792 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 12, 191a 
Factory Lo&ds 
A WORD TO THE WISE! 
The Hunting Season is again with us, and the sportsmen seeking the most reliable and 
effective ammunition must inevitably choose PETERS FACTORY LOADS — the kind 
that have surpassed all amateur trap-shooting records. 
Do not be deceived nor accept a substitute. PETERS SHELLS will kill deader, further 
and oftener than any others. You do not have to take our word for it—just try them. 
If you are already a user of PETERS, you do not need this advice—the chances are 
1000 to 1 you will continue to do so. 
Remember the first requisite— PETERS SHELLS. They will operate and shoot per¬ 
fectly in any standard make of gun. 
THE PETERS CARTRIDGE COMPANY. CINCINNATI. OHIO 
New Y.rk: 98 Chambers St. T. H. KELLER. Manager 
San Francisc.: 6*8-612 Howard Streot. 
New Orleans: 321 Magailns SL P. R. LITZKE, Manager 
J. S. FRENCH, Manager 
SSSSSJ 
PHEASANT AND PARTRIDGE REARING 
IN BRITAIN. 
Continued from page 778. 
cannot fly and the pens are left open at the top 
for the entrance of wild birds. Now the food 
is somewhat increased. They are given abund¬ 
ant green food and barley meal and prepared 
biscuit meal. About the first of April the hens 
begin to lay, forming no nests, but dropping the 
eggs here and there in the pen, usually in some 
of the shelters that have been put up for them, 
i'he keepers make their rounds every morning, 
picking up the eggs and keeping a record of 
them. 
If properly treated, each hen should produce 
about thirty eggs, and the first of these would be 
put under domestic hens for hatching about the 
first of May. During the interval between the 
time they are laid and the time they are put 
under their foster mothers, the eggs are kept 
in bran or moss and are not disturbed. Each 
domestic hen is expected to care for fourteen 
eggs. The hens are taken off to feed every 
morning at a particular time, and finally when 
the eggs hatch, the chicks after a brief interval 
are removed to the rearing field. This ought to 
be near to the place where the hens were setting, 
but if it is at a distance the chicks may be car¬ 
ried there in baskets. Coops are already stand¬ 
ing in the field and hens are placed in them, and 
each one is given her quota of chicks, no mat¬ 
ter whether they are the ones that she hatched 
or not. 
The young pheasants are fed five times a day 
during the first week and the food consists 
chiefly of a hard-boiled egg pressed through a 
fine sieve with a little biscuit meal. The utmost 
care is exercised to prevent waste, yet the ten¬ 
dency of the keepers seems always to over-feed 
and to waste food. It is said that this waste 
amounts to from 25 to 50 per cent, of the food 
bill. 
During the second week of their lives the 
chicks are fed four times a day and later the 
number of feeds is reduced and the egg is re¬ 
placed by other foods. This is the method pur¬ 
sued at one of the most successful pheasant¬ 
rearing estates in England. Here we are told 
that each group of three keepers rears 2,000 
pheasants. The economy of rearing on a large 
scale is obvious. 
Another method is to leave the hen" pheasants 
to themselves, to search for their eggs and bring 
them in, then to hatch the eggs under domestic 
hens in the usual way. 
After the young pheasant chicks have grown 
large enough to be turned loose to care for 
themselves, they must be removed from the rear¬ 
ing field to the cover where they are to live until 
shot. Some owners have the coops distributed 
and make the coverts the rearing field, but if 
this is not thought desirable it is usually a sim¬ 
ple way to slip a sack under each coop at day¬ 
light in the morning, and then gradually driving 
the chicks on to the sack and so into the coop, 
the edges of the sack are turned up and nailed 
to the coop on all four sides, so that the young 
birds cannot get out. The coop with its con¬ 
tents is then lifted on to a low wagon or plat¬ 
form on wheels and carried wherever it may be 
necessary. Sometimes after the coops have been 
put out they may be moved short distances. 
Pheasants are subject to a variety of diseases, 
which, when once they make headway, are very 
fatal. These diseases are fully treated in vari¬ 
ous English works, of which Mr. Tegetmeir’s, 
Dr. Klein’s and Mr. Hutchinson’s are among the 
more important. 
Within the past few years a craze has arisen 
in this country, east and west, for the importa¬ 
tion of European partridge as a sfiooting bird. 
While it would have been wiser to have pro¬ 
tected our own birds and endeavored to learn 
how to breed them in captivity, rather than to 
send to foreign lands to import exotic species, 
the other plan has been chosen and it is under¬ 
stood that in 1908-9 over 40,000 European par¬ 
tridges were shipped to this country against 
about 6,200 the previous three years. It is alto¬ 
gether probable that for a time the number dis¬ 
tributed in the United States will increase rather 
than diminish. The European partridge, also 
called gray partridge, French partridge or Hun¬ 
garian partridge, is a hardy bird and affords 
good shooting. It may do very well in the 
United States. On the other hand, its introduc¬ 
tion may possibly prove a great misfortune. 
In many parts of Britain, where game preserv¬ 
ing is carried to its greatest lengths, partridges 
are carefully protected, and efforts are made to 
increase the supply by various artificial means. 
The birds are watched and cared for by a large 
force of keepers. All vermin-—by which is 
meant birds and mammals which might injure 
the partridge or its eggs—is carefully trapped 
and shot, and all eggs from nests which are de¬ 
serted, or nests which are in dangerous places 
and therefore likely to be disturbed, are removed 
and put in other nests, so that, as Mr. Cornish 
says, “every sitting partridge becomes practi¬ 
cally a living incubator.” 
Under a system of this kind the keepers know 
the location of every partridge’s nest, know ex¬ 
actly when the first eggs were laid, and when 
the bird should begin to sit. The partridges 
being pretty much without enemies and being 
carefully tended all the time, hatch out and rear 
an extraordinarily large proportion of their eggs. 
A single keeper looks after the birds on about 
