THE GAME BREEDER 



81 



MY MARYLAND GAME FARM. 



By Henry P. Bridges. 



I am sending you a picture of my game 

 farm, showing a flock of my wild 

 turkeys. The following is a description 

 of the place : It contains sixty acres en- 

 closed with a nine-foot fence of page 

 wire. About one-third is in timber. It 

 is a splendid location about two miles 

 from Hancock in Washington County, 

 Maryland. I have a 300 foot building 

 for my wild turkeys and a fifty-foot 

 building with four acres enclosed with 

 fence wire, including the top, for Eng- 

 lish pheasants and quail. I have been 

 very successful in raising game and I am 

 enlarging my quail output so that an- 

 other year I will be able to furnish a 

 number of quail. This year I can fur- 

 nish about 100 wild turkeys for sale. I 

 have an expert game keeper, George R. 

 Morris, who understands the raising of 



all kinds of game and who has been very 

 successful. We breed the quail under 

 buff bantam chickens and also the pheas- 

 ants. This is the most successful way 

 to raise English pheasants and quail. 

 Some of the wild turkeys are very hard, 

 to get in the five-acre lot when we bring 

 them in in the evening, as they are so 

 wild they will run back to the woods. 

 We have the genuine wild Pennsylvania 

 and West Virginia mountain turkeys, 

 and the people to whom I sold them last 

 year stated that they were the finest wild 

 turkeys they have ever received and 

 their plumage was perfect and they were 

 perfect, genuine wild turkeys. I sold 

 Mr. William Rockefeller some of them 

 for the Jekyl Island Club, in Georgia, 

 and he wrote me that he was very much 

 pleased with them. 



THE PRAIRIE GROUSE. 

 SIXTH PAPER. 



By Dwight W. Huntington 



The prairie grouse eats many insects. 

 Grasshoppers head the list, and Dr. S. 

 D. Judd, in the bulletin to which I have 

 referred, says, the insect food included 

 12.78 per cent, of grasshoppers, 0.48 per 

 cent, of beetles, 0.39 per cent, of bugs, 

 0.12 per cent, of ants and other Hymen- 

 optera, 0.39 per cent, of other insects 

 and 0.05 per cent, of spiders. 



The ruffed grouse, he says, takes 

 about one-sixth less and the bobwhite 

 about one-third more of insects than the 

 prairie hen. Although the bobwhite de- 

 stroys injurious grasshoppers, the rela- 

 tive proportions of grasshoppers and 

 beetles consumed by it and by the prairie 

 hen are notably different. In the food 

 of the bobwhite the grasshoppers are to 

 the beetles as 3.71 to 6.92; with the 

 prairie hen the ratio stands as 12.78 to 

 0.48. Indeed, grasshoppers constitute the 

 bulk of the prairie hen's animal diet, the 

 reason being probably that on the 



prairies the grasshoppers vastly outnum- 

 ber all other sizable insects. For a 

 gallinacious bird the prairie hen is highly 

 insectivorous from May to October, in- 

 clusive, insects constituting one-third of 

 the fare of the specimens shot during 

 this period. The species is particularly 

 valuable as an enemy of the Rocky 

 Mountain locust. During an invasion of 

 this pest in Nebraska, 16 out of 20 

 grouse killed by Professor Aughey from 

 May to October, inclusive, had eaten 866 

 locusts— a creditable performance, eco- 

 nomically rated. Some ornithologists be- 

 lieve that the diminution in the number 

 of prairie hens is in a measure respon- 

 sible for the ravages of certain insects. 

 Farmers who know these facts must re- 

 gret the extinction of the bird in States 

 where it once thrived and they may well 

 support measures for^re-introducing and 

 protecting it. 



Almost every kind of grasshopper and 



