RANKIN'S DUCK BOOK 



is given. At the end of a week the regular feed should be four 

 meals each day. 



How to Feed. 



When I could get stale baker's bread I used that in con- 

 nection with, and instead of, bran. It can be profitably mixed 

 with milk, not too sour, when it can be had for a cent a quart. 

 But do not give milk as drink, — the young birds will smear 

 themselves all over with it, their beaks and eyes will be stuck 

 up, the down will come off their little bodies in large patches, 

 and they will be a constant aggravation. I was once called 

 upon to visit an establishment, the owner of which complained 

 that his ducklings did not grow, and he was very anxious for 

 me to locate the trouble. I found six to eight hundred duck- 

 lings there of all ages, and, strange to say, nearly of one size ; 

 and one lot of nearly three hundred ducklings eight weeks old 

 would not average one pound each, when they should have 

 weighed four pounds. 



Such a sight I never saw before, and hope never to see 

 again. Of all the miserable, squalid, contemptible looking ob- 

 jects, those ducklings took the lead. This man had not only 

 mixed their food with milk, but had kept it by them in open 

 troughs, and the birds had bathed in it and spattered it over 

 each other until there was hardly a feather left on their emaci- 

 ated bodies ; and yet this man did not know what ailed his 

 ducks. 



Is it strange that some people fail in the poultry business? 



When in full operation we had running twenty-one large 

 machines, and as it requires twenty-seven days to close up 

 each hatch, of course we had a hatch come off nearly every 

 day. Now as each hatch was supposed to occupy two brood- 

 er-pens with the corresponding yards, in the course of five or 

 six weeks that brooding house was filled with its complement 

 of 8,000 ducklings. These were of all ages, from the little 

 puff-balls just from the machine, to the half-grown bird of six 

 weeks old. The brooding pipes are supposed to radiate the 

 same amount of heat at the extreme end of the building as 

 they do next the heater, consequently the brooders are of the 

 same temperature in all their parts. Not so the building. 



As the heater radiates a great deal of heat, the end in 

 which this is located is always 12 or 15 degrees warmer than 

 the other and is thus better adapted to the comfort of the new- 

 ly hatched ducklings than the other, so I always put the birds 

 fresh from the machine next the heater, while the older ones 

 were passed down the building. This is a very simple pro- 

 cess. One end of the partition board is lifted up a little, food 



[ 68 ] 



