230 PROFITS IN POULTRY. 



to weigh at least 12 pounds; in England they often reach 

 16 pounds to the pair; and are occasionally heavier by 

 one or two pounds, thus almost equaling the weight of the 

 heaviest specimens of Rouen Ducks. 



ROUEN DUCKS. 



There is a prevalent belief among farmers that ducks 

 are not profitable poultry. This arises naturally from 

 several causes. The habits of indolence which some 

 possess the tendency not to hunt their food, but to 

 depend upon being fed and the scraps which they pick 

 up about the house lead farmers to contrast them un- 

 favorably with the wandering turkeys, which find their 

 living and rear their young often in the woods, depend- 

 ing only in winter upon the farmer for their food ; and 

 scarcely more favorably with dunghill fowls, which during 

 the summer months require but little food except what 

 they hunt for about the farm. The ducks, besides, 

 though some kinds are excellent layers, are heedless 

 birds, exposing themselves, their eggs, and young to 

 crows, rats, turtles, and other vermin, dropping their 

 eggs about, shifting their place of laying if disturbed, 

 inconstant as sitters, and chilling their young by taking 

 them too soon and too often to the water. Still, all 

 these objections may be obviated, in a measure, and 

 ducks really pay very well both in flesh and eggs for the 

 amount of food they consume. 



The duck is an omnivorous animal eating almost 

 everything vegetable and animal that comes in its way. 

 Insects of all kinds, worms, polliwigs, fish, shellfish 

 (dead or alive), meat, even that which is partly decom- 

 posed, and many green vegetables, grass, seeds, grain, 

 etc. Withal, its appetite is voracious ; hence it grows 



