MANAGEMENT OF DUCKS
Although ducks delight in the water and, when they have an opportunity
to do so, spend a considerable part of the time in it, they are often
kept very successfully where they have no water except for drinking.
Some duck breeders, who have kept their ducks for many generations
without water in which they could swim, have said that the ducks lost
all desire to swim, and that birds of such stock would not go into the
water even when they had the opportunity to do so. This statement
greatly exaggerates the facts. Any young duck, no matter how the stock
from which it came has been kept, will take to the water as soon as it
can run about if it is given access to water at that time; but if young
ducks are kept away from the water until they are several weeks old, and
then given access to water in which they can swim, they are often as
much afraid of the water as they would be of any object to which they
were not accustomed. If they remain near the water, however, it will not
be long before they follow their natural instinct to get into it. Having
once entered the water, they are immediately as much at home there as if
they had always known the pleasures of life in that element.
As comparatively few people keep ducks, and specialization in duck
culture is mostly in the line of producing young ducks for market, on a
large scale, there is not as much variety in methods of managing ducks
as in methods of managing fowls. If ducks are expected to do the best of
which they are capable, they must be given a great deal of attention.
While no bird will endure more neglect without appearing to suffer,
there is none that will respond to good care more generously.
SMALL FLOCKS ON TOWN LOTS
=Numbers.= The small flock of ducks on a town lot is usually a _very_
small flock, kept more from curiosity and for a little variety in
poultry keeping than with any definite purpose. Most of such little
flocks are composed of a drake and from one to five ducks. Where a
larger flock is kept for the eggs they produce, the number rarely
exceeds fifteen or twenty. Many town people who want to grow only a few
ducks each year prefer not to keep any adult stock, but to buy a few
eggs for hatching when they want them.
=Houses and yards.= Ducks require about the same amounts of house and
yard room per bird as fowls. While they will stand crowding better than
any other kind of poultry, they appreciate an abundance of room and good
conditions, and are more thrifty when they are not overcrowded. Where
they can be allowed to remain outdoors at night, they really need no
shelter but a shed large enough to give them shade from the sun on hot
days and protection from hard, driving storms. On most town lots,
however, it is advisable to have them indoors at night for protection
from dogs and thieves. Also, the amount of roughing that they like,
while not at all detrimental to them, is not conducive to early laying.
So most duck keepers prefer to have the ducks housed at night and in
severe weather, and give them approximately the same space that would be
given to an equal number of fowls.
The floor of the house should be littered with straw, hay, or shavings.
The object of littering the floors of duck houses is not to afford them
exercise, but to provide them with dry bedding. The droppings of ducks
are very watery, and the bedding must be changed often enough to keep
the ducks clean. It is customary to provide shallow nest boxes, placing
them on the floor next the wall, preferably in a corner. The ducks are
quite as likely to leave their eggs anywhere on the floor, or out in the
yard (if they are let out before they lay), but the nests are there if
they want them, and many will use the nests regularly.
The only other furnishings needed are a feed trough and a drinking
vessel, but it is advisable to have a tub or a pan in which the birds
can take a bath, and to supply them with water in this once or twice a
week. The drinking vessel must be one that they cannot get into, for if
they can get into it they will certainly do so. An ordinary wooden water
pail, or a small butter tub with the part above the upper hoop sawed
off, makes a very satisfactory drinking vessel for adult ducks. It will
hold enough water for the ducks to partially wash themselves, which they
do by dipping their heads in the water and then rubbing them on their
bodies and wings. For the regular bath for two or three ducks one of the
largest-sized bath pans made for pigeons will do very well, or an old
washtub cut down to six or eight inches deep may be used. For a flock of
eight or ten ducks a good tub may be made from one end of a molasses
hogshead. The bath should always be given outdoors, because it takes the
ducks only a few minutes to splash so much water out of the tub that
everything around it is thoroughly wet. The drinking water should also
be given outdoors whenever the houses are open.
As the ducks of the breeds usually kept can hardly fly at all, very low
partitions and fences will keep them in their quarters, but to keep
other poultry or animals out of their yards it may be necessary to build
higher fences. For the heavier breeds, like the Pekin and Rouen, fences
are usually made from 18 inches to 24 inches high. The ducks will rarely
attempt to go over these, but occasionally a drake learns to climb a
two-foot fence by using his bill, wings, and toes, and may then manage
to get over a higher fence. For the small, light breeds, fences 3 or 4
feet high may be needed. If their yard is on a slope and is large enough
to give them a chance to start a flight high up on the slope, so that
they will rise above the fence at the lower side, it may be necessary
either to put a very high fence on that side or to cover the yard.
While the fence for ducks need not be either high or strong, there must
be no holes in it that a duck, having put its head through, could by
pressure enlarge enough to let its body pass. A piece of wire netting
that has begun to rust a little may be as good as ever for fowls for a
long time, but if used for a duck fence it will be most unsatisfactory,
because the ducks will soon make many holes in it. If wire netting alone
is used, it should be fastened to the ground with pegs every three or
four feet.
=Feeding.= The feeding of ducks differs from the feeding of hens in that
ducks need mostly soft food, and that, if the keeper wishes to force
growth or egg production, they may be fed much larger proportions of
such concentrated foods as beef scraps and meat meals. As has been
stated, in its natural state the duck gets the greater part of its food
from the water. This is all soft food, and the bird swallows a great
deal of water with it. It does not, therefore, need a large crop in
which to soak its food before it passes into the gizzard. So the crop of
the duck is small--merely an enlargement of the gullet. Some of the old
books on poultry say that the duck has no crop, but you can see by
looking at a duck that has just had a full meal that the food it has
taken remains in the passage, sometimes filling it right up to the
throat.
[Illustration: Fig. 130. Pekin duckling six weeks old]
With a mash (just the same as is given to hens) morning and evening, a
cabbage to pick at, plenty of drinking water, and a supply of oyster
shell always before them, ducks will do very well. If they have no
cabbage, about one third (by bulk) of the mash should be cut clover or
alfalfa. When the days are long, it is a good plan to give them a little
cracked corn or whole wheat about noon. The water supply should always
be replenished just before feeding, for as soon as a duck has taken a
few mouthfuls of food of any kind, it wants a drink of water.
=Laying habits.= With the exception of the ducks of the Indian Runner
type, which lay some eggs at other seasons, as hens do, ducks usually
lay very persistently for about six months, and then stop entirely for
about six months. Occasionally ducks of other breeds lay a few eggs in
the autumn, but this trait has not been developed in them as it has in
the Indian Runner. If they are comfortably housed and well fed, Pekin
and Rouen Ducks usually begin to lay in January. If they are allowed to
expose themselves to rough weather, and are fed indifferently, they may
not begin to lay until March or April. When they do begin, they usually
lay much more steadily than hens until hot weather comes, and then
gradually decrease their production until by midsummer they have stopped
altogether.
[Illustration: Fig. 131. Pekin drake four months old, weighing nine
pounds]
The eggs are usually laid very early in the morning. Ducks often lay
before daylight and almost always lay before eight o'clock. When a duck
lays in a nest, she is very likely to cover the egg with the nest
material when she leaves it. A duck will often make a nest and remain on
it an hour or more and then go and drop her egg somewhere else and pay
no further attention to it.
=Growing ducklings.= For a poultry keeper who has only a little room it
is much easier to grow a few ducks than to grow an equal number of
chickens. There are two reasons for this: One is that the ducklings
stand close confinement better and are not so sensitive to unsanitary
conditions; the other is that ducks of the improved breeds grow much
more quickly than chickens and are grown up before the novelty of caring
for them wears off and the keeper tires of giving the close attention
that young poultry need when grown under such conditions.
The ducks of the improved breeds are mostly non-sitters. Unless one has
common ducks, Muscovy Ducks, Rouen Ducks with some wild Mallard blood,
or Mallards not long domesticated, he is not likely to have a duck "go
broody," and so small lots of duck eggs are usually hatched under hens.
As duck eggs are larger than hen eggs, a smaller number is given to the
hen. Eleven medium-sized duck eggs are given to a hen that would cover
thirteen hen eggs. If the eggs are large, it is better to give such a
hen only nine.
The development of a fertile duck egg that has a white or slightly
tinted shell can be seen very plainly when the egg is held before a
light, much earlier than the development of a hen egg. If the shell is
green and quite dark in color, the development of the germ may not show
any better than in a brown-shelled hen egg. The period of incubation is
about four weeks. Eggs are sometimes picked as early as the twenty-fifth
day, but usually on the twenty-sixth day. As stated in Chapter II, the
duckling usually waits quite a long time after chipping the shell before
it completes the process and emerges.
In a little duckling we find the most striking resemblance to a reptile
that is to be seen among domestic birds. It has a long, soft body, a
long neck, short legs, and a wriggling movement, and sometimes, when it
is wriggling through a small hole, it looks very snakelike. While they
are very small, ducklings are the most interesting of young birds. They
will go to the water as soon as they leave the nest. Dabbling in it
will not hurt them in the least if the weather is pleasant, if the water
is not cold, and if they can leave it when they are tired and go to
their mother and get dry and warm. Much of the pleasure of growing young
ducks is in watching their behavior in the water. For this purpose a
large pan or a small, shallow tub may be placed in their coop. It should
either be sunk in the ground, so that they can get in and out easily, or
two short pieces of board should be nailed together at such an angle
that they will form a little walk from the ground outside, over the edge
of the vessel, and to the bottom inside. This walk enables the ducklings
to get out if the water gets so low that they cannot scramble from its
surface over the sides of the pan or tub. The best way to teach the
little ducks to use the walk is to put a little pile of sods or earth
beside the vessel containing the water. The ducks will learn very
quickly to go into the water in this way, and will soon find their way
out by the board walk. After they have come out by the walk a few times,
they will begin to go in by it. It is very important to make sure that
if young ducks are given water to play in, they can get out of it
easily. Many who have not had experience in handling them neglect this
and feel very bad when some of their ducklings are drowned.
If proper provision is made for the safety of the ducklings, they afford
a great deal of entertainment. One of the first things a little duck
does when it gets into the water is to go through the peculiar ducking
performance that gives the name to its species. The little fellows duck
their heads to the bottom, and their tails and feet go up into the air
while they mechanically feel with their bills for the food which
instinct seems to suggest should be there. They play in the water, going
through all the motions of feeding in it. If the sun is warm, they are
as likely to lie down together in the sun when they leave the water as
they are to go to the hen to be brooded. As they lie on the ground they
often turn one eye toward the sky and look steadily upward, as if they
knew intuitively that one of their most dangerous natural enemies might
appear from that quarter. In every way they comport themselves just as
old ducks do and not at all in the ways of their hen mother.
The young ducks may be fed, as the old ones are, on mash, but should be
fed oftener, unless their coops are where they can eat all the grass
they want and can get a great many flies, worms, and insects. They are
expert flycatchers, and if there is anything in their coop to attract
flies, they will get a great many of them. Under such conditions three
feeds a day will be sufficient. If they have no grass they should be fed
five times daily and should be supplied with tender green food of some
kind. For the first few days the mash given them should have a little
very fine gravel or coarse sand mixed with it--about a heaping
tablespoonful to a quart of mash. At any time after that when the ducks
seem dull and weak, a little fine gravel in the mash will usually tone
them up.
Little ducks grow very fast and in a few weeks are entirely independent
of the hen. At ten or twelve weeks they are fully feathered and almost
full-grown, and are ready to be killed and eaten as "green ducks."
SMALL FLOCKS ON FARMS
=General conditions.= The small flock of ducks on the farm is usually
most profitable if it can be given the run of a small pasture or orchard
where the birds have good foraging and have access to a pond or stream
but cannot wander away. Ducks on the farm are often allowed to run with
other poultry. This may do very well if the flocks of all kinds are
small and can separate when foraging, but as a rule it is better to put
the ducks where they will be away from other poultry. A small flock of
ducks properly placed on a farm should require very little food and very
little attention. If possible the birds should be free at night,
because the worms and grubs come to the surface in greatest abundance
then, and they can get as much in an hour early in the morning as they
can in several hours after the sun is high. The principal objections to
leaving them out at night are that they may be attacked by animals that
prey upon them, and that the ducks may lay their eggs where they are not
easily found. The person in charge of the ducks has to use his judgment
as to whether the risks in his case are so great that the ducks should
be confined at night.
When a flock of ducks on a farm has liberty to wander at will, it often
makes a great deal of trouble, because ducks are prone to stop for the
night wherever they happen to be when they have eaten their fill late in
the day.
=Feeding.= If the ducks are kept in until they have laid, they should
have a little food when they are let out. It does not make much
difference what this is. If a mash is made for other poultry, some of it
may be given to them. Otherwise, a little whole grain will make them
comfortable until they can pick up a more varied breakfast. The best
method of feeding the young ducks will depend upon the conditions. As a
rule it is better to keep them quite close for the first two or three
weeks and feed them well. The ideal way is to coop them on grass, or in
a garden where they can get a great deal of green food and worms.
Treated in this way they will get a better start and will grow much
faster and larger than if they are allowed to wear themselves out by
running about while small. On a farm where there is no water near the
house, but where there is a stream at a little distance, the young ducks
should be so placed that they cannot make their way to this stream. Very
small ducks at liberty will often find their way alone to water so far
from their home that it was not supposed that they could locate it. If
they have an opportunity to do so, small ducks are much more likely than
older ones to wander off in search of water, and instinct seems to
direct them toward it.
After the ducklings are three or four weeks old, they may be given as
much freedom as old ducks. Unless natural food is very abundant, they
should be fed some grain for a while. Ducks grown in this way cannot be
sold to advantage as green ducks. At this stage of growth they cannot be
collected from small flocks and marketed in condition to bring the
prices paid for those from the special duck farms, and as it costs the
farmer little or nothing to keep his ducks until mature, it is usually
more profitable for him to do so than to sell them earlier.
[Illustration: Fig. 132. Duck farms at Speonk, Long Island]
On a farm near a market where there is a good demand for green ducks it
might pay very well to grow several hundred a year. On this scale the
methods should be similar to those used on the special duck farms,
except that the hatching might be done with hens. It would not do to let
the ducks run about as recommended for stock which is to be kept until
mature, because then they would not be fat at the age for killing them.
MARKET DUCK FARMS
=History.= The growing of ducks for the New York City market began on
Long Island at a very early stage of specialization in poultry culture.
Many farmers there produced a few hundred ducks for this market each
year, and found it very profitable. As the demand increased they tried
to increase production to meet it, but were unable to do this, because
there was then in this country no duck adapted to their needs. The
Aylesbury Duck, the favorite table duck in England, was too delicate.
The only hardy white duck that they had was the White Muscovy. This
breed was not very satisfactory, because the females are much smaller
than the males, but they had to use white ducks, for the colored ducks
will not pick clean at the age at which ducks can be marketed most
profitably; so they did the best they could with the White Muscovy Duck,
under the restrictions placed upon their operations by the difficulty of
getting broody hens. While the industry was mostly on Long Island, there
were duck growers here and there on the mainland in the vicinity of New
York and also near Boston, but there were no duck farms of any
importance in other parts of the country.
[Illustration: Fig. 133. View from the windmill tower in Fig. 132]
When the White Pekin Ducks were brought from China, and reports of their
hardiness, prolificacy, and rapid growth were circulated, the duck
growers were at first very skeptical, but they soon learned that the
reports which they had supposed were greatly exaggerated were literally
true. Then every duck grower had to have Pekin Ducks. The production
increased very much after the introduction of the Pekin Duck, but the
growth of the industry was still retarded by the impossibility of
getting all the hens that were needed to hatch the eggs. Several
incubators had been invented, which hatched very well for those who had
the skill to operate them, but which, in the hands of unskilled
operators, spoiled most of the eggs placed in them. About 1890 appeared
the first incubators with automatic regulators that really worked so
that the ordinary person could manage the machines successfully. One of
the New England duck growers who had invented the best of the machines
used before this time was already growing ducklings on quite a large
scale. On Long Island, where most of the duck farms were located, the
farmers were hard to convince of the superiority of incubators for their
work. Indeed, the only way that they could be convinced was by practical
demonstrations right on their own farms. The first incubators used there
were machines set up on trial by a manufacturer who had invented an
incubator which was very easy to operate. This man went to the duck
growing district, placed machines on various farms, and went from farm
to farm daily to attend to them, until the farmers were fully convinced
that the machines would do what was claimed for them. In a very short
time the artificial method had displaced hatching with hens on the
commercial duck farms, and the business was growing amazingly. Within
ten years there were many farms producing from 15,000 to 20,000 ducks a
year, and a few producing from 40,000 to 50,000. One man on Long Island,
who operated two farms a few miles apart, sometimes grew 80,000 ducks in
a season. Those who were successful on a large scale became moderately
rich. Without exception the successful duck farms have been built up
from small beginnings by men who had very little capital to start with.
Some of these farms have been operated on a large scale for twenty
years.
[Illustration: Fig. 134. House and yards for breeding stock]
[Illustration: Fig. 135. Brooder house for young ducklings]
[Illustration: Fig. 136. Fattening sheds and yards]
VIEWS OF WEBER BROTHERS' DUCK FARM, WRENTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
As would be expected, the success of the big duck farms has led many
people with large capital to undertake to establish duck farms on a
still larger scale. But these undertakings do not last long, because it
is practically impossible to secure for such a plant an organization as
efficient as one developed by the owner of a plant which has grown from
small beginnings under his own management.
=Description.= A large duck farm is a very interesting place at any
time, but is most interesting at the height of the growing season, when
all the operations in the business are going on at the same time. The
total number of birds on a farm at any time is very much less than the
product for the season, because the first ducks hatched will have gone
to market before the eggs which produce the last are laid, but in flocks
of more than 10,000 the impression on the visitor is much the same, no
matter what the numbers.
[Illustration: Fig. 137. Duck house and yards on seashore, Fishers
Island, New York]
Duck farms are of two types: those located on streams or inlets have the
yards for all but the smallest ducks partly in the water; the inland
duck farms, on which the young ducks grown for market are given no water
except for drinking. Some of the inland farms give the breeding stock
access to streams and ponds only during the molting season, when they
can be allowed to run in large flocks and a small area of water will
serve for all. For a time after the large inland duck farms were first
established it was claimed by many that ducks grew faster when not
allowed to swim than they did when allowed to follow their natural
inclination to play in the water. No doubt some ducks which were in dry
yards grew better than some having access to large bodies of water, and
on the whole as good ducks were grown on the inland farms as on those
near the water, but it has long been known that it is much easier to
manage the ducks when they have water in their yards. There are two
reasons for this: in the first place, they are much more contented in
the water; in the second place, they feel very much safer on the water
when anything alarms them, and will keep quiet on it when, if they could
not retreat to the water, they would rush about in a panic and many
would be injured.
[Illustration: Fig. 138. Quarters for breeding stock on an inland duck
farm. Swimming tanks in the yards]
Ducks are very timid and easily panic-stricken. The duck grower has to
take every possible precaution to guard against disturbances of this
kind, because ducks are so easily injured, and even if they are not
hurt, a sudden fright will make them shrink a great deal in weight.
Visitors who come merely out of curiosity are not desired on duck farms
at any time, and none but those familiar with the handling of ducks are
ever allowed to go about the farm without a guide who will see that the
ducks are not disturbed. Many visitors think that this is unreasonable,
but the duck grower knows that the mere presence of a stranger excites
the ducks, and that a person walking about might put a flock in a panic
which would at once extend to other flocks, simply because he was not
familiar enough with the ways of ducks to detect the signs of panic in a
flock which he was approaching, and to stand still until they were
quiet, or move very slowly until he had passed them. If a stranger,
walking between yards where there were five thousand ducks fattening,
made an unconscious movement that set the ducks in motion, the loss to
the grower could hardly be less than from five to ten dollars, and might
be very much more. Where such little things can cause so much trouble
and loss, the difference between success and failure may lie in
preventing them.
On a duck plant with a capacity of 50,000 ducks everything is on a big
scale. Although ducks will stand more crowding than other kinds of
poultry, it takes a large farm for so many. The buildings will cover
many thousands of square feet of land and, though of the cheapest
substantial structure, will represent an investment of fifteen or twenty
thousand dollars. Incubators, appliances, breeding stock, and supplies
on hand will amount to about as much. The incubator cellar will be
several times as large as the cellar under the ordinary dwelling house.
Before the so-called mammoth incubators were made, the largest-sized
machines heated with lamps were used on all duck farms, and an incubator
cellar would sometimes contain as many as seventy incubators having a
capacity of from 200 to 300 eggs each. Now many of the large farms use
the mammoth incubators, with a capacity of from 6000 to 18,000 eggs
each. These mammoth incubators are really series of small egg chambers
so arranged that the entire series is heated by pipes coming from a
hot-water heater, instead of each chamber having an independent lamp
heater as in the small, or individual, machines.
[Illustration: Fig. 139. Feeding young ducks on farm of W. R. Curtiss &
Co., Ransomville, New York]
As nearly all kinds of supplies are bought by the carload, and as stocks
must be kept up so that there will be no possibility of running short of
foodstuffs, a great deal of space is required for storage. Large
quantities of ice are needed to cool the dressed ducks before shipping
them to market, so the farm must have its own ice houses and store its
own supply of ice in the winter. For some years after duck farms grew to
such large proportions, the mixing of mash was all done by hand, with
shovels. Often one man was kept busy all day long mixing mash, and very
hard work it was. Now the men on the large farms mix the food in big
dough mixers, such as are used by bakers, and work that would take a man
an hour is done in a few minutes.
In some sections the killing and dressing of the ducks is done by men
with whom duck picking is a trade at which they work during its season.
In others the killing is done by men, but the pickers are women living
in the vicinity of the farm, who can be secured for this work whenever
they are needed. A farm that markets 50,000 ducks in a season will keep
a large force of pickers busy the greater part of the time for many
months. Quite a large building is required to provide room for the
pickers to work in, for tanks for cooling 500 or more ducks at once, for
space for the men who pack them, and for lofts for drying the feathers
before they are sold. This drying process must be used whether the birds
are dry-picked or are scalded before the feathers are removed. Water on
feathers dries quickly, but the oil in the quills dries very slowly. The
feathers from one duck are worth only a few cents, and where small
numbers are grown the feathers are hardly worth the trouble of saving
and curing. On a large plant the total product of feathers for a season
amounts to several thousand dollars, and it pays to provide facilities
for taking proper care of them.
After the crop of ducks on an inland farm is marketed, the fences must
be removed and the land plowed and sowed with winter rye. This crop is
used extensively for this purpose, because it is a gross feeder and
takes the impurities from the soil very fast, and also furnishes a good
supply of green food for the stock ducks during the winter and for the
first young ducks put on the land in the spring. Where the farms are
large enough, all ducks may be kept off a part of the land each year and
crops grown on it. The farms located at the waterside do not have to
look to the purification of the land so carefully, because the rains
wash a great deal of the droppings away. Some of these farms get large
quantities of river grass from the streams and cut it up to mix with the
food for the ducks.
DUCK FANCIERS' METHODS
There are two general classes of duck fanciers: those who breed one or
more of the useful varieties for fine form and feather points, and those
who breed the ornamental varieties. Breeders of the latter class usually
keep other kinds of ornamental poultry also.
The methods of the fanciers of useful kinds of ducks compare with those
of the practical growers who handle small numbers as do those of the
fowl fancier with the methods of the poultry keeper who keeps a few
fowls for his own use. In a general way they are the same, yet wherever
it is necessary they are modified to secure the best possible
development of the type. If a duck fancier has not a natural water
supply for his ducks, he either makes a small artificial pond or ditch
or gives them water for bathing much oftener than the commercial duck
grower thinks is necessary. He also gives both old and young ducks more
room, and encourages them to take exercise, because this makes them
stronger, more symmetrical, and better able to stand transportation and
the handling to which they are subjected when taken to shows. Most duck
fanciers are also fanciers of fowls or of some other kind of poultry.
The competition in ducks is not nearly so keen as in fowls. Hence they
are so much less interesting to a fancier that few are satisfied with
the sport that may be obtained from exhibiting ducks only.
When the growing of green ducks for market began to be developed upon a
large scale, many of those engaged in this line exhibited stock and sold
birds for breeding and eggs for hatching. They soon found that while the
Pekin Duck was unrivaled as a market duck, it was not of sufficient
interest to fanciers to excite the competition that creates high prices
for the finest specimens, and that it paid them better to devote
themselves exclusively to the production of market ducks. At the present
time only a few market duck growers make a business of selling breeding
and exhibition stock. Most of them will not take small orders, but will
fill large orders when they have a surplus of breeding stock and can get
a good price for it. On almost every large commercial duck farm there
are hundreds of birds much better than most of the Pekin Ducks seen at
poultry shows, and many better than the best exhibited. There is
probably no other kind of poultry in which so large a proportion of the
finest specimens are found on the plants of those producing for market.
The ornamental varieties of ducks are given much less attention in
America than they deserve. Few are seen except in large collections of
fancy waterfowl, and sales from these collections are principally for
special displays at shows. On many farms the Mallard, Call, and East
Indian Ducks might be established and left to themselves, to increase in
a natural way, only enough being sold or killed to keep them from
becoming too numerous. If located in a suitable place, such a flock
makes a very attractive feature on a farm. The highly ornamental
Mandarin and Carolina Ducks, being able to fly quite as well as pigeons,
must be kept in covered runs. They will breed and rear their young in a
very small space. A covered run 6 ft. wide, 6 ft. high, and from 20 to
30 ft. long, built in a secluded place and having a small shelter at one
end, makes a very satisfactory place for a pair of ducks of any of the
small breeds to live and rear their young.