32 
PHEASANT RAISING IN THE UNITED STATES. 
lid state, unfit for the chicks; but development may be arrested for 
several weeks by keeping them in a temperature of 40 to 45 degrees. 
Care should be taken that unconsumed maggots be not permitted to 
transform in any considerable number into flies, as flies transmit 
disease. 
The commission found the stench from raising maggots almost 
unbearable, and overcame the difficulty by exposing slightly tainted 
meat to the flies, cutting out the egg clusters as they appeared (with 
a small piece of the meat), placing them in moist bran, and feeding 
the maggots twice a day on as much thinly sliced fresh meat as they 
would eat up clean. It was found necessary, not only to devise 
means to obtain a supply of maggots early in the season, but also to 
replenish the stock of flies in the neighborhood. Maggots can be 
raised unobjectionably in piles of rotting seaweed, and near the sea- 
coast this method may be employed to advantage. 
Owing to the numerous difficulties and annoyances attending the 
raising of maggots, ants’ eggs, and meal worms, it is now the general 
custom to feed raw ground meat, which makes a fairly satisfactory 
substitute. Practically every specially prepared pheasant food on 
the market contains this ingredient. 
No special food formula will be given here, as no fixed rule will meet 
all conditions. For the first three or four days the chicks are usually 
fed on a stiff custard of eggs and milk (10 eggs to each quart of milk, 
baked dry), with sometimes a little oatmeal added, but some success¬ 
ful pheasant raisers use hard-boiled egg grated fine, mixed with other 
food, such as browned bread crumbs, cracked wheat, finely cut onion 
tops or lettuce, crushed hemp seed, or canary seed. 
After three or four days of the egg diet, whether custard or hard- 
boiled egg, more substantial food should be added and the egg gradu¬ 
ally decreased. It is usual, while reducing the egg food, to feed a dry 
crumbly mash containing a number of different ingredients, such as 
corn meal, oatmeal, barley meal, boiled rice, a little ground meat, and 
some finely chopped lettuce, water cress, grass, dandelion leaves, onion 
tops, cabbage, chickweed, garlic, or similar green food. Canary, mil¬ 
let, or hemp seed may be added in small quantities for variety. A 
good general rule is u variety of dry food and liberality of green food.” 
A satisfactory ration is composed of 1 quart of milk, 1 quart of bone 
flour, 2 quarts of corn meal, 2 quarts of wheat middlings, and 1 pint 
of beef scraps (ground fine). 
After two or three weeks coarser ground food may be supplied 
safely and the grain gradually increased, both in size and quantity, 
until the fifth week, when whole wheat, barley, cracked corn, oats, 
and buckwheat may be added. Sunflower seeds, boiled potatoes, 
kafir corn, chopped artichokes, chopped onion, and baked bread 
crumbs are a few serviceable components of pheasant food that may 
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