THE GAME BREEDER 



175 



February they first began to wander 

 from the garden for short distances, 

 and; as the spring advanced, finally dis- 

 appeared, and I never could hear of 

 their being met with afterwards. 



In rearing the young I found that the 

 very best food for them, and of which 

 they were most fond, was the larvae of 

 the bluebottle fly, with a quantity of 

 which I always was prepared prior to 

 the young being hatched. ' I took care . 

 to have a constant supply during the sea- 

 son by hanging a cow's liver over a bar- 

 rel, in the bottom of which was some 

 bran or sawdust, into which the maggots 

 dropped. A fresh liver was hung up 

 about once a week. In addition to these 

 larvae, the young were supplied with 

 potatoes, alum curd, groats, and Indian 

 corn meal; this last I found they were 

 very fond of, and it seemed to agree with 

 them particularly well. It was mixed 

 into the form of soft dough with a little 

 water, which was all that was required. 

 They were also constantly supplied with 

 green food, such as lettuce, when they 

 were in the aviary. But -the best way 

 is to have a coop, railed in front, into 

 which they are put with the hen twenty- 

 four hours after they are hatched. This 

 coop should be placed upon a gravel walk 

 as near to the windows of the house as 

 possible, so that they may always be 

 within observation ; a small verdure gar- 

 den is the best possible locality, as the 

 young have plenty of range, with shelter 

 under the bushes from both sun and rain. 

 In this instance, which I have already 

 alluded to, the hen was allowed to range 

 about six feet from the coop, by means 

 of a small cord attached to a leather 

 strap round one of her legs, and the other 

 end tied to the coop ; the young pheasants 

 never wandered far from the hen, and 

 always came into the coop to remain with 

 her at night. In front of each coop a 

 small frame was put down, boxed round 

 on three sides, without a bottom, and 

 railed at top ; the open side was put close 

 to the coop, and the young birds could 

 run through the rails of the coop into the 

 enclosed space, and were safe from the 

 night attacks of cats, rats, etc. This 

 frame was always kept before the coops 

 •for the first few days after the young 

 were hatched, and until they became ac- 



quainted with the call of the hen. When 

 . I first began to rear young pheasants I 

 could not at all account for" their seem- 

 ingly foolish manner for the first two or 

 three days after being hatched; they 

 would run gaping about without appear- 

 ing to notice the hen or her calls to 

 them to come for food. The reason of 

 this I afterwards believed to have been 

 owing to their ignorance of the language 

 of their foster-mother, which it took 

 some time for them to understand ; dur- 

 ing this process it is necessary to keep 

 them confined within the frame before 

 their coops, as, were they to wander a 

 few yards from the hen, they would not 

 heed her call, and would inevitably 

 perish. 



When three or four weeks old, it is 

 necessary, if reared for the aviary, to 

 pinion them, which is done by cutting 

 off rather more than the first joint of the 

 wing, having previously, by means of a 

 needle and thread, inserted close to the 

 small wing-bone, and brought round the 

 large one, just within the skin, taking 

 up the main blood vessels ; the piece of 

 the wing is then chopped off on a block.. 

 There is no loss of blood, and I never 

 could observe that the birds seemed to 

 suffer in the slightest degree afterwards, 

 . although the operation, I dare say, was 

 painful enough. My reason for taking 

 off rather more than the first joint of 

 the wing was because I found that if only 

 the first joint was taken off the birds 

 were always able, when grown up, to get 

 out of the aviary, which was about 12 

 feet high, and I found it 'thus requisite 

 to take off so much as to render them 

 incapable of any attempt at flying; but I 

 left enough remaining to enable them to 

 reach their roosting-place at night. I 

 furnished them with a kind of ladder by 

 nailing cross-pieces of wood on a long 

 piece about 3 inches wide, and which they 

 very soon learned to walk up and down 

 with facility. One aviary in which I 

 kept some had a back wall to it covered 

 with old ivy, and they preferred roosting 

 in this ; indeed, I always found that, al- 

 though during a wet day those which 

 were at liberty took shelter under a roof, 

 yet at night they would not do so, but 

 would instead roost in the open air. The 

 females will lay about twenty-five eggs 



