Ducks. 145 



be allowed to venture into ponds or rivers ; a shallow 

 vessel of water filled to the brim and sunk in the ground 

 Avill suffice for the first week or ten days, and this rule is 

 more especially to be adhered to when they are under the 

 care of a common hen, which cannot follow them into the 

 pond, and the calls of which when there they pay little or 

 no regard to. Rats, weasels, pike, and eels are formidable 

 Ibes to ducklings : we have known entire broods destroyed 

 by the former, which, having their burrows in a steep bank 

 around a sequestered pond, it was found impossible to 

 extirpate/ 7 If the ducklings stay too long in the water 

 they will have diarrhea, in which case coop them close for 

 a few days, and mix beanmeal or oatmeal with their 

 ordinary food. 



A troop of ducks will do good service to a kitchen 

 garden in the summer or autumn, when they can do no 

 mischief by devouring delicate salads and young sprouting 

 vegetables. They will search industriously for snails, 

 slugs, woodlice, and millipedes, and gobble them up 

 eagerly, getting positively fat on slugs and snails. Straw- 

 berries, of which they are very fond, must be protected 

 from them. Where steamed food is daily prepared for 

 pigs and cattle, a portion of this mixed with bran and 

 barleymeal is the cheapest mode of satisfying their 

 voracious appetites. They should never be stinted in 

 food. 



To fatten ducks let them have as much substantial food 

 as they will eat, bruised oats and peameal being the 

 standard, plenty of exercise, and clean water. Boiled 

 roots mixed with a little barleymeal is excellent food, 

 with a little milk added during fattening. They require 

 neither penning up nor cramming to acquire plumpness, 

 and if well fed should be fit for market in eight or ten 

 weeks. Celery imparts a delicious flavour. 



The Aylesbury is the finest breed, and should be of a 

 spotless white, with long, flat, broad beak of a pale flesh 

 colour, grey eyes, long head and neck, broad and flat body 

 and breast, and orange legs, placed wide apart. As it 

 lays early, its ducklings are the earliest ready for market. 



