The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life RationallyLoudon, Mrs. (Jane)
General
The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally
Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
Cooking; Country life; Home economics
Almost every park where there are trees contains _pheasants_; and in
many places especial contrivances have been resorted to for feeding
and keeping these birds. The places which they like to frequent are
woods and plantations where there is plenty of undergrowth, and they
are particularly fond of places where fern and brake grow abundantly.
When it is wished to stock a park with pheasants, it is usual to set
the eggs under a common hen, and when they are hatched, which will
be in from twenty-three to twenty-seven days, the young ones should
be put into a basket with a bit of flannel till the whole are hatched
and the shells have been removed from the nest. They are then put back
to the hen, and fed with eggs boiled hard and then cut small, and
curd made by mixing new milk with the water in which a lump of alum
has been dissolved. They should also have a few ants' eggs if they
can be procured, and, if they cannot, a raw egg should be beaten up
and mixed with as much flour as will make it into a paste, and then
rubbed through a coarse sieve so as to leave it in little grains. Young
pheasants should be fed often, and have but a very little at a time.
When they are able to run about, they are first put out with the hen
under a coop like chickens; but, when they get older and stronger,
the hen is put on one of the lower branches of the tree in the
poultry-yard, and tied to it by the leg, so that she can move about on
the branch, but not descend to the ground; the young pheasants seeing
her on the tree will fly up to her, and thus learn to perch. In a few
days the hen is put upon one of the higher branches of the tree, and
the young pheasants soon learn to follow her. In a week or ten days
after this, they are generally old enough to leave the hen, and they
may be turned into the woods; though they will require feeding every
morning and evening for some weeks. Pheasants are naturally very shy,
and even when reared in this manner they become so timid in the course
of a few weeks that they will not suffer any one to come near them.
Many persons suppose that, as they are natives of Asia Minor, they are
tender, and easily affected by the cold; but this is not the case, as
they will bear cold better than most others of the feathered race.
Some persons try to fatten pheasants by putting them in a small
enclosure covered with a net; but pheasants treated in this manner are
never so good as those shot wild in the woods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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