WILD DUCKS 129 



enough. A variation on this grain receipt is employed by 

 Colonel Kuser, Bernardsville, New Jersey, in which during 

 summer the corn is left out and more buckwheat substituted. 

 Others use only corn and wheat or barley for grain. 



A. G. MacVicar, on the Walcott estate, for a winter diet 

 is feeding the ducks and geese mostly whole corn for the 

 grain ration, but gives a change once a week to wheat, buck- 

 wheat, and barley. Barley he considers an excellent food 

 for ducks. In the warm season, of course, not so much 

 corn is used. Besides the grain, he feeds chopped turnip 

 and cabbage, giving this in the water, so it will not freeze. 

 In spring he begins giving mash, of barley meal, Spratt's 

 pheasant and duck meals, and crissel, the latter not over 

 10 per cent. These are mixed and scalded together. An- 

 other mash, used for variety, is of cornmeal, bran, middUngs, 

 and crissel. He feeds the mash mornings and the grain at 

 night. On cold mornings in early spring he delays giving 

 the mash until it warms up enough not to freeze. He does 

 not give crissel separately, nor allow dry mash to stand be- 

 fore the ducks, thinking that they get too fat. 



Henry Cook uses a grain mixture of wheat, kaffir corn, 

 corn, buckwheat, barley, whole oats, sunflower seed. In 

 winter he also gives cabbage, and sometimes has ground-up 

 raw carrots, though they do not care so much for this. He 

 also gives lettuce in season, watercress, or other succulent 

 growth. In winter and spring he also gives clear beef -scrap, 

 scalded and soaked, in a trough, renewing it when eaten up, 

 and keeping it before them most of the time. If it freezes 

 he pours hot water on it. They eat only a little at a time 

 thus, and it never has hurt them. 



Neil Clark, of the Clove Valley Club, New York, keeps the 

 mallard breeding-stock out on a marshy pond and connect- 

 ing brook all winter without shelter. They pick up a good 



