How to Feed Breeding Ducks for Eggs.
There should be quite a distinction between feeding ducks to obtain a supply of eggs and feeding them for market, as in one case the object is to lay on fat and the other is to furnish the most available supply of egg material. As before hinted, soft food is much more readily utilized in a duck's organization than a hen's. We make a habit of turning out our breeding ducks to pasture during the moulting season, housing them in the fall according to the nature of the season, say, from the middle of November to the first of December. We feed soft food morning and evening composed largely of bran with a little meal, keeping them purposely short to induce them to forage for themselves, but when the birds are housed this is all changed.
They are then fed on equal parts of corn meal, wheat-bran and low-grade flour, with about twelve or fifteen per cent. of animal food. One fourth of this food should be composed of vegetables cooked—say, small potatoes, turnips, etc., with all the green rye and refuse cabbage they will eat. We feed this compound morning and evening with a little corn, wheat and oats at noon. Feed all the birds will eat clean and no more. The birds, young and old, may be expected to lay in three weeks from the time they are housed. This part of the thing seems to be under perfect control. You turn in the proper variety of food and they cannot help turning out a generous supply of eggs.
The fertility however, cannot, at this season of the year be so perfectly controlled, as the standard of fertility in the first eggs is apt to be very low, but soon comes to a high point. The fecundity of these birds is wonderful. As a general thing each bird can be depended upon for 140 eggs each season, and as the eggs always command from 5 to 10 cents per dozen more than those from hens it makes the Pekin ducks more profitable for eggs alone than any other fowl.