Wild Ducks on the Farm.—II. 
As with most young birds the food problem 
is one of the most difficult. The ordinary young 
duck hatched on a farm depends a little on the 
scalded cornmeal that is given him, and a great 
deal on the insects which he catches by his own 
activity, but when the one, two or three crops 
raised on the farm are multiplied by hundreds 
in the duck preserve, it seems quite evident that 
the supply of insects must soon run short. Ani¬ 
mal food, of course, can be given in the way of 
scraps or bone meal, but neither of these is 
quite satisfactory in producing the results most 
desired. 
While the main food of the ducks will natu¬ 
rally be some form of grain, they must—to keep 
them in the best condition—have this animal 
food. If they have a considerable pond of water 
to swim and play in, they will for a time get 
a great deal of animal food from that, but this 
in time will be exhausted. If on the other hand 
the pond or pool, which is within their inclosure, 
has a stream flowing into it, this running water, 
especially in times of a freshet, brings down a 
considerable quantity of new animal food of one 
kind and another, and will be a great help to the 
birds. 
It is of the utmost importance also that they 
should have an abundance of green food. This 
can be supplied by natural growing grass if the 
range which they occupy is large enough, but if 
for any reason sod grass does not grow, suc¬ 
cessive crops of oats or rye may be sown, enough 
to give fresh springing green food through a 
part of the summer. Such patches need not be 
more than two or three yards wide and twenty 
yards in length. If they grow faster than birds 
eat them down, they can either be allowed to go 
to seed or can be mowed and then kept cut down 
close with a lawn mower so as to constantly 
produce new green food. At times when— 
as in mid-summer—there is little or no green 
stuff to be had, ducks eagerly eat lettuce or even 
the top leaves of young cabbage. Few things are 
more important than to vary the food of the 
bird, so that they shall constantly relish what is 
offered to them and eat it up clean. It may be 
said, of course, that nothing is needed to stimu¬ 
late the appetite of a duck—one of the most 
voracious of feeders—yet there is a great differ¬ 
ence between the result produced by a bird mere¬ 
ly stuffing itself from gluttony and enjoying 
what it eats. 
Perhaps the most important requirement of 
the duck is abundant sand, gravel or grit, which 
shall assist it to grind up the food which it eats. 
Lacking gravel, no bird of this group can be 
well nourished. 
It is essential to the success of a flock of ducks 
that they be fed with the utmost regularity. If 
well fed and protected from alarm, they will be 
tame and easily handled, and in that case will 
be likely to do well and to produce many fertile 
eggs. During the breeding season the best food 
for the adult ducks is whole corn. It is al¬ 
most too large to be eaten by any wild birds 
that you would be willing to have about your 
duck range, for, of course, crows, blackbirds, 
magpies and jays of all sorts must be absolutely 
barred, and when they make their appearance 
must be shot; in fact, for most of the time from 
early spring to mid-summer, whole corn with 
plenty of gravel will be the staple food for your 
ducks. Later it may be worth while to change 
the grain, but after all, corn is the staple food 
and all other things are to be viewed in the 
light of luxuries or condiments. It is well recog¬ 
nized all along the Atlantic coast that thousands 
of bushels of corn are fed each winter to the 
wild ducks for the purpose of keeping them in 
good condition or inducing them to frequent 
some particular spot. 
Of the enemies of domesticated wild ducks the 
most obvious are rats and mink. These are good 
climbers, good diggers and may even occasionally 
slip through a hole in the wire, and if they once 
get inside the inclosure they will certainly cause 
havoc among the ducks’ nests and young. 
Eternal vigilance is the only remedy for these 
destroyers. The fence around the inclosure must 
be constantly watched, especially at its base, to 
see whether any digging has been done about it. 
Blind entrances to the inclosure may be made 
in the hope that rats or minks may enter them 
to learn whether there is not a way through the 
fence. In these inclosures, traps should be set. 
It is less difficult to keep the larger mammals, 
such as ’coons, foxes, skunks and others, out of 
such an inclosure or to catch them if by any 
chance they manage to get into it. The rapa¬ 
cious birds and the egg-sucking birds present an¬ 
other difficulty and must be constantly watched. 
If I were rearing wild ducks I should not care 
to have the inclosure covered with wire. Better 
results, I think, would be secured by trying to 
have the young ducks hatched and reared in 
safety and then to permit them if they wished 
to do so to migrate southward, feeling every 
confidence that when spring came they would 
return to the place where they had been bred, 
settle down and rear their young with perfect 
confidence. Of course one might keep a small 
stock, perhaps a dozen breeding birds, to act as 
decoys in spring, but I am convinced that the 
most satisfactory results would be attained by 
letting young go off and shift for themselves. 
A trouble which sometimes occurs is that an 
old mother bird of one species may attack and 
kill the young birds of another species if they 
venture too near. We may question whether in 
nature this ever takes place, but that it occurs 
among captive birds is beyond question. 
If one were about to undertake to breed wild 
ducks he would do well to begin—in the Eastern 
States at least—either with wild mallards or wild 
blackducks, and for a year or two should keep 
these birds by themselves. Under no circum¬ 
stances should mallards and blackducks be kept 
in the same inclosure during the breeding sea¬ 
son. The two species hybridize very readily, and 
it would be the easiest thing in the world to get 
a lot of mongrel ducks, which will be neither 
wild nor tame, and which in fact would be fit 
only to have their heads chopped off after they 
were hatched. With the mallards or the black- 
ducks, as the case may be, it might be well to 
introduce after a time some pintails or, better 
still, some woodducks. The woodducks and the 
mallards, or blackducks, would probably have 
very little to do with one another, and the same 
is true of a number of other species. 
There are a number of duck breeders along 
the Atlantic coast from whom it should not be 
difficult to secure stock for a start. Wild geese, as 
already stated, can easily be had at Chincoteague 
Island, or at a variety of places along the coasts 
of Virginia and North and South Carolina. 
They will breed readily, although to be sure 
they do not lay many eggs, and the flocks do 
not rapidly increase. Ducks, however, are more 
productive in the matter of eggs, and with 
proper care will hatch most of the eggs on which 
they sit. Captain Oates, in his excellent book 
entitled “Wild Ducks, How to Rear and Shoot 
Them,” "speaks of five. nests in his inclosures 
from which were hatched out sixty-five duck¬ 
lings-—all the eggs that the birds had under 
them. As ducks often lay many more eggs than 
they can cover and drop some of these eggs 
away from the nest, there will probably be 
enough eggs gathered from your flock, no mat¬ 
ter how small it may be, to set a few hens, and 
the ducklings hatched by the hen are quite likely 
to do as well as those hatched by the ducks. 
The mother duck may lay a good many eggs 
before she shows any sign of wishing to sit on 
the eggs she has deposited in her nest. When 
this time comes, however, her actions will show 
plainly what she intends. One of the first acts 
of the ducks about to sit is to more or less com¬ 
pletely line her nest with down from her breast 
and to cover the eggs over with this when she 
leaves the nest. When this time arrives it is 
well to give her a full complement of eggs to 
sit on, which may be from twelve to fifteen. 
About fifteen or sixteen eggs are as much as 
a duck can successfully cover, and it is not 
worth while to give her more than she can cover 
and run the risk of some of the eggs being 
chilled and spoiled. 
Stacks or piles of dry grass and weeds are 
favorite nesting places for ducks in confinement. 
They are also very fond of finding their way 
into the center of any clump of thick growing 
bushes or even sprouts and into the middle of 
a pile of brush—the tops and twigs cut from 
trees that have been felled. Here in the half 
light, protected by the barrier which is about 
them from sudden attacks of any enemy, they 
sit day after day and week after week until the 
eggs hatch and the tiny young are ready to be 
led away to their watery home. 
A few species like the woodduck, goldeneye 
and mergansers, which breed in trees, should 
have special arrangements provided for them. 
An ordinary nail keg firmly fastened at a height 
of four or six feet above the ground, and so 
bound with wire or hoops that it will not at 
once fall to pieces, makes a very good nest for 
one of these tree-breeding ducks, so soon as a 
