270 THE PRACTICAL POULTRY KEEPER. 



flour, the maize and meat being somewhat increased and 

 the bran decreased with age. There are, however, establish- 

 ments which market as many as 30,000 ducklings annually. 



On other large duck -farms, as we are informed by 

 Mr. A. F. Hunter (the editor of Farm Poultry, U.S.), 

 ducklings are reared out of doors, a hundred or more in a 

 pen of about a quarter of an acre. Several lots are reared 

 in succession, so that 2,000 per acre are reared on these 

 plots up to August ; then the partitions are removed and 

 the ground ploughed up and sown with winter rye, not to 

 be used again till April. Early ones are reared in -doors in 

 pens, more or less as above. Where there is water it is 

 often fenced up into small portions, each belonging to one 

 of the pens ; these small ponds become filthy, but the 

 ducklings seem to take no harm. On other farms the pens 

 may be roughly 100 feet square. 



The splendid appetites of young ducks, their hardiness if 

 kept out of rain, sun, and damp for a few weeks, and their 

 early maturity, make duck rearing a steady business when 

 properly managed. But like other branches, it must be 

 gradually grown into, directed by experience acquired in 

 actual practice, and the market and machinery gradually 

 worked up to or created by the rearer. 



It should be remembered that the first dozen eggs or so 

 which a duck lays are generally (or at least very often) 

 unfertile. 



AYLESBURY DUCKS. In plumage these should be of the 

 purest snow-white all over. The head should be full, and 

 the bill well set on to the skull, so that the beak should 

 seem to be almost in a line from the top of the head 

 to the tip. The bill should be long, and when viewed in 

 front appear much like a woodcock's : it should be in prize 

 birds of a delicate flesh colour without spot or blemish, and 





