126 
THE POULTRY BOOK. 
than eleven eggs under a game hen, and do not like to have any chickens hatched 
before the middle of April, but as many as I possibly can in May. I have never 
found early-hatched game chickens feather so well as those hatched at the end 
of April and during May. I have often seen chickens hatched in February 
commence to throw their feathers about September — not, however, in a regular 
moult, but gradually lose their plumage by degrees, without acquiring the good 
firm feather which is so necessary to success in the game classes. 
After they have hatched, I coop the hens with chickens until the latter are 
seven or eight weeks old, feeding them liberally with custard and oatmeal, in the 
same way as I recommended for rearing Dorkings. 
consider it exceedingly desirable to send out each cockerel and four or five 
pullets to a run directly on their leaving the hens, and prefer a cottage run if 
possible. When brought up at a cottage, chickens will always show boldest from 
the first year ; for being accustomed to the presence of society is beneficial to 
them, giving them boldness and confidence to be stared at in a crowded show. If 
I have not a sufficient number of walks or separate runs, I put all the cockerels 
together, dubbing them when about four months old, as runs turn up for them, 
not daring to dubb them and turn them down again amongst each other, or war to 
the death would occur to nearly all. The pullets I simply turn down in any of 
the home runs, picking out all those that are in the least inclined to run red or 
pencilled on the wing, or with light breasts, and killing them off for the table as 
wanted. 
Under the name of brown-breasted red game are included streaky-breasted, 
marble-breasted, and ginger-breasted red ; in fact, there are as many shades of colour 
admissible as there are days in a month : there is no other breed of game having so 
many variations in colour as brown-reds, owing to the fact that they are bred to a very 
great extent by men who rear birds for the pit and who care nothing whatever about 
shades of colour, therefore do not trouble themselves to mate their birds so as to 
breed true to feather, but match up blues, piles, duns, and brown and black reds 
indiscriminately ; therefore the blood of these various strains is so intermixed that 
it takes a length of time to produce anything like uniformity of colour, if any 
of these birds are bred from. 
‘‘It is true that a few gentlemen exhibit birds almost all one colour : they 
are but few, and well do they know the trouble they have had to breed them up to 
an 3 dhing like the standard, and the large number of faulty-coloured birds they 
rear. Brown-reds have deteriorated to a great extent of late years. Some few years 
ago the managers of the Liverpool exhibition had to refuse entries for their ^100 
gamecock sweepstakes two months before the show opened. At that time you could 
see as many as twenty or thirty brown-reds, every one of which almost seemed better 
as you looked at him than any of the others, and was really something strikingly 
beautiful to stand and admire ; but now you have to hunt a show to find more than 
one or two above ordinary merit. 
“ Another cause of the falling off of the brown-reds has been the increase in 
