56 ARTIFICIAL REARING OF WILD DUCKS 



the liquid to be thoroughly absorbed by the earth be- 

 fore putting back the nest and eggs. This might do 

 when nests are made on the ground, as Mr. Shaw ad- 

 vises, but less water should be used when the nest is 

 made on a sod in a box. A thorough sprinkling of the 

 eggs and a little water on the sod is all that is re- 

 quired. 



The earlier experiments in hatching wild duck eggs in 

 incubators were failures, since the fact that the duck 

 eggs need moisture was overlooked. More recent ex- 

 periments have been more successful when the eggs 

 have been sprinkled with tepid water. I succeeded in 

 hatching some eggs (which I imported from England) 

 in an electric incubator. These eggs were thoroughly 

 sprinkled as the hatching time approached. 



Ducks' eggs take from twenty-four to twenty-nine 

 days to hatch, as a rule, though occasionally a lot of 

 eggs that have been put down soon after being laid will 

 hatch in twenty-three days, if placed under a good hen. 

 Twenty-six days may be said to be the usual period of 

 incubation. 



Wild ducks should not be permitted to interbreed with 

 tame ducks. 



The Shooting Times and British Sportsman says: 



"Any reader who possesses a stock of real wild duck 

 has a valuable thing, which he may turn to good account. 

 Those stocks which have been hand-reared for the last 

 ten years have become so impregnated with domestic 

 blood as to be practically useless for first-rate sport, be- 

 cause they neither can nor will fly high. A real wild 

 duck rarely associates with the domestic varieties, and, 

 as far as we have been able to ascertain, never interbreeds 



