The commonest practice for beginners is to set duck eggs under hens in April and May. The biggest varieties are the best to raise as all are hardy, fast growers, and good layers. The eggs take about twenty-eight days to incubate. Treat the hen and nest for lice just as when sitting on hens' eggs.
When ducklings are twenty-four hours old, they are ready for their first meal. Mashed potatoes mixed with meal of corn or oats and middlings are good for them. Milk, too, is excellent as for all fowls. Begin to stuff them immediately; you will find them quite agreeable. Green food of all kinds—grass, lettuce, cabbage, vegetable tops—all chopped small, fills them up and is good for them. Such things as turnips and potatoes should be cooked. Ground meat should be fed three times a week. Have the feeding troughs so arranged that they can get their shovels into it but cannot walk over the food and foul it; same thing with the water. Feed four times a day. They must not get empty. Growth will not be rapid unless continuous. Grit should be supplied.
On duck farms one hundred ducklings are kept in brooders five by seven feet, with yards five by sixteen feet. They are kept absolutely clean and dry. Those you keep over winter for next year's egg supply should have access to a pond and grass. Old ducks do not bring high prices for table use and do not put on weight very fast.
It was perhaps a young Boston housekeeper who asked when her market man offered her Pekin ducks for her table, "How are they esteemed?"
He replied, "Oh, my wife, she don't never steam ducks. She just stuffs 'em like you would a chicken and bakes 'em."
RAISING SQUABS FOR MARKET
A few years' experience in raising fancy pigeons for pets is the best kind of training for a young man who wants to raise squabs for market. This business on a small scale ought not to take all one's time and can easily be combined with some other business or profession or with attending college. But your experience, varied though it may be, has not acquainted you with all that is worth knowing on the subject. The time has gone by when a man can afford to ignore books and bulletins even on a subject upon which he may himself be an authority. A library of pigeon literature will increase your wisdom. A practical man writing of his experience in your business may save you hundreds of dollars if you heed his advice. Don't scoff at college bulletins as your grandfather probably did. He had reason, but the bulletin is not what it was. Great strides forward have been made. Visit some big squab raiser's plant and take mental and written notes of significant facts observed. The colour of his pigeon loft does not affect the price he gets for his squabs, but the quality of the grain he feeds has a direct influence on the fullness of his wallet.
Full-blooded homers are declared by many to be the best, all things considered, for table use. Good, mated birds of this variety can be bought for about two dollars a pair. They are hardy, bright, active on their feet, and the squabs have a larger breast than some of the other sorts.
Homers are not all the same colour; some are white, others black, reddish, and mixed colours. Good stock will rear six or eight pairs of squabs in a year, while some exceptionally good ones will raise ten pairs. If you make a clear profit of one dollar and twenty-five cents per year on an average from each pair you should do well. It is not profitable to keep birds which produce less than five pairs a year. A record must be kept in order to weed out worthless birds. You do not wish to spend your leisure running a free boarding house for pigeons. You must know which are the big producers and keep only their young as breeders. Nests should be numbered and every bird have a leg label with a number corresponding to a numbered description in your book of records. This is good economics.
Squabs of homers should be ready for selling at four weeks old; they should be fully feathered but still in the nest. The heaviest grade weigh eight pounds per dozen and these bring highest market prices. Lighter birds are considered poor quality and bring a correspondingly low price. Prices vary from four dollars and fifty cents to one dollar and seventy-five cents per dozen. Dispose of pairs which habitually produce light-weight squabs as indicated by your records.