“Young pheasants are subject to a kind of diarrhœa, which often proves fatal. If the disease be taken in time, boiled milk and rice, in lieu of any other diet, will generally effect a cure. To these chalk may be added, to counteract the acidity which attends this complaint; and should the symptoms be very violent, a small quantity of alum, as an astringent.”
This treatment appears reasonable. Many consider rice a judicious diet in such cases; and I know of a surgeon’s giving boiled milk with great success, in the West Indies, to patients suffering from diarrhœa.
“But the most formidable disease from which the young pheasant suffers is that known by the name of ‘the gapes:’—so termed from the frequent gaping efforts of the bird to inhale a mouthful of air. Chickens and turkeys are equally liable to be affected by it; and it may be remarked, that a situation which has been used, for many successive seasons, as a nursery ground, is more apt to be visited with this plague, than one which has only recently been so employed. Indeed, I have observed that it seldom makes its appearance on a lawn or meadow during the first season of its occupation; and, therefore, when practicable, it is strongly to be recommended, that fresh ground should be applied to the purpose every year: and when this cannot be done, that a quantity of common salt should be sown broadcast over the surface of the earth, after the birds have left it in the autumn.” He elsewhere describes the gapes as that “dreadful scourge, which, like certain diseases that affect the human subject, seems to have been engendered and fostered by excessive population within a limited district.”
“Dissection has proved that the latent cause of this malady is a minute worm of the genius fasciola, which is found adhering to the internal part of the windpipe, or trachea.” Then Mr. Knox explains how this worm may be destroyed; (and only by such means,—the most delicate operator being unable to extract it without materially injuring the young bird)—viz. by fumigating with tobacco-smoke, according to the method (which he fully describes) recommended by Colonel Montagu. If the worm is not destroyed, the death of the bird ensues “by suffocation from the highly inflamed state of the respiratory apparatus.”
I once kept many guinea-birds when abroad; and I am now convinced that I should have succeeded in rearing a far greater number, had I adopted more closely the mode of feeding, &c., here recommended for young pheasants.
In July, ’57, I saw in a large clover field at Sandling, East Kent, 820 pheasant chicks which had been reared by M——n under sixty-six common hens. It was a very interesting sight. I accompanied him round all the coops. They stood about twenty paces apart, and I could not detect a single bird with a drooping wing or of sickly appearance. He told me most positively that he had not lost one by disease, but a few had been trodden under foot by careless, awkward hens, and, what seems curious, some few chicks on quitting the shell had been intentionally killed by the very hens which had hatched them. A hatching hen will sometimes thus destroy ducklings,—but these are far more unlike her natural progeny than are pheasant chicks. M——n found that game-fowls make the best mothers—Cochin-china the worst. He has a prejudice,—how doctors differ! against maggots and ants’ nests. However, he has a right to his notions, for he lost hardly any birds in the year ’56, out of the 400 and upwards that broke the shell. He devotes himself to what, with him, is a labour of love. He has great, and just pride in his success. He maintains that pheasants can be reared cheaper than barn-door fowls, wherever there are woods, as the chicks find their own food at such an early age. The rearing of the birds that I saw and about fifty partridge-chicks, occupied the whole of his time and that of an assistant. There was also a boy to cook, &c. The chicks were fed every two hours throughout the day with a mixture of hard boiled eggs,[124] curds, bread-crumbs, rape and canary seed. The shutter of each hutch doing duty as a tray for the food. After the chicks had fed M——n made his rounds, and scraped into a pot all that was not consumed, being careful that nothing was left to get sour. He gave a small portion of these remains to the imprisoned matrons. He feeds the chicks liberally, yet calculates to a great nicety what will be eaten, for on every shutter a portion, but a very small portion of food was left. Water, kept in earthenware pans made with concentric circles on the ridge and furrow system, was placed at intervals between the hutches. Many times a day he moved the several coops a few feet to fresh ground. At night when all the chicks have joined the hens he fastens the shutters, and does not remove them in the morning until the dew is off the grass. How entirely is this practice opposed to the advice of the Yorkshireman given at the commencement of this note! and yet it might be possible to reconcile the contradictory recommendations by supposing that as soon as the young birds have nearly reached maturity they are allowed to search for insects at the earliest dawn. M——n’s last location for the hutches would be in the centre of the landlord’s property, and they would not be taken away until the hens were quite abandoned by the young pheasants—which in general would be at the end of August. Differing much from Mr. Knox, it was M——n’s practice to keep as many as five hens with one cock for the purpose of obtaining eggs. I observed that some hutches possessed a disproportionate number of inmates. This had arisen from the hutches having been placed in too close proximity before the chicks had the sense to know their respective foster-mothers.
Remarking once after a good battue in cover upon the fine condition of the birds spread in a long array on the lawn for the inspection of the ladies, I was told that the keeper greatly attributed their size and weight to keeping ridge and furrow pans near their feeding places constantly filled with bark-water. He used to boil from a quarter to half a pound of oak-bark in two gallons of water until it was reduced to half the quantity. After once tasting it the pheasants become fond of it, their natural instinct telling them the advantages of the tonic. A cross with the true China makes the young birds hardy and wild. The brilliancy of the plumage is much increased but not the size of the birds. However long Chinese pheasants may be kept in confinement they will be alarmed at the sight of strangers.
Note to 537.—Setters.—Poachers.—Keepers.—Netting Partridges.—Bloodhounds.—Night-dogs.
It is far more easy to get a well broken pointer than a well broken setter; but times may change, for clean farming, the sale of game, poaching, and poisoning of seed-grain, are now carried on to such an extent, and the present game-laws are so inefficacious, that, probably, our children will much prefer the hard-working setter to the pointer. What an encouragement to villany is it that poulterers will give a higher price for game that appears perfectly uninjured, than for what has been shot; and seldom ask questions! It is a pity that the sale of such game cannot be rendered illegal. The destructive net sweeps off whole coveys at a time. The darkest night affords no protection, for the lantern attached to the dog’s neck sufficiently shows when he is pointing at birds. A friend of mine in Kent, some years ago, wanted a partridge in order to break in a young bitch. Under a solemn promise of secrecy he was taken to an attic in an old house, not far from London, where he saw more than a hundred birds, ready for the market against the approaching first of September, running among the sheaves of corn standing in the corners of the room. To prevent the employment of the net, it has been recommended that the fields frequented by partridges should be staked, according to the method successfully followed in some preserved streams: but there are French gamekeepers who adopt a far less troublesome, and more effective plan. They themselves net the coveys at night, as soon as the harvest is collected, and turn them out again on the same ground the next evening, in the fullest confidence that the birds are henceforth safe from the poacher’s net: for, however carefully they may have been handled, they will have been so alarmed, that their distrust and wariness will effectually prevent their being again caught napping. Talking of poaching, I am led to observe that one well-trained bloodhound would be more useful in suppressing poaching than half-a-dozen under-keepers; for the fear poachers naturally entertain of being tracked to their homes at dawn of day, would more deter them from entering a cover, than any dread of being assailed at night by the boldest armed party. Even as compared with other dogs, the sensitiveness of the olfactory nerves of the bloodhound appears marvellous. Let one of pure breed but once take up the scent of a man, and he will hold it under the most adverse circumstances. No cross scents will perplex him.