DUCK DOLLARS 17 
on-record price of eleven cents a pound was reached; but even at this 
price the farm made a profit. 
A neighbor, for a certain sum per year, calls at their farm daily for 
the killed packed ducklings and teams them to Walpole, whence they go 
by local express to Boston at one-half the rate charged by one of the 
interstate express companies from the Pondville or Wrentham station. 
The empties are returned free, whereas an interstate express company 
now charges for all empties. 
There are breeders of ducks now in every part of the United States 
and Canada, but they have been working with poor stock and largely by 
guesswork. Most of them are breeding the common, or 
puddle ducks, or the lightweight ducks of colored plu- 
mage, all of inferior size and fed on lake or sea-shore 
fish until the flesh tastes more or less fishy. 
The Weber strain of Pekins is different from the common ducks. 
Their birds are what they have made famous as the cross-bred, white- 
feathered Boston ducklings, fattened on grain and beef scraps, and 
weighing five to six pounds when marketed at ten weeks of age. 
The plain facts about modern duck raising have never been told to 
the whole people. There have been writings about the subject by the 
workers in it, but they have talked, in a great degree, to themselves, 
in an obscure way, discussing methods, and not “ talking up the goods” 
to the public as they rightfully can be talked up. 
Perhaps the most surprising point, to the average reader, is that the 
Weber ducks are raised without water. (Swimming water, we mean; 
they are great drinkers.) 
A farm which is good for nothing from the old-fashioned farmer’s 
standpoint is just the place for ducks. Their manure will make the most 
sterile fields productive enough for the green stuff and vegetables that 
may be grown. The I911 crops on the Weber farm helped by the duck 
manure were a sight, the millet being three feet high and the corn from 
fifteen to sixteen feet high. The crops of mangels and carrots were extra- 
ordinary. 
The Weber ducklings are not raised as a small breeder raises 
chicken. An incubator is the device which multiplies the money-making 
possibilities. In the first place, these modern ducks will not reproduce 
their young by nest-building and setting. They have been bred to lay 
eggs and not to sit on them. If you wish to start small and without an 
incubator, you have got to take a common, old-fashioned hen and set 
her on the duck eggs to hatch them out. 
On account of the incubators the Webers save great expense by 
carrying only comparatively few breeding birds from one year to the 
next. From each duck they get eggs enough to raise 
four-score ducklings that year. A duck reproducing at 
that rate must be good to start, and must have intelli- 
gent care and feed. 
Ducklings are on the Webers’ hands only ten weeks. Then they 
vanish to market and the Webers get the money for them, and their room 
also. This goes on day after day, raising, killing, shipping, the markets 
Not Fed 
on Fish 
Incubators 
Necessary 
