Practical Game-Preserving. 24 



enclosure must be fed regularly and carefully, and it is 

 important that a proper system of feeding be decided on 

 and carried out. The birds naturally find a certain amount 

 of food in an enclosure of the kind advocated, but still 

 their semi- domesticated state will require a large amount 

 of attention to be bestowed on them. Feeding-time 

 should be but twice a day first thing in the morning, and 

 about two or three hours before dark. The nature and 

 mode of feeding will be fully detailed in a subsequent 

 chapter dealing with the treatment of penned birds. 



When confined in this manner, good healthy first- and 

 second-year hens lay from twenty or thirty eggs apiece, 

 and although some of them may drop them anywhere about 

 the pen, the majority will resort daily to some particular 

 spot which will do duty for a nest, consequently they will 

 be easily collected. Owing to the size of the enclosure, 

 most of the hens will commence their laying and nesting 

 operations in the same or similar manner to unrestrained 

 birds, forming their nids, and proceeding in the usual way. 

 The aim of the mode of introducing pheasants here 

 described is that, in addition to the birds hand-reared from 

 eggs laid in the pen, each hen may herself hatch off a nest 

 of youngsters, and rear them, thus producing a small stock 

 of practically wild birds. In a natural state the pheasant 

 rarely broods more than twelve eggs, but will occasionally 

 exceed that number. Generally all are hatched out, but 

 the bird is a bad mother, and seems to be more content with 

 five or six chicks reared than the full number. Conse- 

 quently, if the eggs in each nest in the pen be daily taken 

 until about five-and-twenty or thirty per bird have been 

 obtained, the nests may then be left for the hen to 

 complete her sitting and hatch off. One should, of course, 

 be careful to note that the bird is sitting, otherwise the 

 eggs would be wasted. They must be collected during 



