Ducklings must be Carefully Yarded While Young.
A great mortality often occurs to young ducklings when allowed free range during warm weather, from devouring injurious insects. Bees, wasps, hornets, bugs of all descriptions, are eagerly swallowed alive but not always with impunity, and the birds often pay the penalty with their lives. Always confine them, even when designed for breeding purposes, until they are six weeks old, when they can be allowed their liberty.
The most of the diseases to which ducks and fowls are subject can usually be traced to some infraction of conditions, and of course are always more or less under the control of the careful operator. Two young men called here a short time ago wishing to know what was the trouble with their fowls. Hitherto they had occupied a cold building, so open that the snow sifted through on them, and they had never to their recollection had a diseased fowl. Within a year they had put up a nice, warm building with a glass front, and their fowls had been diseased ever since. They had shut their birds in a building that would run up to 100 degrees during the day and that would go down nearly to zero at night, subjecting their fowls to thermal changes, under which neither animal or vegetable life could possibly live, and then expect them to thrive.
The amateur poulterer should understand in the beginning that it is far easier to anticipate disease in poultry than to cure it. Where fowls are kept in large numbers, their health and well-being can only be insured by extreme care and cleanliness, together with a free use of disinfectants. Buildings should be kept dry, clean and sweet, and not too warm. The greater the variety of food the better, so long as it is healthy and nutritious; while gravel, sand, shell and granulated charcoal should be kept by them during confinement in winter.
I am often asked by parties, "Why do so many would-be poulterers fail if it is a legitimate business and fairly profitable?" I reply, I am not prepared to concede the point that the proportional number of failures in the poultry business is greater than among other vocations in life. Hundreds of men fail every year in mercantile, manufacturing and brokerage pursuits. People do not decry any legitimate business from this cause, because they know there are hundreds who are not only getting a livelihood, but are amassing fortunes at them. There are hundreds, yes thousands, of farms on the market in New England today, for less than the value of the buildings, because their owners have made failures of them. Do men denounce agriculture? No! Because they know that from time immemorial men have not only secured an honest living, but have gained a competence from tilling the soil. You simply say that it is the men. Why not be equally frank with the poultry business?
They say the whole thing is contrary to nature, and you can't improve upon nature. Can't we? That is just what man is placed upon this sublunary sphere for, and he must begin by improving himself. With the present opportunities for obtaining information, no one has a right to remain ignorant because he begins by making a failure of himself; and when a man has failed in the poultry business or elsewhere, it is simply want of that indomitable pluck, energy, and perseverence, which are the requisites of success everywhere, coupled with a disinclination to sacrifice his comfort and ease, or conform his life to his business requirements.
Again, we hear that artificially grown fowls are stunted and small, the flesh tasteless and insipid, and many other things which have no shadow of truth in them. I append the testimonials of some of the largest poultry dealers both in Boston and New York cities, who cheerfully and voluntarily testify to the superiority of our artificially-grown birds. These firms are square and honest dealers, and we heartily recommend them to any who stand in need of their services.
I have endeavored in this little book to impart what little knowledge I possess on this important subject to the reader. If he can learn wisdom by my experience and avoid the errors into which I fell, it is all I ask. The business, as I have learned its details, has become more profitable each year; while the experience of the past season has been highly satisfactory, as the demand has been greater than ever before.