Spons' Household Manual / A treasury of domestic receipts and a guide for home management

by Unknown

Ducks

Ducks.—With regard to the variety that should be kept, two circumstances have to be considered. If large size, early maturity, and white appearance for the market are required, the Aylesbury will be found pre-eminent. If, on the other hand, small size with a strongly pronounced suspicion of wild duck is required, then choose a smaller variety, as the small black, called with equal inaccuracy East Indian, Buenos Ayres, and Labrador, or, still better, the tame-bred wild, or a cross between the two; but for family use Aylesburies must be relied on.

The great error in the usual management of ducks is not bringing them to rapid maturity. A duck should be so fed as to be large enough to kill under 10 weeks old. If it is allowed to live longer, it begins to moult, and consequently is not so good in flavour, and the nourishment given to it goes to form feathers, and not to increase its weight. It is obvious that if one duck can be made ready for the market in 2 months, it must yield a larger profit than another that is not fit for use till it is 4 or 6.

Ducks should be always shut up during the night, as they generally lay at that time, and, if allowed to be at large, drop their eggs in the water, where they sink and are lost. As early as possible in the season they should be set under large hens. A good-sized Cochin, Brahma, or Dorking will cover 12 or 13. The hens should not be set in the crowded, vermin-infested nest places that are usually seen in fowl-houses, but on the ground or in a circular basket or American cheese box, nearly filled with moist earth, and covered with a very little bruised straw, not hay; this earth should be kept moist during the whole time of setting, so as to imitate the conditions of the nest in a state of nature.

The young should be hatched on the twenty-eighth day, that is, the same day of the week one month after they are placed under the hen.

When the young are hatched they should be left with the hen till well nestled, well dried, and strong enough to stand. Many scores of ducklings are lost by inexperienced persons through their impatience to remove them from the nest. The little duckling is at first clad with soft yellow down, which gradually disappears as the feathers grow. After a few days, 3 or 4 broods are put together with one hen, who is quite able to take care of them all. For market purposes the treatment of the ducklings is as follows: They are not allowed to go into any water, but are kept in hovels, or the rooms of cottages, each lot of 30 or 40 separated by low boards; it is no uncommon thing at Aylesbury to see 2000-3000 all in one establishment. They are kept very clean and dry on barley straw. Their food consists of hard-boiled eggs chopped fine, and mixed with boiled rice and bullock’s liver cut up small. This is given to them several times in the day for about a fortnight or more. When they are capable of consuming more, they are fed on barley meal and tallow greaves mixed, together with the water in which the greaves have previously been boiled; some also use horseflesh to mix with their other food. This constitutes all that is necessary to produce early ducklings for the table.

They are killed at 10-12 weeks old, just before the adult feathers come; as the energy up to that time has been spent in the growth of flesh, but is then directed to the feathers, and a duck at 5-6 months when plucked often does not weigh so much as one of 3 months. The hens should be set in December and not later than March, for then the demand for ducklings is greater than the supply.

As to the treatment of such as are intended for breeding and exhibition. To produce birds of great frame and weight, the same food is given during the earliest stage; but, after about 3 weeks, they are allowed to go to the water, and their food is varied as soon as possible, by giving them maize (or better, oats) and barley alternately, when they can eat the same. They should be fed 3 times a day, and always have a trough of water by them, or the grain be thrown into the water; and it is an advantage to have some gravel or sand at the bottom, so that when drinking they also get hold of some grit, which helps digestion, and tends to keep the bill in proper colour. Maize is apt to render the birds too fat, and increase the tendency to accumulate internal abnormal fat, and to go “down behind,” in which condition they are perfectly useless as stock birds.