DUCKS.
169. No water, to swim in, is necessary to the old, and is injurious to the very young. They never should be suffered to swim (if water be near) till more than a month old. The old duck will lay, in the year, if well kept, ten dozen of eggs; and that is her best employment; for common hens are the best mothers. It is not good to let young ducks out in the morning to eat slugs and worms; for, though they like them, these things kill them if they eat a great quantity. Grass, corn, white cabbages, and lettuces, and especially buck-wheat, cut, when half ripe, and flung down in the haulm. This makes fine ducks. Ducks will feed on garbage and all sorts of filthy things; but their flesh is strong, and bad in proportion. They are, in Long Island, fatted upon a coarse sort of crab, called a horse-foot fish, prodigious quantities of which are cast on the shores. The young ducks grow very fast upon this, and very fat; but wo unto him that has to smell them when they come from the spit; and, as for eating them, a man must have a stomach indeed to do that!
170. When young, they should be fed upon barley-meal, or curds, and kept in a warm place in the night-time, and not let out early in the morning. They should, if possible, be kept from water to swim in. It always does them harm; and, if intended to be sold to be killed young, they should never go near ponds, ditches, or streams. When you come to fat ducks, you must take care that they get at no filth whatever. They will eat garbage of all sorts; they will suck down the most nauseous particles of all those substances which go for manure. A dead rat three parts rotten is a feast to them. For these reasons I should never eat any ducks, unless there were some mode of keeping them from this horrible food. I treat them precisely as I do my geese. I buy a troop when they are young, and put them in a pen, and feed them upon oats, cabbages, lettuces, and water, and have the place kept very clean. My ducks are, in consequence of this, a great deal more fine and delicate than any others that I know any-thing of.