DUCK DOLLARS 49 
this basket to your brooder or nursery of first brooding house. Put them 
in the runs, which are three feet wide and nine feet long., 
The hot-water pipes are not on the ground, but are eight inches 
above it. On top of the water pipes is a wooden cover, one for each 
ino regia having the hot-water pipes above the Peat in the 
give them heat from the top such as they Brooding 
would get from un er the natural mother. Bottom heat House 
would weaken the legs of the ducklings and is not natural. The little 
creatures huddle up closely to each other under the hot-water pipes so as 
to get the heat on their backs. Should they touch the hot-water pipes 
they cannot be burned. 
Take these youngest ducklings into the nursery just before noon, the 
warmest part of the day. 
Their first food has been previously placed on the food boards ready 
for them. There is a water drinking fountain in each pen, the No. 1 or 
smallest size (see page 50). This water dish, like the others, is 
arranged so that. the ducklings cannot jump into the water and get 
damp, and also so that no water can stand in it for any length of time. 
A self-feeding reservoir fountain is exactly what is not wanted. The 
water should be renewed at each feeding time. It is not necessary to 
scald the fountains, but they should be rinsed out. They may be scalded, 
say once a week, 
The first food includes bread-crumbs and rolled oats. The rolled 
oats are the same as a.e commonly used for the table, 
costing from $3.25 to $5 a barrel, each barrel weighing’ 
180 pounds. 
The bread-crumbs are made from stale bread by running the bread 
through a meat grinder. Buy dry, stale bread from the bakers for about 
one cent a pound, $20 a ton. Also use up dry and stale home bread. 
Bread-crumbs for a small number of ducklings can be prepared from 
the bread by hand without a machine, 
Take half rolled oats and half bread-crumbs to make this first mix- 
ture. Take them by measure, not by weight. Use for a measure an 
ordinary quart measure. Take one pailful of rolled oats and one pailful of 
bread-crumbs, or two pailfuls of rolled oats and two pailfuls of bread- 
crumbs, and so on. Put in five per cent. of good, sharp, ordinary 
sand with the bread-crumbs and rolled oats. The object 
of this sand is to provide grit, which the little ducklings 
need as well as the old ones. Two handfuls of sand to 
each pailful of mixture is what we mean by five per cent. Put these three 
ingredients, rolled oats, bread-crumbs and sand, into a box and mix them 
in the box. Then moisten this mixture with water, not enough to make 
the mixture sloppy, but just enough to moisten the particles. If you 
have milk, you can use milk instead of water, because the ducklings will 
grow faster when milk is used than when water is used. Understand, do 
not make this first mixture sloppy. Make it damp, that is the idea. 
The foregoing is the food for these newly-hatched ducklings for 
forty-eight hours after being put into the nursery. The food is there in 
each pen as the ducklings are put into it from the basket from the 
incubator. 
The First 
Feed 
Don’t Forget 
the Sand 
