on Wild Ducks from an Incubator.



67



of four ruddy’s eggs came to term. All four were pipped, and three

came out promptly. The other duckling was having a hard struggle

and seemed to be stuck. After a time I decided to assist, but it was

too late. The little fellow had died from exhaustion.


So it ran on from time to time. The next four sets hatched

consecutively one hundred per cent. The poorest hatch of all was a

set of Blue-winged Teal, from which we got five good ducklings,

three nearly ready to hatch, being dead in the shell. This was pro¬

bably due to my forgetting the eggs when they were out cooling,

Yet even that result was not bad.


On tabulating the records, I find that only three eggs were

infertile, and very few embryos failed to hatch. In over half the

sets every egg hatched, the average hatch for the season being

ninety-two per cent, which is certainly remarkable, far surpassing

the results in ordinary poultry work. This was despite the dis¬

advantages of placing miscellaneous eggs in the same machine,

transporting them for miles at critical stages of incubation, and

subjecting them to the abrupt change of conditions. Probably it is

the great vigour and virility of this wild stock, hardened to rigorous

climatic conditions, that accounts for this astonishiug percentage.


To revert to stern realities, lack of brooders was one of our

principal causes for anxiety. All we had at first was an indoor

hover, with hot water heater. The large outdoor brooder we had

ordered was delayed in transportation. The weather was cold and

stormy, and, even in the kitchen, that hover would not heat up to

over eighty degrees. We had to keep our first brood quite a while

in the incubator. Finally, getting the hover enclosed in a box and

building a fire in the stove to warm the room, we ventured to transfer

the ducklings. During rare periods of sunshine we transferred the

ducklings by hand outdoors to a wire run on the lee side of the cot¬

tage, partly sheltered from the raging prairie wind. As other broods

hatched, we had our hands more than full and saved the ducklings

only by unremitting toil. Finally, one day, the assistant discovered

the long-desired brooder behind an unused cottage, where a drunken

driver had dumped it the night before.


Everyone familiar with young wild ducks knows what shy-

skulkers they are, having a supposed inherent and unconquerable



