96 Money in Broilers and Squabs. 



A good way to feed green food is to cast it in the drinking 

 water ; the ducks love to fish it out. 



If the breeding stock has been selected for the brightness of 

 their eyes, for the roundness of their orbs, and for stamina and 

 muscle power in preference to size, weight and sluggishness, they 

 •cannot help but give good results. 



The main trouble with beginners is that they insist in too close- 

 ly confining their ducks over night, thereby causing them to feel 

 uncomfortably warm, says Theo. F. Jager, and as this in conducive 

 to start them molting, and as a molt will in each and every case 

 cause a drop in the receipts of the eggs as well as in their fertility, 

 it is easily seen why we should keep the birds from feeling too 

 warm at night. 



To show the importance of purity in food, an experience of A. 

 J. Hallock is worth quoting : At one time a lot of ducks were sick, 

 and off their feed ; they were dying, and no cause could be dis- 

 covered. All the ingredients of the soft food were thoroughly exam- 

 ined, and found to be all right, and it was a mystery as to the 

 source of the trouble. Finally, one day the feeder happened to 

 catch the odor from the sand they were using, and found that it 

 was very foul ; it had been dug out of the bottom of the creek near 

 where the ducks had run, and was supposed to be all right, but it 

 proved that the leachings from the duck yards had flown down over 

 it, and rendered it impure, and this resulted in the trouble men- 

 tioned. The throwing out of this, and the substitution of perfectly 

 clean, pure sand, remedied the difficulty. 



James Rankin, in Farm and Home, gives this method of feeding: 

 "For breeding birds, old or young, during the Fall, feed three parts 

 wheat bran, one part crushed oat feed, one part cornmeal, five per 

 cent., beef scraps, five per cent, grit, and all the green food they will 

 eat in the shape of corn fodder cut fine, clover or oat fodder. Feed 

 this mixture twice a day, all they will eat. For laying birds equal 

 parts of wheat bran and cornmeal, twenty per cent, crushed oat feed, 

 10 per cent, boiled potatoes and turnips, fifteen per cent, clover 

 rowen, green rye or refuse cabbage chopped fine, five per cent. grit. 

 Feed twice a day all they will eat, with a lunch of corn and oats at 

 noon. Keep grit and oyster shells constantly by them. I never 

 cook food for ducks after they are a week old, but mix it with cold 

 water." 



In 1897, Prof. Samuel Cushman gave Rural New-Yorker a very 

 interesting and valuable report of the duck farm owned and operated 

 by George Pollard, of Pawtucket, R. I. We make the following ex- 

 tracts : 



Mr. Pollard estimates that he gets about 50 ducks from every 

 100 eggs put in the machines, not counting the first two and last 

 two hatches, which do not usually turn out so well. Of the early 

 lots of eggs, sometimes 50 per cent are fertile and of these about 5c 

 or 60 per cent hatch. He runs the machines at 102 degrees, and 

 says "of course they vary some, but if the stock is good and the 



