PARTRIDGE REARING 
certain fox-hunting country gave me the following simple recipe, which 
he declared never failed: 
“ Every morning, when I be going my rounds, I puts a wad of cotton 
wool under each arm — and when I comes to a nest which I think Mr Fox is 
likely to visit — ^I just plucks a bit of the wool from under my arm and puts it 
down to windward, and no fox won’t come near that nest for two days.” 
In regard to the chipped egg system, should the nests be situated near 
a footpath or in a dangerous spot, it is a very good plan, after the bird has 
laid at least five eggs, to substitute some artificial eggs for the real ones. 
The best of these artificial eggs, so far as my experience goes, are made 
by Mr G. Malden, and are so exactly like the natural egg that even rats 
and crows have been taken in. 
The real eggs should be put under light hens or bantams until they chip, 
and may then be placed in lots of twenty -four in those nests in which the 
birds are sitting on the sham eggs — ^the latter, of course, being removed. 
This should not be done unless the bird has been sitting at least ten days, 
otherwise they are likely to desert. Should a nest be made in a very 
dangerous place, it is advisable to remove the eggs each day after the 
first five have been laid, substituting sham eggs, until the whole clutch 
has been laid ; this may be ascertained by the fact that the bird will leave 
them uncovered when away at feed, just before she begins to sit. The 
nest should then be destroyed, and the pair will most likely make a new 
nest in a safer place, and lay from eight to ten eggs. It is very rare indeed 
for a partridge to make a new nest and lay a second clutch of eggs if she 
has once sat on her first lot. The process of sitting is so exhausting to the 
parent bird, that she has little inclination or strength to begin again. 
Whilst on the subject of nesting, the following further observations 
by Capt. G. Taylor, of Pickenham, will be of interest: 
” I said I would send you some facts about partridges. In 1906 I was 
out with one of my keepers, looking for partridge nests. In the morning 
we found a nest with five partridge eggs, one 
pheasant’s egg, and one lark’s egg ! A few 
days later, on the same beat, we found a part- 
ridge sitting on sixteen partridge eggs and 
thirteen pheasant’s eggs, four layers deep in 
the nest, and hopelessly mixed up. We took 
away all the pheasant’s eggs, but she deserted, 
and all were found to be spoilt. I had a partridge’s nest spoilt by a rabbit 
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