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FOREST AND STREAM. 
Rearing Ring-Necked Pheasants. 
Westchester, Pa., Nov. 19 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Breeding ring-necked pheasants 
is rather a discouraging proposition if you turn 
to current literature for information, though in 
a practical way I have not found it difficult. 
Last summer a fine lot of them were raised and 
turned loose near here and they are doing well. 
The adult pheasants were confined in a series 
of cages about five by five feet and fifty feet 
long. The cages were located in the woods, 
and the leaves and stumps and dead limbs were 
left in them to furnish a scratching ground. 
The sides and tops of the cages were made of 
fine mesh wire screen and there was no shelter 
except a small covered space at one end. One 
pair of birds was put in each cage. If this plan 
is not followed the cocks will fight until one 
of them has been killed. When so located the 
hen will drop her eggs anywhere, not taking the 
trouble to hunt a nest, neither will she incubate 
the eggs. Many people experience great trouble 
in getting fertile eggs. In order to overcome 
this difficulty the pheasants must be left undis¬ 
turbed as much as possible, and they should not 
be moved from one cage into another for at 
least three months before the egg-laying season 
begins. They are remarkably shy birds and 
visitors should be kept away from them. 
Early in May our birds began to drop their 
eggs. Several settings of these were gathered 
up and put under bantam hens, but not one in 
a nestful hatched. Then we tried putting the 
eggs right on the bare ground in a place shaded 
from the sun, setting the bantam on about a 
dozen of them and building a protection around 
her to keep away predatory animals. That was 
successful. In one nestful every egg but one 
hatched and about seventy per cent, of the birds 
grew to' maturity. The period of incubation is 
twenty-four days. After the little chicks are 
hatched they do not care to eat for thirty-six 
hours, and no effort should be made to feed 
them. 
The mother hen was put into a cage about five 
feet square and about a foot high. It was cov¬ 
ered on top and sides with wire netting. The 
sides were re-enforced with mosquito netting so 
as to keep the little pheasants from running out¬ 
side. There was no bottom, the birds being al¬ 
lowed to run on the ground. The cage was set 
on the grass in the sunshine and was moved to 
a new spot every day. It is very important that 
the little birds be kept dry, and when there was 
any appearance of rain a window sash was laid 
on top of the cage to keep them from getting 
wet and chilled. 
Now as to feed, and that is the most important 
thing of all. They thrive on a varied diet. With 
us they received a little corn, a little curded 
milk and a good deal of green stuff such as 
salad and clover and celery tops. We took mut¬ 
ton, cheap pieces, boiled it thoroughly and chop¬ 
ped it very fine, and they were ravenously fond 
of it. They were fed every three hours all day 
long for five or six weeks, but never were given 
much at a time. The food was newly prepared 
each time and they were given it in such small 
quantities that it was always eaten up clean. 
An excellent plan is to place the food on a 
porcelain dish and introduce it to the cage. 
Then in about five minutes remove it and wash 
the plate before feeding again. Do not put any 
[Nov. 27, 1909. 
food on the ground. We made it fresh every 
time it was used. In our neighborhood yellow- 
jackets and flies were unusually abundant last 
summer, and the little fellows would chase after 
and capture every one that came in the cage. 
When six weeks old they were quite gentle and 
would eat out of the hand readily. 
By this time they could fly easily, and when 
an occasional one escaped from the cage it was 
caught with difficulty. Wild nature would assert 
itself and the little bird would scoot for the 
tall grass, having gained which it would squat 
down and not move possibly for two or three 
hours. 
Several of our birds were tramped to death 
by the hen mother. The best way to-avoid this 
trouble is to keep everybody away from the 
cage. I do not believe it possible to overcome 
this loss entirely. 
When six or eight weeks old the little pheas¬ 
ants were given their liberty and now—the mid¬ 
dle of November—they are running around the 
woods in coveys and are no wilder than a flock 
of young turkeys. Every evening they come to 
the stable to be fed. They have abandoned 
their old hen mother. I think they roost on the 
ground in the woods and so far they have es¬ 
caped disaster. We allow no gunning on the 
place and use a good deal of care that they 
shall not be frightened. 
When about four weeks old the young pheas¬ 
ants quit sleeping under the mother hen, but 
they nestled down quite close to her in a little 
circle. They could never be caught napping at 
night. Always their bright black eyes would be 
seen shining in the darkness if disturbed after 
they had settled themselves for sleep. They 
have never seemed to suffer from the cold and 
I believe will winter well. I am more afraid 
of wet weather than anything else in their life 
history. Dealers who have pheasants for sale 
say that they do not raise their own stock, but 
that it is caught from among the wild birds. 
The birds sent to this country are mostly 
hybrids, a cross between the Chinese and the 
native English pheasants. 
In Europe the favorite plan of raising the 
pheasants is to find the nests of the wild ones 
and take their eggs, which are then placed under 
domestic chickens to hatch. The chickens make 
excellent mothers and the wild birds also gen¬ 
erally lay a second nestful of eggs. A double 
crop is thus secured. 
I have not had much success in keeping the 
adult pheasants in confinement and believe that 
the system of feeding is the main trouble. The 
grown birds are fed on mixed grains and a 
large amount of green food, such as chopped 
clover, celery and garden vegetables. Next year 
I intend to try them on tree buds and as many 
wild berries as can be secured, and to reduce 
the grain ration. 
One fact strongly impressed on me was that 
the pheasants should not be made show birds. 
Keep people away from them; do not show them 
to your friends even at a distance and have one 
person care for them and no more. 
The past season has been an unusually dry 
one in this locality, and consequently more 
favorable than the average for all bird life, but 
I believe that with a system outlined as above, 
anyone may have reasonably good success with 
the ring-necked pheasant. 
The young birds grow very rapidly. Wing 
feathers begin to appear before they are a week 
old, and at the end of a month they are good 
fliers, though even now they seldom incline to 
use their wings, and none of them, either young 
or old, have shown a tendency to migrate. They 
have a protected range of several hundred acres, 
but have not yet wandered more than a few 
hundred feet from the feeding ground. 
Robert P. Sharples. 
Ducking at Tulare Lake. 
San Francisco, Cal., Nov. 15.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: From the vicinity of Tulare Lake 
comes the news that hunting there is again in 
fine shape and that bags as heavy as those 
secured years ago, when the lake was a Mecca 
of sportsmen, can now be had. A few years 
ago, because of a series of dry seasons, the lake 
dried up until there was but very little water 
even in the winter time, and the rich land that 
had once been several feet under water was 
cultivated and immense crops of grain raised 
there. For the past two years these grain 
ranches have been covered with water and the 
lake at the present time has a diameter of about 
twenty miles. Heavy growths of tules have 
again sprung up around the edges of the lake, 
making the place a perfect home for waterfowl. 
Last season great numbers of ducks remained 
there and bred, and of late these numbers have 
been supplemented by large numbers of North¬ 
ern birds until now the space is perhaps the best 
stocked hunting place in the. State. Good bags 
of ducks can be secured in a few hours even 
by the novice, and attention can then be turned 
to other game birds which are found there in 
large numbers. These comprise geese, sandhill 
cranes, avocets, curlew and various members of 
the snipe family. Farmers in the vicinity have 
been sowing grain of late and the geese have 
become such a nuisance that they are very glad 
to have hunters camp on their property. A 
flock of geese gorging themselves in a grain 
field was recently approached and sixty-five of 
the birds secured before they took flight. 
Parties from San Francisco are making the 
trip to the lake and are coming back with large 
numbers of geese, there being no limit to the 
number of these that can be killed. Corcoran, 
a station on the Santa Fe railroad, is the main 
objective point of the hunters, and being close 
to the lake it is made their headquarters. The 
San Francisco Gun Club has a boat house fitted 
up near Corcoran and two other clubs have 
headquarters around the lake, the Widgeon Gun 
Club, composed of Tulare, Hanford and Visalia 
sportsmen, having a club house at the southern 
end of the lake, and the Coalinga Gun Club has 
a large barge anchored on the west side. The 
immense size of the shooting ground, and the 
fact that it is not near any large city, makes 
private preserves unnecessary. 
One of the surprises of the present season 
has been the fine shooting that has been had 
on the Suisun marshes. For the past two or 
three seasons the sport there has been below 
the old time standard, and many clubs had been 
seeking sport in more favored sections, but this 
year as many ducks are to be found on these 
grounds as in almost any other section of the 
State, and limit bags have been the rule rather 
than the exception with the hunters who have 
shot over the ponds there. 
