142 Ducks. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



DUCKS. 



Ducks will not pay if all their food has to be bought, 

 except it is purchased wholesale, and they are reared for 

 town markets, for their appetites are voracious, and they 

 do not graze like geese. They may be kept in a limited 

 space, but more profitably and conveniently where they 

 have the run of a paddock, orchard, kitchen garden, flat 

 common, green lane, or farmyard, with ditches and water. 

 They will return at night, and come to the call of the 

 feeder. Nothing comes amiss to them — green vegetables, 

 especially when boiled, all kinds of meal made into por- 

 ridge, all kinds of grain, bread, oatcake, the refuse and 

 offal of the kitchen, worms, slugs, snails, insects and their 

 larvae, are devoured eagerly. Where many fowls are kept, 

 a few ducks may be added profitably, for they may be fed 

 very nearly on what the hens refuse. 



Ducks require water to swim in, but '' it is a mistake," 

 says Mr. Baily, '' to imagine that ducks require a great 

 deal of water.' They may be kept where there is but very 

 little, and only want a pond or tank just deep enough to 

 swim in. The early Aylesbury ducklings that realise such 

 large prices in the London market have hardly ever had a 

 swim ; and in rearing ducks, where size is a desideratum, 

 thev vdW grow faster and become larger when kept in pens, 

 farmyards, or in pastures, than where they are at and in 

 the water all day." Where a large number of geese and 

 ducks are kept, water on a sufficient scale, and easily 

 accessible, should be in the neighbourhood. 



Ducks, being aquatic birds, do not require heated apart- 

 ments, nor roosts on which to perch during the night. 

 They squat on the floors, which must be dry and warm. 

 They should, if possible, be kept in a house separate from 



