3-078-006 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Rearing Pheasants: sketches at the Duke of Norfolk's Pheasantry at Angmering Park, Sussex, 1890. 'Collecting the eggs; where the young ones are kept until they know hen's call; making them secure; the sitting room; egg protector; testing eggs; feeding time. The rearing of pheasants...is conducted in a systematic manner, and at much private cost, by many landed proprietors. Pheasant-eggs...are procured and hatched usually by poultry hens...The hatching process, which may occupy twenty-two or twenty-four days, is carefully superintended...the young pheasant chicks, with the hen, are brought out into the run, and are kept a few days under the coop, fed by the gamekeeper, to whose call they readily come, until they grow strong enough to be removed to the covert...for medicinal purposes, a dose of sulphate of iron is put into [their] water...Our Illustrations...show the collecting of pheasant-eggs in the covert; the close rows of boxes in which they are placed with hens to sit on them; and the way in which they are examined, by inspecting them under a strong light, to test the progress of hatching; also the coops and enclosures for the chickens, with partitions removable, at the proper time, to release them from the hen's stepmotherly care'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.