CHAPTER VII

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