230 PROFITS IN POULTRY. 
to weigh at least 12 pounds; in England they often reach 
16 pounds to the pair; and are occasivnally heavier by 
one or two pounds, thus almost equaling the weight of the 
heaviest specimens of Rouen Ducks. 
ROUEN DUCKS. 
There is a prevalent belief among farmers that ducks 
are not profitable poultry. This arises naturally from 
several causes. The habits of indolence which some 
possess—the tendency not to hunt their food, but to 
depend upon being fed and the scraps which they pick 
up about the house—lead farmers to contrast them un- 
‘favorably with the wandering turkeys, which find their 
living and rear their young often in the woods, depend- 
ing only in winter upon the farmer for their food ; and 
scarcely more favorably with dunghill fowls, which during 
the summer months require but little food except what 
they hunt for about the farm. The ducks, besides, 
though some kinds are excellent layers, are heedless 
birds, exposing themselves, their eggs, and young to 
crows, rats, turtles, and other vermin, dropping their 
eggs about, shifting their place of laying if disturbed, 
inconstant as sitters, and chilling their young by taking 
them too soon and too often to the water. Still, all 
these objections may be obviated, in a measure, and 
ducks really pay very well both in flesh and eggs for the 
amount of food they consume. 
The duck is an omnivorous animal—eating almost 
everything vegetable and animal that comes in its way. 
Insects of all kinds, worms, polliwigs, fish, shellfish 
(dead or alive), meat, even that which is partly decom- 
posed, and many greet. vegetables, grass, seeds, grain, 
ete. Withal, its appetite is voracious; hence it grows 
