The shooting season for game always ends on 1 February and that is in a sense the start of the gamekeeper's new year. He has until the next autumn to manage the rearing of the new generation of pheasants and partridges and replenish the stocks for the next season. The first half of February is spent catching up hen pheasants for breeding stock. Then there are some six weeks rabbit-catching. The keepers do a sweep through the woods 'roughing up' with terriers and sending ferrets down the burrows to bring down the numbers. Of course, rabbit numbers are periodically much reduced by the terrible myxomatosis virus, but the numbers always build up again on about a four-year cycle as the rabbits become temporarily immune and then need culling again.

In April we will be collecting eggs for incubation. In the old days we used to buy up broody hens for miles around for this job, but now people don't keep hens any more and we have to use artificial incubators. New cocks are introduced every three years just to vary the strain and thousands of eggs are hatched, though yields are kept down now because the shooting is more selective and sporting. Whereas the guns used to shoot up to 800 birds a day it's now more like 150 or 200. The chicks hatch in June and are placed in Rupert Brooders, which are protective cages with all mod cons like heating and are surrounded by an electric fence to keep out the foxes. As a final defensive measure we leave radios playing all night in the enclosure ­ the voices on Radio 5 seem to be the best deterrent!

Thurlow Estate paddock