The trouble arises when there are some ants’ eggs but not enough to go round, for this food has the effect of setting the young birds against everything else. Lord Ducie’s partridges were mainly fed upon meal of some kind, although the writer forgets what it was. Another precaution that was taken was to distribute the coops very widely along the sides of corn-fields, and there is no doubt that this plan obliged the birds to hunt for insect food at a much earlier age than if they had been kept upon ants’ eggs. Unfortunately, the chicks will not eat the ants themselves; otherwise the getting of ant-hills to cart to the birds would go three times as far as it does, for there are generally twice as many wingless ants as there are eggs to every nest.
The second charge against these tame birds is that they grow too wild in packs and fly right away, and this is a fact beyond all dispute. However, it has been said that cock partridges will sometimes take to young birds reared by hens, if the bachelor partridges are themselves penned in the neighbourhood when the little chicks are first carried from the sitting boxes to the coops. There appears here to be a possible future for hand rearing without its old disadvantage of packing. Probably most people will think that the cock partridge is better occupied in assisting his own proper mate to raise the very big coveys that are now manufactured by the joint efforts of birds and keepers.
This partnership arrangement came about when the keeper at The Grange discovered how easy it was, with proper precautions, to make up the nests of _sitting_ partridges to 20 or more eggs. The result of this was that, although eggs had for many years been changed during the laying period, to effect cross breeding, it now became possible to employ the partridges themselves to do the work of foster-mothers—a vocation that farmyard hens had only half performed hitherto, and done their part badly. All destroyed nests, as well as those that looked likely to be destroyed, could now have their eggs hatched without the intervention of those fowls that always want to start laying again just as they are most desired to keep their foster game chicks from “sowing wild oats.”