PEKIN DUCKS FOR PROFIT 



Wonderful Increase in the Business — Poultry Raising is Now a Trade — Operating Duck Egg 



Incubators — Proper Care of Breeding Stock — It Does Not Pay to Cross Pekins — 



Formula for Feeding Laying Ducks and Young Ducks' 



BY JAMES KANKIN, BEEEDBR 



THE wonderful growth and increase of the duck busi- 

 ness in this country during the past twenty years 

 has been phenomenal,- and although it has been 

 multiplied many times over (and never more so 

 than during the last five years), yet the demand exceeds 

 the supply. Though the prices for dressed birds the past 

 season have ruled, a trifle lower, which was the ease with all 

 kinds of poultry, the unusually low prioe of grain has more 

 than made up the deficiency. 



We will briefly describe our method of growing and mar- 

 keting Pekin ducks. Though we have grown ducks more or 

 less all our lives, principally for our own use, we started 

 in some twenty-four years ago with thirty Pekin ducks to 

 make it a business. From those thirty birds we grew more 

 than fifteen hundred young birds for market, and we dis- 

 tinctly recollect the job we had in getting rid of them. The 

 marketmen would look at us in surprise and say: "There 

 is no call for that stuff. ■ We do not. want it." Now, though 

 growing ten times as many, we can not fill our orders from 

 those same men, and it is not alone what we grow, but the 

 hundreds of thousands of birds that are grown by others all 

 over" the country. 



Our methods at first were crude, and we met with some 

 losses. It was weak legs, sore eyes, hump backs and other 

 troubles, the cause and remedy for which we finally discov- 

 ered. Too highly concentrated food, together with too little 

 animal food, without the proper amount and quality or grit 

 to enable the young birds to grind and assimilate it, ac- 

 counted for a large share of all these troubles, and are re- 

 sponsible now for nearly all the leters with which we have 

 been flooded the past season, all containing the same re- 

 frain: "My ducklings are weak -legged; many of them can 

 not stand, and are dying. They have dysentery, sore eyes 

 and abnormal Mvers. What shall I do?" 



POTTLTEY BAISINO IS THOW A TRADE. 



It is well known by this time that the poultry business 

 is as much a trade as any other department in life, and a ' 

 man in order to succeed must possess, at least, two traits 

 to qualify him for the business — ^intelligence and energy. 

 His buildings should be neat and commodious, constructed 

 with a view of reducing the labor to a minimum, also of 

 securing good drainage. Above all, start in with good in- 

 cubators and good brooding appartus. Secure first-class 

 stock to start with. Debilitated, degentrate stock will 

 never produce healthy young birds, and it is worse than 

 useless to hatch thousands of young birds that come into 

 the world with enfeebled constitutions and dn no condition, 

 to live. But there are other sources of mortality aside 

 from this. Cheap and improperly constructed incubators, 

 with ^eatly varying temperature in their egg chambers, 

 defective brooders, which mean extremes of heat and cold 



for the young birds — all contribute their share toward the 

 death rate. 



I have never thought that the variety of food given was 

 as responsible for the poultry growers' troubles, as the care, 

 cleanliness and proper control of heat in both hatching and 

 brooding the young birds. It is\ true that under proper regi- 

 men and diet, young birds wilf grow faster, develop better 

 and weigh more at a marketable age than if the food ingre- 

 dients were not right, and the old birds will also contribute 

 a larger number of highly fertilized eggs when the food con- 

 ditions are right. Our food formula for dijckldngs in differ- 

 ent stages of growth, also for laying and store birds, I will 

 give later on, and confine myself now to the care and treat- 

 ment of the birds. 



OPERATING DUCK EGO INCUBATORS. 



Highly fertilized eggs should be used, if possible, as it 

 will mean strong ducklings and more of them. See that the 

 heat in the egg chamber ds uniform. Use accurate glasses, 

 and place them on the eggs in the center of the egg chamber. 

 Eun tbe'm at 102 degrees the first two weeks and 103 after 

 the animal heat begins to rise. The eggs should be cooled a 

 little once each day after the first week, and longer after the 

 animal heat rises. A little moisture should be used after 

 the eighteenth day, ventilating a little more towards the end 

 of the hatch. Observing these rules, with a good machine 

 and good eggs, the operator should hatch from 65 to 70 per 

 cent of all the feggs used. 



Do not feed your ducklings till after they are thirty-six 

 hours old. Feed four times a day and no more at a time 

 than they will eat clean, in fact, keep them a little short, 

 especially during confinement in inclement weather, at is is 

 an incentive to exercise, which they need in order to assimi- 

 late their food. Do not put more than one hundred in a 

 pen; seventy -five would be better. Bed the little fellows, 

 until ten days old with hay, chaff or cut straw, then with 

 sawdust (if to be had), as the latter is .both a good absorb- 

 ent and disinfectant. Keep the • pens dry and clean, both 

 outside and in. The welfare of ■ the ducklings depends upon 

 this. Be sure to give shade in warm weather. It is 

 not necessary to keep water by them, but give all 

 they will drink, while feeding. The birds should be 

 read for the market at ten" weeks old. Breeding 

 birds should be selected from the early hatched birds (I 

 always select the largest and choicest), handling every one 

 carefully. It is true that the early hatched birds are worth 

 more in market, but I must keep, them to breed from, as 

 they will develop into larger and better birds than those 

 hatched later, as the cool, temperate weather of the early 

 spring will facilitate their growth and maturity much bet- 

 ter than the extreme heat of mid-summer. The birds cost 

 me more, but it is policy in the end, as they reproduce much 

 sooner than the later ones. 



