RAISING PHEASANTS
The young people on a big ranch or estate with its up-to-date poultry plant, raising not only plain and fancy chickens, but pigeons, ducks, geese, turkeys, and guinea fowl, all attended by men hired for the purpose, may look about in vain for a chance to try their hands at raising anything with feathers. To such boys and girls I say, "Did you ever see any pheasants?"
"At the Zoölogical Gardens, yes."
Aren't they beauties? How would you like to grow pheasants? There is a line that has not been overworked. Profit in it, too. Look at prices you must pay for birds and get an idea of how yours will sell later.
Numerous experiments in pheasant growing have been tried in this country. It is well to know of these and to profit by them. Some men raise many varieties, importing them from every quarter of the globe. Their ideal is to have a complete collection. A visit to a large aviary will give you some idea of what a gorgeous family of birds the pheasants make. They are highly prized as game birds. In Germany they are served in a most surprising way. The edible parts are cooked and arranged on a platter on a bed of parsley. At one end of the platter the cook puts the head with its beautiful neck ruff and at the other end the tail feathers. Imagine the waiter's triumphant entrance into the dining-room, platter held aloft, and the pheasant's brilliant tail feathers streaming far behind like pennants from a mast top!
The pheasant most easily grown in the United States is the ringneck or Mongolian pheasant imported from its home in China. There is hardly a state in the Union where no attempt has been made to raise pheasants. It is an industry that appeals to sportsmen everywhere. Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, Indiana, Illinois, California, New Jersey, and some other states have made pheasant rearing a part of the work of their Fish and Game Commissions. The state of Oregon is the only one where a remarkable success has been won. Evidently the climate and conditions there were ideal. About three dozen pheasants were set free in the Willamette Valley in eighteen hundred and eighty-one. So rapid was the increase that when the first open season of two and one half months was declared eleven years later it was estimated that fifty thousand birds were shot the first day! They have continued to increase in that state and towards the north, and many other states get their supply for propagation from Oregon.
The first thing to do after becoming interested in pheasants is to learn something about their nature and needs and to consider whether your conditions are such as would make the business possible or profitable. They are not domestic fowls but more like the jungle fowl from which, in all likelihood, our barn yard fowls are descended. But they can be raised in captivity if due regard is taken of their habits and characteristics. Books and bulletins are mentioned in the appendix of this book. In some respects pheasants are very like chickens, being especially susceptible to the diseases of the poultry yard. In England, pheasant rearing is quite common. One sees in open meadow land on great estates the tidy coops where anxious biddies cluck after their wayward foster children. It is a pretty sight to see the fifteen or twenty brown-striped birds scuttling wildly to her protecting wing at the approach of danger.
Pheasants' eggs for shipping should be most carefully packed in cotton, hay, or excelsior to insure safety from jar. You do not have to begin with grown birds which cost five dollars a pair for ring-necks, as the eggs are best set under hens. The eggs should be set in late April or early May for best results. Bantams are often preferred, but any good mother will do if she is cleanly and not too clumsy. Great precautions should be taken that the nest be clean, and that the hen should have all the comforts of home, e. g., a dust bath, clean water, and regular feeding. Can you afford to run the risk of young chickens getting lice as soon as they are hatched? Well, you simply can't take any chances with baby pheasants. Hens should be dusted three times during incubation with insect powder. Visit an aviary or a pheasantry if you can and ask questions and take observations on how to make nests, coops, and pens. Study your books, too, and be guided by the experience of others.
While you wait for your young pheasants to hatch there is plenty to do in preparing coops and learning what to feed them when they arrive. Much of our lack of success in rearing all sorts of wild game is because we know so little about what they eat. We probably make lots of mistakes with the animals we have domesticated but the more adaptable of them have grown accustomed to civilized food, and thrive.
There could be no better place for a rearing ground for young pheasants than an orchard where clover abounds. Coops, like chicken coops, should be rain proof, well ventilated, bottomless, and so built that they can be closed to keep out vermin and to shut the chicks in when the grass is wet.
Pheasants are omnivorous but they need more fresh animal food than is supplied by ordinary "chick mixtures," to balance their ration. Probably they share with other young birds a relish for insects and while their mothers do not actually bring this food to the open bills of their young, they take the flock to the feeding ground and show them how to find worms, bugs, caterpillars, etc., by scratching. There are ways employed by experienced pheasant growers of raising a supply of meal worms, maggots, and ant pupæ for their flocks, but cheap, fresh meat ground very fine furnishes suitable animal food. During the first three or four days after feeding is begun a custard made of ten eggs to a quart of milk, baked well, is their best food. Hard-boiled eggs finely minced (put through a potato ricer), fine bread crumbs, and fresh vegetables cut into small bits can be given during the first week. Later, small grains of a great variety of kinds. A sprinkle of red pepper in their food during cold, damp days is good for half-grown chicks. The young pheasants must have access to fine grit and gravel and they must have fresh, cool water all the time.
In building pens for pheasants we should take into consideration their habits, their safety, and their lack of hardiness in domestication. Select the site for the pens after due thought. There must be both shade and sunshine. The soil should be well drained and rich enough to grow grass and clover. Each run should be at least ten feet by ten with netting of medium mesh for sides, eight feet high, cover of the same. A house is an unnecessary expense, as it is pheasant nature to stay in the open or seek a covert of brush. A rain proof shed, where they can retire when it rains, and where a dust bath will always be in readiness, is a necessity.
Wild birds of prey evidently consider it perfectly legitimate to visit pheasant runs. Raccoons, foxes, rats, and mink, too, may work ruin there. The cover of netting protects from above and it may be necessary, where burrowing animals abound, to dig a trench a foot deep and set the netting down in the ground that far. A few steel traps set unbaited along the outside of the runs may prevent a serious loss and provide you with a handsome mink or raccoon fur skating or motoring cap. Severe cold, even storms, are not fatal to pheasants. Provide perches in the pen as well as in the shed and they will usually choose those in the open air.
Because of their great timidity the birds should be disturbed as little as possible. Unfamiliar sights and sounds alarm and distress them. What a triumph it would be to induce your pheasants to eat from your hand! It can be done by exercising great patience, gentleness, and perseverance.
All you know about chicken raising will be useful now. Make up your mind that everything that is bad for chicks is simply fatal to young pheasants; for instance, wet feet, lice, dirty, or sun-warmed water, over-feeding, wrong feeding. If you play this game you must expect a constant succession of hazards, of narrow escapes, and losses. But it is a noble game.