The same rule holds good in a measure with breeding ducks, though not in so great a degree. For instance, your hen when closely confined seems to lose her ambition, and spends a large part of her time on the perches, apparently indifferent to all sublunary things. Not so your duck. She is in constant motion, no matter how small her quarters. No meditation for her. Indeed, the days seem too short for her to exercise in, and so she keeps it up through a great part of the night. Her greatest ambition seems to be to distribute the few quarts of water you have given her for drink, evenly all over the pen you have just covered with dry, finely-chopped straw, and make it as sloppy as possible, and it is astonishing in how short a space of time she will succeed in doing it. Again, snow and ice are the aversion of the hen.
She cannot be induced to step in either except under pressure of circumstances. Not so your duck. She likes nothing better than to be out in a snow bank during a thaw, and if she can only work it up into the color and consistency of mud it suits her exactly. She does not mind the cold if she can only keep her feet warm. She is clothed with an impenetrable coat of feathers and an equally thick coat of down. She does not take kindly to confinement in a building and will utter her constant protest, and like the average school boy of ten prefers to suffer from the cold outside to being comfortable in. Therefore, the main point in breeding early ducks and erecting buildings for the same, next to supplying them with the right kind of food, is to keep their feet warm. Cold feet affect the winter laying of the duck the same as a frozen comb affects the hen. It stops the egg production at once.
Locate Near a Railroad.
Your plant should be located on a line of railroad, in direct communication with one or more of our great city markets, and not too far from the station, as you will necessarily be in frequent and close communication with that.
Arrange the Buildings.
to secure good room in front, also good drainage, and especially with a view to reducing the labor to a minimum, both inside and out. Always remember that the labor is the most expensive part of the poultry business. Now is the time for forethought and caution—save all the steps, all the work you can. You will never suffer from want of exercise, if your fowls do. I never knew a case of gout in a man in the poultry business in my life. It is well, also, when arranging a poultry plant, to make provision for future contingencies, so that should one in the course of time and experience wish to increase his plant and the size of his buildings longitudinally he will have plenty of room to do it, by simply moving the end of his building out as far as he wishes and filling in between. I have been obliged to do this several times in the course of my experience, and have the past Fall built a double brooding house 250 feet long by 16 feet wide.
One important point in erecting poultry buildings is the difficulty in building them,
Warm, Cheap, and Rat-proof.
Formerly I built stone foundations on which were placed the buildings, cementing the stone work to the sill carefully inside and out. This proved in the end not only an expensive but a very unsatisfactory arrangement, for cement it as one would the action of the frost would always part the sill from the foundation and admit the cold air from all around just where it should be kept warm. I have since hit upon a plan which has not only met the case but is comparatively inexpensive. Place posts, with one square side to them, about four feet apart, on which place the 2x4 inch sill. Set these posts in the ground so that the tops rise but one inch above the surface, with the flat side exactly horizontal and perpendicular to the inside of the sill. Then sink a hemlock board twelve or fourteen inches wide into the ground inside of the building, and immediately in front of the two-inch sill, until the upper edge is flush with the upper side of the sill, nailing it firmly thereto, filling up inside nearly to a level of the top of the sill. This gives a warm, cheap foundation on which the frost does not act. Hemlock, too, seems to have an affinity for moisture and will last in that condition from eight to ten years, when it can be easily renewed. This arrangement is also comparatively rat-proof, as a hemlock board is a rat's aversion. It does not agree with their teeth. They cannot possibly dig under during the frozen months of the year, and as it affords them no concealment they do not care to, during the warm season.