As nearly all kinds of supplies are bought by the carload, and as stocks must be kept up so that there will be no possibility of running short of foodstuffs, a great deal of space is required for storage. Large quantities of ice are needed to cool the dressed ducks before shipping them to market, so the farm must have its own ice houses and store its own supply of ice in the winter. For some years after duck farms grew to such large proportions, the mixing of mash was all done by hand, with shovels. Often one man was kept busy all day long mixing mash, and very hard work it was. Now the men on the large farms mix the food in big dough mixers, such as are used by bakers, and work that would take a man an hour is done in a few minutes.
In some sections the killing and dressing of the ducks is done by men with whom duck picking is a trade at which they work during its season. In others the killing is done by men, but the pickers are women living in the vicinity of the farm, who can be secured for this work whenever they are needed. A farm that markets 50,000 ducks in a season will keep a large force of pickers busy the greater part of the time for many months. Quite a large building is required to provide room for the pickers to work in, for tanks for cooling 500 or more ducks at once, for space for the men who pack them, and for lofts for drying the feathers before they are sold. This drying process must be used whether the birds are dry-picked or are scalded before the feathers are removed. Water on feathers dries quickly, but the oil in the quills dries very slowly. The feathers from one duck are worth only a few cents, and where small numbers are grown the feathers are hardly worth the trouble of saving and curing. On a large plant the total product of feathers for a season amounts to several thousand dollars, and it pays to provide facilities for taking proper care of them.
After the crop of ducks on an inland farm is marketed, the fences must be removed and the land plowed and sowed with winter rye. This crop is used extensively for this purpose, because it is a gross feeder and takes the impurities from the soil very fast, and also furnishes a good supply of green food for the stock ducks during the winter and for the first young ducks put on the land in the spring. Where the farms are large enough, all ducks may be kept off a part of the land each year and crops grown on it. The farms located at the waterside do not have to look to the purification of the land so carefully, because the rains wash a great deal of the droppings away. Some of these farms get large quantities of river grass from the streams and cut it up to mix with the food for the ducks.
Duck Fanciers' Methods
There are two general classes of duck fanciers: those who breed one or more of the useful varieties for fine form and feather points, and those who breed the ornamental varieties. Breeders of the latter class usually keep other kinds of ornamental poultry also.
The methods of the fanciers of useful kinds of ducks compare with those of the practical growers who handle small numbers as do those of the fowl fancier with the methods of the poultry keeper who keeps a few fowls for his own use. In a general way they are the same, yet wherever it is necessary they are modified to secure the best possible development of the type. If a duck fancier has not a natural water supply for his ducks, he either makes a small artificial pond or ditch or gives them water for bathing much oftener than the commercial duck grower thinks is necessary. He also gives both old and young ducks more room, and encourages them to take exercise, because this makes them stronger, more symmetrical, and better able to stand transportation and the handling to which they are subjected when taken to shows. Most duck fanciers are also fanciers of fowls or of some other kind of poultry. The competition in ducks is not nearly so keen as in fowls. Hence they are so much less interesting to a fancier that few are satisfied with the sport that may be obtained from exhibiting ducks only.
When the growing of green ducks for market began to be developed upon a large scale, many of those engaged in this line exhibited stock and sold birds for breeding and eggs for hatching. They soon found that while the Pekin Duck was unrivaled as a market duck, it was not of sufficient interest to fanciers to excite the competition that creates high prices for the finest specimens, and that it paid them better to devote themselves exclusively to the production of market ducks. At the present time only a few market duck growers make a business of selling breeding and exhibition stock. Most of them will not take small orders, but will fill large orders when they have a surplus of breeding stock and can get a good price for it. On almost every large commercial duck farm there are hundreds of birds much better than most of the Pekin Ducks seen at poultry shows, and many better than the best exhibited. There is probably no other kind of poultry in which so large a proportion of the finest specimens are found on the plants of those producing for market.
The ornamental varieties of ducks are given much less attention in America than they deserve. Few are seen except in large collections of fancy waterfowl, and sales from these collections are principally for special displays at shows. On many farms the Mallard, Call, and East Indian Ducks might be established and left to themselves, to increase in a natural way, only enough being sold or killed to keep them from becoming too numerous. If located in a suitable place, such a flock makes a very attractive feature on a farm. The highly ornamental Mandarin and Carolina Ducks, being able to fly quite as well as pigeons, must be kept in covered runs. They will breed and rear their young in a very small space. A covered run 6 ft. wide, 6 ft. high, and from 20 to 30 ft. long, built in a secluded place and having a small shelter at one end, makes a very satisfactory place for a pair of ducks of any of the small breeds to live and rear their young.