DUCKS.
Ducks will not pay if all their food has to be bought, except it is
purchased wholesale, and they are reared for town markets, for their
appetites are voracious, and they do not graze like geese. They may be
kept in a limited space, but more profitably and conveniently where they
have the run of a paddock, orchard, kitchen garden, flat common, green
lane, or farmyard, with ditches and water. They will return at night,
and come to the call of the feeder. Nothing comes amiss to them--green
vegetables, especially when boiled, all kinds of meal made into
porridge, all kinds of grain, bread, oatcake, the refuse and offal of
the kitchen, worms, slugs, snails, insects and their larvae, are devoured
eagerly. Where many fowls are kept, a few ducks may be added profitably,
for they may be fed very nearly on what the hens refuse.
Ducks require water to swim in, but "it is a mistake," says Mr. Baily,
"to imagine that ducks require a great deal of water. They may be kept
where there is but very little, and only want a pond or tank just deep
enough to swim in. The early Aylesbury ducklings that realise such large
prices in the London market have hardly ever had a swim; and in rearing
ducks, where size is a desideratum, they will grow faster and become
larger when kept in pens, farmyards, or in pastures, than where they are
at and in the water all day." Where a large number of geese and ducks
are kept, water on a sufficient scale, and easily accessible, should be
in the neighbourhood.
[Illustration: Toulouse Goose.
Rouen and Aylesbury Ducks.]
Ducks, being aquatic birds, do not require heated apartments, nor roosts
on which to perch during the night. They squat on the floors, which must
be dry and warm. They should, if possible, be kept in a house separate
from the other poultry, and it should have a brick floor, so that it
can be easily washed. In winter the floor should be littered with a thin
layer of straw, rushes, or fern leaves, fresh every day. The
hatching-houses should be separated from the lodging apartments, and
provided with boxes for the purpose of incubation and hatching.
In its wild state the duck pairs with a single mate: the domestic duck
has become polygamous, and five ducks may be allowed to one drake, but
not more than two or three ducks should be given to one drake if eggs
are required for setting.
Ducks begin laying in January, and usually from that time only during
the spring; but those hatched in March will often lay in the autumn, and
continue for two or three months. They usually lay fifty or sixty eggs,
and have been known to produce 250. The faculty of laying might be
greatly developed, as it has been in some breeds of fowls; but they have
been hitherto chiefly bred for their flesh. They require constant
watching when beginning to lay, for they drop their eggs everywhere but
in the nest made for them, but as they generally lay in the night, or
early in the morning, when in perfect health, they should therefore be
kept in every morning till they have laid. One of the surest signs of
indisposition among them is irregularity in laying. "The eggs of the
duck," says Mr. Dickson, "are readily known from those of the common
fowl by their bluish colour and larger size, the shell being smoother,
not so thick, and with much fewer pores. When boiled, the white is never
curdy like that of a new-laid hen's egg, but transparent and glassy,
while the yolk is much darker in colour. The flavour is by no means so
delicate. For omelets, however, as well as for puddings and pastry, duck
eggs are much better than hen's eggs, giving a finer colour and flavour,
and requiring less butter; qualities so highly esteemed in Picardy, that
the women will sometimes go ten or twelve miles for duck eggs to make
their holiday cakes."
A hen is often made to hatch ducklings, being considered a better nurse
than a duck, which is apt to take them while too young to the pond,
dragging them under beetling banks in search of food, and generally
leaving half of them in the water unable to get out; and if the fly or
the gnat is on the water, she will stay there till after dark, and lose
part of her brood. Ducks' eggs may be advantageously placed under a
broody exhibition hen. (_See_ page 88.) A turkey is much better than
either, from the large expanse of the wings in covering the broods, and
the greater heat of body; but if the duck is a good sitter, it is best
to let her hatch her own eggs, taking care to keep her and them from the
water till they are strong. The nest should be on the ground, and in a
damp place. Choose the freshest eggs, and place from nine to eleven
under her. Feed her morning and evening while sitting, and place food
and water within her reach. The duck always covers her eggs upon leaving
them, and loose straw should be placed near the house for that purpose.
They are hatched in thirty days. They may generally be left with their
mother upon the nest for her own time. When she moves coop her on the
short grass if fine weather, or under shelter if otherwise, for a week
or ten days, when they may be allowed to swim for half an hour at a
time. When hatched they require constant feeding. A little curd,
bread-crumbs, and meal, mixed with chopped green food, is the best food
when first hatched. Boiled cold oatmeal porridge is the best food for
ducklings for the first ten days; afterwards barley-meal, pollard, and
oats, with plenty of green food. Never give them hard spring water to
drink, but that from a pond. Ducklings are easily reared, soon able to
shift for themselves, and to pick up worms, slugs, and insects, and can
be cooped together in numbers at night if protected from rats. An old
pigsty is an excellent place for a brood of young ducks.
Ducklings should not be allowed to go on the water till feathers have
supplied the place of their early down, for the latter will get
saturated with the water while the former throws off the wet. "Though
the young ducklings," says Mr. W. C. L. Martin, "take early to the
water, it is better that they should gain a little strength before they
be allowed to venture into ponds or rivers; a shallow vessel of water
filled to the brim and sunk in the ground will suffice for the first
week or ten days, and this rule is more especially to be adhered to when
they are under the care of a common hen, which cannot follow them into
the pond, and the calls of which when there they pay little or no regard
to. Rats, weasels, pike, and eels are formidable foes to ducklings: we
have known entire broods destroyed by the former, which, having their
burrows in a steep bank around a sequestered pond, it was found
impossible to extirpate." If the ducklings stay too long in the water
they will have diarrhoea, in which case coop them close for a few
days, and mix bean-meal or oatmeal with their ordinary food.
A troop of ducks will do good service to a kitchen garden in the summer
or autumn, when they can do no mischief by devouring delicate salads and
young sprouting vegetables. They will search industriously for snails,
slugs, woodlice, and millipedes, and gobble them up eagerly, getting
positively fat on slugs and snails. Strawberries, of which they are very
fond, must be protected from them. Where steamed food is daily prepared
for pigs and cattle, a portion of this mixed with bran and barley-meal
is the cheapest mode of satisfying their voracious appetites. They
should never be stinted in food.
To fatten ducks let them have as much substantial food as they will eat,
bruised oats and peameal being the standard, plenty of exercise, and
clean water. Boiled roots mixed with a little barley-meal is excellent
food, with a little milk added during fattening. They require neither
penning up nor cramming to acquire plumpness, and if well fed should be
fit for market in eight or ten weeks. Celery imparts a delicious
flavour.
The Aylesbury is the finest breed, and should be of a spotless white,
with long, flat, broad beak of a pale flesh colour, grey eyes, long head
and neck, broad and flat body and breast, and orange legs, placed wide
apart. As it lays early, its ducklings are the earliest ready for
market. They have produced 150 large eggs in a year, and are better
sitters than the Rouen.
The Rouen is hardy and easily reared, but rarely lay till February or
March. They thrive better in most parts of England than the Aylesburys,
and care less for the water than the other varieties. They are very
handsome, and weigh eight or nine pounds each, and their flesh is
excellent.
The Muscovy duck is so called, says Ray, "not because it comes from
Muscovy, but because it exhales a somewhat powerful odour of musk."
Little is known of its origin, which is generally thought to be South
America; nor has the date of its introduction into Europe been
ascertained. "This species," says Mr. W. C. L. Martin, "will inter-breed
with the common duck, but we believe the progeny are not fertile. The
Musk duck greatly exceeds the ordinary kind in size, and moreover,
differs in the colours and character of the plumage, in general contour,
and the form of the head. The general colour is glossy blue-black,
varied more or less with white; the head is crested, and a space of
naked scarlet skin, more or less clouded with violet, surrounds the eye,
continued from scarlet caruncles on the base of the beak; the top of the
head is crested, the feathers of the body are larger, more lax, softer,
and less closely compacted together than in the common duck, and seem to
indicate less aquatic habits. The male far surpasses the female in size;
there are no curled feathers in his tail." The male is fierce and
quarrelsome, and when enraged has a savage appearance, and utters deep,
hoarse sounds. The flesh is very good, but the breed is inferior as a
layer to the Aylesbury or Rouen.
The Buenos Ayres, Labrador, or East Indian, brought most probably from
the first-named country, is a small and very beautiful variety, with the
plumage of a uniform rich, lustrous, greenish-black, and dark legs and
bills; the drake rarely weighing five pounds, and the duck four pounds.
Their eggs are often smeared over with a slatey-coloured matter, but the
shell is really of a dull white.