The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1904-11-19
GREAT PHEASANT FARM.
WHERE THE BIRDS ARE REARED
FOR cOVERTS.

mere rave Been 20 UOO PneaSan1S,
Partridccs ard Wild Duck at One
Thnc-+.ow Birds Arc Furnished for
Get.
so. twenty years ago young man
fresh iron Harrow was looking about
for aJ.&c,hir" to 60 which would COM
bine Il L. raiiv. with an outdoor Oc-
cupat.Cl.
His no'hnr Owned farm lands. but
they W;rc Il ..icult to let; and farming,
in thl uld.aary sense, did not appeal
to hill. Why not start model game
farm arl sunly sportsmen and great
landowners with pheasants, patridges
and eg 6!
Tie thing had never been done be-
fore on large scale, and Mr.. }. NJ =.
RobI, the Cd IilrrOyian referred 70,
lost no ticle in securing a good stock
of birds.
Six years later he had many acres at
lovely IiphOCk filled with stock BIRDS
alone. To-day the LiphoOk game farm
is known to sportsmen the world over,
says the London Express.
The pens in which the birds are
kept are being constantly moved over
the 1CO acres of land at the Liphook
farm and the 400 acres on his other
farm about seven miles from Peters
field.
On the slopes Of the Hampshire hills,
clad in pines and oak and gorse, are
great encampments Of birds full wing
ed and wild If you keep quite still
you will hear the metallic call OF the
cock birds Move among the pens and
the birds will run the full forty feet
of their pens so quickly that you can
not count them.
You do not need to be told that these
birds are as wild as any sportsman
could wish. There have been as many
as 10000 pheasants, cartridges AID
wild duck on the farm at one time
q sight to make the mouth Of sports
man water. During the season-as
many as 5000 eggs are daily being des-
patched to all parts Of the British Isles
and the Continent, where they will be
Matched out by common or barnyard
fowls.
The eggs are packed with extraor-
binary care About 200 of them go TO
a hamper and each egg is wrapper in
moss or soft hay.
AS an instance Of the uniformly good
Matching of the eggs produced by
pheasants penned on the latest system.
it may be mentioned that for two sea-
sons in succession, out Of $4,000 eggs
sent in two consignmcnts to Baron
Nathaniel Rothschild in Prussia, 80
percent produced strong birds, al
though the eggs were four days on the
journey.
This penning system is the result OF
years of experiments. The pens, which
are about forty feet long, are fixed at
one end Round this point they re-
volve, SO that one man can easily shift
their position SO as to cover new soil
every day.
This constant change Of soil is the
secret Of Mr. Robb's success. Tuber-
culosis and other diseases among the
birds at Liphook are reduced to q
minimum
In the breeding pens one gorgeously
plumaged cock and five hens are given
ample space.
Wood has been absolutely discarded
as far as possible in the pens and
aviaries. Everything is OF iron, and
made in the workshops on the prem
Uses.
The birds lay from April until the
well. but hens are not encouraged to
lay too politically. The price of the
eggs varies enormously. From April
20 to May 2, for instance, they are G5
per 100; from May 26 to 81 G3 IS, and
from June 10 to 20 CT per 100. Later
eggs" can be had as cheap as fifteen
shillings per 100.
strange thing about pheasants'
eggs is their liability to assume all
shapes and colors Many OF them are
as pale blue as the hedge sparrows
egg; others are green, and few have
strange protuberances. Only the per-
feet olive brown eggs, each OF which
Is examined for size and shape. are
sent away for Matching.
Hundreds of barnyard fowls are kept
at Liphook to hatch out the young
pheasants, and excellent mothers they
make. Incubators have been pro-
nounced to be failures on game farms.
The pheasant is by nature shock
ingly bad mother. Should a drenching
storm come on, she will deliberately
desert her brood and allow them to
drown, apparently without a qualm.
Visitors to Liphook invariably won
der why there are not nightly depreda-
lions by poachers among this valuable
stock-until they come within view OF
the aviaries on the hillside.
There they encounter an army of
canine policemen, which completely
surround the encampment of pens.
Huge st. Barnard dogs and mastiffs do
sentry go" along wire cable stretch
ed for a distance Of 100 yards. to which
their chains are attached, and the dogs
meet within a yard of each other.
There are other sundry little traps
for the poacher, such as alarm guns
and wires in unexpected places.
The feeding Of the birds requires