JAN. 20, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 








» | Pheasant Rearing in England. 
A sHorT time ago a correspondent in Forest 
_ AND STREAM remarked that “the hand rearing ot 
game birds appears up to the present time not to 
have made very rapid progress in the United. 
- States, although in England it is becoming a big 
business.’ In the present article I propose to 
‘briefly describe how things are carried on at 
one of our big game farms in England, a goodly 
number of which are scattered up and down the 
‘country, worked all of them more or less upon 
the same lines, and where thousands of pheas- 
ants’ eggs are produced and sold to various own- 
ers of estates and lessees of large shootings, and 
where also hundreds of young pheasant poults 
are reared for the purpose of turning down on 
various properties where the stock is not suffi- 
cient to provide sport for the owner and _ his 
friends. Many wealthy sportsmen in addition 
to gathering large numbers of eggs from their 
own wild pheasants, buy largely from these game 
farms, not only to add to their stock, but also 
to change the blood of the birds and make them 
-more vigorous. Many thousand pounds are an- 
-nually spent in pheasant rearing. What with 
food, keepers’ wages, loss from disease and wild 
| 

A REARING HUT. 
Photo copyright by Oxley Grabham. 
birds and animals, and the hundred and one in- 
cidental expenses, connected with rearing game 
on-a large scale, the old estimate that every 
pheasant which is eventually brought to the gun 
represents the sum of one guinea is not far off 
the mark. There is an old saying which runs as 
follows: “Up gets a guinea, meaning the pheas- 
-ant, and what he has cost to produce, bang goes 
a penny, the price of a cartridge, and down 
comes three and six, the market value of the 
bird when he is dead.” 
In starting a game farm, a healthy sheltered 
jlocality, where there is plenty of water is an 
absolute necessity, and where there is likely to 
be plenty of insect food for the young chicks as 
/soon as they are hatched. The ground covered 
by the particular game farm I am about to de- 
“scribe is of very considerable extent, for the pens 
containing the birds are moved twice a week, so 
that the pheasants are always running on prac- 
tically fresh ground and thus there is consider- 
ably less fear of their being attacked by the vari- 
ous diseases which are so prevalent among those 
always kept upon the same ground, which very 
soon becomes tainted and fouled. There is a 
high, strong inclosure of wire netting all round 
the rearing field, and several wooden movable 
huts inside for the keepers to sleep in and to 
store and prepare the various foods which both 
the old and young birds require, where the pack- 
ing of the eggs is done and where most of the 


WILD PHEASANT ON NEST. 
Photo copyright by Oxley Grabham. 
impedimenta connected with a game farm is kept. 
Near the gates that open into the inclosure are 
stationed the watch dogs, on rings at the end of 
the chain to which they are fastened, that run 
along a length of stout wire, some fifty yards 
in each case, so that the dogs can move up and 
down in a straight line the whole length of this 
wire. Some are retrievers and others devils to 
look at and to tackle when they are roused— 
short, thick-set animals, brindled in color and 
ferocious in expression, a cross between a bull- 
dog and a mastiff. 
In each of the open pens are kept one cock and 
five hen pheasants, and during the first month or 
two of the egging season thousands of eggs are 
collected and dispatched to various parts of the 
kingdom and abroad. Owing to the movable pen 
system and the fact that the birds are kept under 
conditions as natural as possible, the proprietor 
is able to guarantee 95 per cent. of the eggs fer- 
tile. During the month of April and up to May 
10 £5 per 100 is the price charged for eggs; 
then they gradually begin to get less valuable, till 

NEST AND EGGS OF PHEASANT. 
Photo copyright by Oxley Grabham. 
after June 15 they do not fetch more than £2 
per 100; although as a matter of fact many of 
these late eggs hatch out very well, and if the 
birds produced from them are not required till 
late in the season they come in most usefully 
after the more forward ones that were turned 
down earlier have been shot. The keepers go 
regularly round the pens every afternoon to col- 
lect the eggs that have been laid during the day. 
They use a long rod to which a small bit of 
linen fastened round a thick wire ring is at- 
tached, forming a small sort of landing net, and 
with this they fish out each egg that is lying in 
the pens and transfer it to the basket. When 
they get back to the egg hut all the eggs are 
placed in trays of wood, the bottom of each tray 
being covered with a thick layer of bran. Each 
tray holds about 200 eggs and only the normally 
colored and shaped eggs are retained. Many 
are laid of a very lightish blue color, but these 
produce weakly birds and are not retained, while 
any egg malformed is sure to produce either a 
cripple or a dead bird, and these also are thrown 
away. The healthy eggs are kept in these 
wooden trays until they are ready to be dis- 
patched to their various destinations. About a 
big game farm there are thousands of eggs; the 

ONE OF THE PENS, 
Photo copyright by Oxley Grabham. 
light colored ones, and those that are laid too 
late to be set that cannot be sold—well, I do 
not know what is done with them at every game 
farm, but at the one I am writing of the owner 
gives away a great many to his friends for eat- 
ing purposes, retaining some for the same pur- 
pose himself, and speaking from experience I 
can only say that when scrambled for breakfast 
or eaten hard boiled with salad they are excel- 
lent. Many are reserved for boiling hard and 
mixing up with other food for the young poults. 
For cooking purposes in many ways the surplus 
pheasant eggs come in most useful. 
Packing up the eggs is mostly done by women, 
and very expert some of the women prove them- 
selves, doing so many thousand a day. Conical 
wicker baskets are used, wider at the top than 
at the bottom, holding from 150 to 300 eggs 
apiece. Each egg is carefully wrapped up in 
grass, which is twisted all round. The eggs thus 
wrapped up are placed as tightly together in the 
basket as possible, so that they cannot shake 
about. As everyone knows, the shell of a pheas- 
ant’s eggs is very hard, and it is seldom that any 
get broken in transit, though many have to cross 
the sea and must be subjected to a considerable 
amount of rough usage. 
Besides the eggs, many thousands of which 
are bought by game preservers in a season, there 
is also the rearing department, the proprietor 
setting some thousands of his own eggs, a cer- 
