The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-08-19
GREAT PHEASANT EARN.
WHERE THE BIRDS ARE
 REARED FOR THE COVERFS.

REARED FOR THE 0oVERFS The One Hundred Acre Tract on Which
 There Have Been Twenty Thousand
 Pheasants, Partridges and Wild Duck
 at One TIme-HOw Birds are Fur
 nished for Shoot.
 Some twenty years ago a young man fresh from Harrow was looking about for something to do which would com bine q. lucrative with an outdoor oecu- patton. His mother owned farm lands, but ithey were difficult to let; and farming in the ordinary sense, did not appeal to him. Why not start a model game farm and supply sportsmen and great landowners with pheasants, cartridges land eggs? ... -
 The thing had never been done before on a large scale, and J. M. c. Robb, the old Harrovian referred to, lost no time in securing a good stock of birds.
 Six years later he had many acres ca lovely Liphook filled with stock birds alone. To-day the LiphoOk game farm is known to spoTtsmen the world oVer' says the London Express. -s .es..
 The pens in which the birds are kept are being constantly moved over the one hundred acres Of land at the Lip- hook farm, and the four hundred acres on his other farm about seven miles from Petersfeld.
 On the slopes of the Hampshire hills, clad in pines and oak and gorse, are great encampments of birds full winged 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 cannot count them. I.z .s.as
 You do not need to be told that these birds are as wild as any sportsman could wish. There have been as many las twenty thousand pheasants, part ridges and wild duck on the farm at one time-a sight to make the mouth of a sportsman water. During the ear ly part of May--the height of the egg season-as many as six thousand eggs ara daily being dispatched to all parts of the British Isles and the continent, where they will be matched out by com mon or barnyard fowls. ..ss
 The eggs are packed with extraordi- mary care About two hundred of them go in a hamper, and each egg is wrapped in moss or soft hay.
 A an instance of the uniformly good matching of the eggs produeedl by pheasants penned on the latest system, 1t may be mentioned that, for two sea sons in succession, out of eighteen thousand eggs sent i'll two consign- ments to Baron Nathaniel Rothschild in Prussia, eighty-nine per cent, pro duced strong birds, although the eggs were four days on the journey.
 This panning 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 se- cret of MT. Robb's success. Tuhereulo-s sis and other diseases among the birds at Liphook are reduced to a minimum.
 In the breeding pens one gorgaously plumaged cock and five hens are given ample space.
 Wood has been absolutely discarded as far as possible in the pens and avi- aries. Everything is of iron, and made in the workshops on the premises. s,,
 The birds lay from April until the end of June. There are later eggs as we'll 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 five pounds per hundred; from May 26 to S1, three pounds five shillings, and from June 13 to 20. one pound per hundred. Later eggs" can ha had as cheap as fifteen shillings per hundred.
 A strange thing about pheasants' eggs is their liability to assume all shapes and colors. Many of them are as pale blue as the hedge sparrow's 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. "..r...-
 Hundreds of barn-yard fowls are kept at Liphook to hatch out the young pheasants, and excellent mothers they make. Ineubators have been pro- nounced to be failures on game farms.
 The pheasant is by nature a shock ingly bad mother. Should a drenching storm come on, she will deliberately de- sert her brood and allow them to drown apparently without qualm.
 Visitors to, Liphook invariably won- der why there are not nightly depreda- tions by poachers among this valuable stock until they come within view of the aviaries on the hillside.
 There they encounter an army of ca nine policemen, which completely sur sounds the encampment of pens. Huge St. Bernard dogs and mastiffs do sen try go'' along wire cable stretched for