Chicks at the Gay bird Pheasant Farm , Great Mis send en 219


two. This chick finally died on the seventh day, although it was

running about and feeding fairly satisfactorily till nearly the last

moment. The other two are still doing well. The last four eggs

we set under a game Bantam hen on the 10th June and after the same

number of days, namely twenty-four, she hatched out three fine strong

chicks. Again, one chick was dead-in-shell. These three up to the

present are flourishing.


We find that during the first three days these little Bornean chicks

scarcely ever appear from under the hen and when they do they seem

to require no food. They do quite well at first on hard-boiled egg

and fine scalded biscuit meal. As a drink they have milk before them

from the time they are hatched and should this turn sour during the

day it does them no harm. After five days they have added to their

diet some fine, chopped green food, including dandelion leaves, lettuce,

buttercup leaves, young kale and chives, also a few scalded maggots

are given twice a day. One has to be careful not to overfeed on maggots

as apparently the little chicks like them so much that they will go on

eating them until their crops become distended, which of course is

harmful. Just about ten maggots a chick twice a day is, we consider,

sufficient, especially when they are still small.


For safety’s sake we rear the little birds in a wired-in run in front

of the hen-coop which is shifted on to fresh ground three times a day.

As the little Bornean Pheasants always seemed to be scratching on

the ground after insect life, we tried giving them daily a few shovelfuls

of old leaf-mould which we found in the corner of our kitchen garden,

and in this they seemed to revel as it was chock-a-block with spiders,

earwigs, beetles, wormlets, and other edible matter which they devoured

with great rapidity and relish. Also a few handfuls of an ants’ nest,

thrown down to them occasionally, they are very fond of, at once

devouring the eggs, pupae, live ants and anything else they can find

in it to eat.


At the present time, on the 29th July, we have two four-weeks-old

Bornean chicks under the one hen and three chicks, eighteen days old,

under the other hen, and they are all doing well and growing rapidly.

We certainly hope to be successful in rearing them to maturity. They

are very shy of strangers and amazingly strong on the wing.



