PRESERVES. 



Aviary Species. 



It is a good plan on any game preserve 

 where pheasants, ducks and quail are 

 reared for shooting to rear a few broods 

 of aviary species of pheasants. Some 

 Lady Amherst, Reeves, Golden, Silver 

 and other handsome aviary pheasants 

 easily can be reared by the game keeper 

 who rears the sporting species. The 

 birds are ornamental and some can be 

 sold at excellent prices, and in this way 

 money will be realized to pay part of 

 the food bill. Our advertisers can fur- 

 nish aviary species and their eggs but 

 orders for these should be placed now 

 in order to be sure of getting any birds 

 or eggs. 



Quail Breeding in North Carolina. 



Air. W. B. Colenan, who made a small 

 experiment breeding quail in Virginia a 

 few years ago wrote an account of his 

 work for The Game Breeder which was 

 published with an illustration showing 

 the young quail. This article attracted 

 considerable attention and Mr. Coleman 

 was offered a position with the Oketee 

 Club in North Carolina where he has 

 since continued his experiments with 

 quail 



In a recent report, published in The 

 Bulletin of the Protective Association, 

 Mr. Coleman says he gathered nineteen 

 hundred and eight eggs from fifty hen 

 quail. On account of a shortage of set- 

 ting hens 433 eggs could not be hatched. 

 We would advise the Club to provide an 

 incubator for Mr. Coleman another sea- 

 son and information about the hatching 

 of quail eggs in incubators will be fur- 

 nished by The Game Conservation So- 

 ciety on request. It is not a bad plan to 

 place a large number of eggs in incu- 

 bators and to give them to setting hens 

 a day or two before they are hatched. 



Mr. Coleman reports that 280 eggs 

 failed to hatch on account of ointment 

 used on the setting hens. The insect 

 powders, used by all game keepers, will 

 prevent such a loss as this. 



Notwithstanding the losses, Mr. Cole- 

 man may be said to have been success- 

 ful, since he actually reared and turned 

 down 509 quail out of 928 quail hatched. 



Most of the southern quail clubs em- 

 ploy game keepers to properly look after 

 the quail breeding wild in the fields. 

 Vermin on some of the places is well 

 controlled and the result is an abundance 

 of quail every season. A game keeper 

 on one of the places told the writer that 

 he feared his birds were too abundant 

 although several thousand had just been 

 shot and we agreed with him that it 

 would be wise to "thin them out," as he 

 proposed doing. 



We long have believed that the best 

 way to produce big numbers of quail is 

 to breed the birds wild in the fields, 

 made safe and attractive, just as. par- 

 tridges are bred in the older countries, 

 where very few attempts at hand-rearing 

 are made with this species. The tendency 

 of quail to increase in numbers is tre- 

 mendous, the ratio of increase being geo- 

 metrical. Where the fields are made at- 

 tractive and the birds are in charge of 

 beat keepers, who know how to trap and 

 shoot, quail quickly can be made as 

 abundant as it is desirable to have them, 

 on any suitable area. Each beat keeper 

 should have not over 800 or 1,000 acres 

 to look after in America, where game 

 enemies are more numerous than they are 

 in the older countries. 



Hand-rearing experiments are inter- 

 esting but they should only be regarded 

 as supplemental to the wild rearing on 

 quail preserves. The quail or partridge 

 makes the best possible mother. The 

 young birds are taught to find their food 

 and to escape their enemies, two im- 

 portant things which hand-reared birds 

 do not learn in their infancy. The wild 

 bred birds for many reasons may be re- 

 garded as better than hand-reared birds 

 ever are. 



We propose liberating some of our 

 hand-reared birds next season, when 

 they are only a few days old. 



