CHAPTER XXII.
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 larvæ, 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.
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.