DUCK DOLLARS 53 
peep. This peeping noise increases in volume until they are six weeks 
old. Then they begin to make a quack more like the old birds. 
When washing out the drinking fountains, use a rag or dish-cloth 
and two pails of water. Wash in one pail and rinse in 
the other. i 
Be careful not to step on the little ducklings in giv. PPetites 
ing the first food. They are very tame and will get all Should Be 
around your feet if you give them a chance. Kept Eager 
Do not put down too much food on the boards. The night feeding 
should be the biggest of the five because the food eaten then has to last 
them through the night. 
Be sure to keep them eager and hungry. Do not load up the 
boards with the mixture so that they will overstuff themselves. Remem- 
ber that for these first two days they are learning to eat. 
In hot weather water them twice as much as when the weather is 
cooler. Fill the fountain often. They will drink this water up quickly, 
within five or ten minutes, then fill the fountain up again. 
Do this watering always at each feeding. The easiest Hot Weather 
way to get the water into the little fountains is to pour Watering 
it from a milk-can, which is better than a dipper because it holds more 
and is handled easier. Do not fill these milk-cans from a faucet. That 
would take too much time. Let the faucet water run into a tub and fill 
the milk-cans by dipping them into the tub. This saves work. 
Beginning with the third day, the food for the young ducklings 
changes to the weaning food. Mix the same ingredients of food as the 
first two days with bran and corn-meal in equal parts, by : 
measure not by weight. That is to say, take one meas- THe Weaning 
ure of rolled oats, one measure of bread-crumbs, one Food 
measure of bran and one measure of corn-meal; in other words, twenty- 
five per cent. of each. 
By bran we mean wheat shells, also called shorts. It is the outside, 
flaky shell of the wheat. It costs about $20 a ton in carload lots, but is 
cheaper in the West. It is a by-product of a flour mill. 
Corn-meal is common yellow Indian corn which has been ground, 
not cracked. It costs here in the East about the same as bran. This 
weaning food is given for sever or eight days. 
When the ducklings are seven or eight days old, 
cut out the expensive rolled oats and bread-crumbs 
and in their place in the mixture put low-grade flour, 
which costs about $28 a ton. 
Remember, that all these mixtures are moistened with water, but 
not so as to be sloppy. They should be damp. When 
‘you take up a handful which has been mixed properly 
‘with water, it will not stick to the hands, but will hold 
compactly together in a lump. 
The food which begins at seven or eight days of age also has green 
‘stuff and beef scraps. To summarize, then, prepare the food as follows: 
Equal parts of bran and corn-meal, ten per cent. of low-grade flour and 
. ten per cent. of green stuff, such as green grass or rye or millet (which 
thas been chopped up in a cutting machine or by hand in a pail), beef 
heir 
Feed at Eight 
Days 
Beware of 
Sloppy Food 
