EIDER DUCKS IN CAPTIVITY.


By W. H. St. Quintin.


I do not know if there is at the present time anybody

beside mj^self in this country who has tame Eiders. If so, I am

unaware of the fact, though I have often made enquiries of

persons who might be likely to know if this were the case. They

have not, I think, been kept at the Zoological Gardens of late

years ; though at one time, I believe about fifty years ago, they

were bred there.


My first pair of Eiders were sent to me by an Orkney

fisherman, who managed to rear a duck and a drake with con¬

siderable trouble—the young birds not taking any food that was

offered to them except earthworms.


I found great difficulty at first in arriving at the best diet

suited to these birds in captivity ; but after many trials came to

the conclusion that barley meal, mixed with Spratt’s poultry

meal, moistened so as to form large pelletts, or balls, with a small

quantity of fresh Ox- or Rabbit-liver daily, w 7 as sufficient to

keep the birds in the best of health, when once they were

accustomed to it.


For the first few weeks the young should have earth¬

worms ; indeed they will look at nothing else, but by degrees

they can be trained to the same diet that answers for the adults.

I should add that the old birds will eat bread freely and, when

very hungry, grain as well.


A fox killed my old drake after I had kept him nine years ;

and his mate died, apparently of old age, two years later.


At present I have two fine drakes—one a descendant of the

original pair—the other drake and three ducks having been

hatched from eggs sent to me from Northumberland. There is

also a young duck, the survivor of three ducklings hatched last

year.


The young are by no means easily reared. Besides rats,

the greatest enemies to young ducklings that I know of,

exposure to hot sun will often bring on attacks of heat-apoplexy.

I lost two fine young birds last summer from this cause, when

they were of the size of a Teal. The young birds moreover often

go off in a sort of decline after getting fully feathered ; and- in

short they are not easy subjects to manage. But still to my

mind they are worth a good deal of trouble. Their extreme

tameness, the wild “cooing” of the drakes in the spring, and



