The trouble arises when there are some ants’ eggs but not enough to go round, for this food has the effect of setting the young birds against everything else. Lord Ducie’s partridges were mainly fed upon meal of some kind, although the writer forgets what it was. Another precaution that was taken was to distribute the coops very widely along the sides of corn-fields, and there is no doubt that this plan obliged the birds to hunt for insect food at a much earlier age than if they had been kept upon ants’ eggs. Unfortunately, the chicks will not eat the ants themselves; otherwise the getting of ant-hills to cart to the birds would go three times as far as it does, for there are generally twice as many wingless ants as there are eggs to every nest.
The second charge against these tame birds is that they grow too wild in packs and fly right away, and this is a fact beyond all dispute. However, it has been said that cock partridges will sometimes take to young birds reared by hens, if the bachelor partridges are themselves penned in the neighbourhood when the little chicks are first carried from the sitting boxes to the coops. There appears here to be a possible future for hand rearing without its old disadvantage of packing. Probably most people will think that the cock partridge is better occupied in assisting his own proper mate to raise the very big coveys that are now manufactured by the joint efforts of birds and keepers.
This partnership arrangement came about when the keeper at The Grange discovered how easy it was, with proper precautions, to make up the nests of sitting partridges to 20 or more eggs. The result of this was that, although eggs had for many years been changed during the laying period, to effect cross breeding, it now became possible to employ the partridges themselves to do the work of foster-mothers—a vocation that farmyard hens had only half performed hitherto, and done their part badly. All destroyed nests, as well as those that looked likely to be destroyed, could now have their eggs hatched without the intervention of those fowls that always want to start laying again just as they are most desired to keep their foster game chicks from “sowing wild oats.”
Obviously The Grange plan would not have been of much use had not a very careful record been kept of when each bird began to sit; for it was necessary that eggs added after the laying season should only be those in precisely the same advanced state of incubation as those already in the nest. Someone has said that the cock bird goes off with the first chicks hatched, and leaves the hen to manage the other eggs; but this is not so, and if added eggs are twenty-four hours behind the others they will generally be left unhatched in the nest.
Probably all the great partridge estates have advanced as far as this. It marks the time at Holkham in the north of Norfolk as well as Orwell Park in the south of Suffolk. But although these two estates are hard to beat in the matter of big days, the partridge yield is not the highest per acre on either of these celebrated estates, and never has been. At Holkham about 8000 birds on 12,000 acres is the most that has been done. At Orwell 6000 birds upon 18,000 acres is not regarded as bad. Both of these estates are considered the best possible land for partridges, and both of them have also the advantage that foxes are particularly scarce in the districts of Norfolk and Suffolk. No Hungarian birds have ever been used at Holkham, although eggs are exchanged for fresh blood. At Orwell this method is also practised, and as many as 1000 eggs in a season have been obtained from Cumberland and Hampshire, by exchange with Sir R. Graham and Lord Ashburton. Nests are made up to 20 eggs at Orwell, and occasionally eggs are placed under hens until hatched, when the young birds are given to old partridges on the point of hatching out. But here the appearance of the old sitting birds is relied upon to indicate when that time comes. Thus, when two partridges are seen sitting on the same nest, it is taken for granted that the egg-chipping stage has been reached.
Holkham has been the most famous partridge estate for a century, but much of this fame is owing to the fact that it is a very large estate, naturally well suited for game, and especially for partridges. Besides this, it was one of the first upon which partridge driving was practised, and this method seems to have raised the stock by double. At the same time, the system of only using the same beat once in the season limits the kill enormously.
This estate has beaten all previous records for a single day’s shooting by a bag of 1671 birds in 1905. Naturally the thought at once occurs that the Holkham must be the best system; but when we understand that this beat is made upon 2000 acres in 20 drives to 8 guns, and that this is the total season’s bag of the very best beat in the very best partridge land in England, and remember also that on 8000 acres of the best land only 4749 birds were bagged as the whole season’s work, but all in four days, the question arises, What would Holkham do in the season if it were subjected to the most modern methods of preservation?
Another splendid estate for game, and one similar to Holkham in size and dryness of land, is Euston. The Duke of Grafton has in a letter to the Times repudiated the idea that partridges are preserved at Euston by the plan adopted there for pheasants. On the contrary, the partridge preserving at Euston has been of the same character as elsewhere in Norfolk and Suffolk. The ill-named “Euston plan” was not wanted there for partridges, and was applied only to pheasants, and to them not as has been very often described. The great difference between the Euston pheasant system and the latest method with partridges, erroneously described and applied to Euston, is that in the case of pheasants at Euston the birds are not kept sitting on sham or bad eggs while their own are being incubated. They are, according to the Duke’s letter, allowed to sit on their own eggs, and when the latter are chipping they are given more eggs in the same forward condition—such eggs as have been picked up out of destroyed nests.
The system that is not employed at Euston, then, either for partridges or pheasants, is that in which the period of incubating is shortened for the wild bird by picking up all her eggs as laid and incubating them under barndoor poultry.
By this latter plan the period of incubation of any individual bird can be pretty nearly what the keeper wishes it to be, and its length will greatly depend upon the number of foxes, the nature of the soil, and the situation of the nests. The success of this system on Mr. Pearson Gregory’s property in the great fox-hunting county of Lincolnshire was perhaps the origin of ill-naming the plan after Euston, and came about because of Mr. Pearson Gregory’s tenancy of Euston.