Fig. 137. Duck house and yards on seashore, Fishers Island, New York
Duck farms are of two types: those located on streams or inlets have the yards for all but the smallest ducks partly in the water; the inland duck farms, on which the young ducks grown for market are given no water except for drinking. Some of the inland farms give the breeding stock access to streams and ponds only during the molting season, when they can be allowed to run in large flocks and a small area of water will serve for all. For a time after the large inland duck farms were first established it was claimed by many that ducks grew faster when not allowed to swim than they did when allowed to follow their natural inclination to play in the water. No doubt some ducks which were in dry yards grew better than some having access to large bodies of water, and on the whole as good ducks were grown on the inland farms as on those near the water, but it has long been known that it is much easier to manage the ducks when they have water in their yards. There are two reasons for this: in the first place, they are much more contented in the water; in the second place, they feel very much safer on the water when anything alarms them, and will keep quiet on it when, if they could not retreat to the water, they would rush about in a panic and many would be injured.
Fig. 138. Quarters for breeding stock on an inland duck farm. Swimming tanks in the yards
Ducks are very timid and easily panic-stricken. The duck grower has to take every possible precaution to guard against disturbances of this kind, because ducks are so easily injured, and even if they are not hurt, a sudden fright will make them shrink a great deal in weight. Visitors who come merely out of curiosity are not desired on duck farms at any time, and none but those familiar with the handling of ducks are ever allowed to go about the farm without a guide who will see that the ducks are not disturbed. Many visitors think that this is unreasonable, but the duck grower knows that the mere presence of a stranger excites the ducks, and that a person walking about might put a flock in a panic which would at once extend to other flocks, simply because he was not familiar enough with the ways of ducks to detect the signs of panic in a flock which he was approaching, and to stand still until they were quiet, or move very slowly until he had passed them. If a stranger, walking between yards where there were five thousand ducks fattening, made an unconscious movement that set the ducks in motion, the loss to the grower could hardly be less than from five to ten dollars, and might be very much more. Where such little things can cause so much trouble and loss, the difference between success and failure may lie in preventing them.
On a duck plant with a capacity of 50,000 ducks everything is on a big scale. Although ducks will stand more crowding than other kinds of poultry, it takes a large farm for so many. The buildings will cover many thousands of square feet of land and, though of the cheapest substantial structure, will represent an investment of fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. Incubators, appliances, breeding stock, and supplies on hand will amount to about as much. The incubator cellar will be several times as large as the cellar under the ordinary dwelling house. Before the so-called mammoth incubators were made, the largest-sized machines heated with lamps were used on all duck farms, and an incubator cellar would sometimes contain as many as seventy incubators having a capacity of from 200 to 300 eggs each. Now many of the large farms use the mammoth incubators, with a capacity of from 6000 to 18,000 eggs each. These mammoth incubators are really series of small egg chambers so arranged that the entire series is heated by pipes coming from a hot-water heater, instead of each chamber having an independent lamp heater as in the small, or individual, machines.
Fig. 139. Feeding young ducks on farm of W. R. Curtiss & Co., Ransomville, New York