254 BEARING DUCKS. 



Ducks lay in the night, and make no nests. They should 

 be yarded under cover in the laying season, and the ground 

 strewed with hay or straw. They sit thirty-one days. The 

 young require the same food for a few days that is suitable for 

 chickens, and when two or three weeks old, they will eat any 

 thing set before them, and nothing appears to be injurious in 

 the way of food given to them, but they will kill themselves if 

 allowed to run at large in the season of " rose-bugs," so called. 

 I lost one hundred young ducks on a certain occasion, from this 

 cause. I had them all hatched under hens, and I made a pen 

 one foot high, for them to run in, in one corner of which I 

 made a shelter for them to lodge at night. They were all 

 growing finely, and some were a month or more old, when I 

 fancied that it would be a good plan to let them out. I did so, 

 and they ran over the field, seizing every bug in their reach, 

 till their crops were expanded with the living mass. In forty- 

 eight hours, every duck had " kicked the bucket." Let this be 

 a warning to all duck breeders. 



author respectfully solicits communications from 

 Poultry Breeders, for publication in the " NORTHERN FARMER," 

 (see advertisement of it,) which has a greater circulation among 

 Fowl Fanciers, than any other journal in this country. 



