234 POULTRY-CRAFT. 
says: ‘*more the food of the clubman and the epicure than the staple dish of 
the family.” This was the case where the edible qualities of quick grown, 
grain fed ducks were pretty well known. Elsewhere the reputation of 
‘* duck” as a food was about as unsavory as the flesh of the common puddle 
duck, the only kind of which people generally knew anything. Consumers 
of poultry were apt to look askance at their poultryman when he tried to sell 
them duck as a delicacy, and at a higher price than chicken. Thus the 
growth of a popular taste and demand for ducks is necessarily slow, the more 
so because so many regular consumers of good poultry can eat duck only 
occasionally, or only in cool weather; or, perhaps, not at all. Under the 
circumstances, the first who tried ducks in each locality usually found it much 
easier to produce duck meat than to sell it profitably. The natural result was 
the congestion of the surpluses from all quarters in the few markets where 
the demand had been good. Following this came demoralization of prices, 
particularly in the latter part of each season. 
Though the business has been temporarily overdone, well established farms 
are able to make a very fair profit; and duck growing still offers opportunity 
for a living or a part of a living according as one engages in it extensively and 
exclusively, or on a smaller scale in connection with other branches of poultry 
culture, or with some other business. Wherever good ducks are produced, 
the demand for them will steadily increase, and though it is neither likely nor 
— for the best good of the industry — desirable, that there should be a return 
to the high prices of earlier years, the inevitable adjustment of supply to 
demand will hold prices high enough generally to give the grower a living 
profit. 
344. Profit From Ducks.— On large plants the estimated total cost of 
producing ducks is 6 to 8 cts. per pound. At the lowest prices yet reached 
this gives the grower a net profit of 15 to 20 cts. on each duck. As a large 
part of the product is marketed before very low prices are reached, the average 
net profit, at prevailing prices, should be about 25 cts. or more, per duck. At 
that figure a plant producing ten thousand to fifteen thousand ducks annually 
yields a substantial profit. A plant of such capacity, however, is not built in 
a season, nor is it every man who tries duck growing that can successfully 
manage such a plant. It represents a total investment of hardly less than 
$10,000, and the ability to produce ducks at the cost figures given is gained 
only with years of practical experience. In a business conducted on a smaller 
scale the cost of production is greater, and the profit less. A plant which one 
man could manage, with a little assistance during the marketing season, would 
hardly do more nowadays than give him fair remuneration for his own labor. 
His net income would probably be about the same as that for the oze man 
poultry business described in § 4. The amounts credited to different items 
would differ; the totals would be nearly the same. This estimate, however, 
is merely suggestive. As a matter of fact, but one duck grower in a hundred 
