Part 5

But I expected great things from the Aylesburys. I procured the best ducks to be had in the country, while I used imported drakes from the best prize-winners in England, and I have never yet seen those drakes equaled in size; and I was unusually careful in this experiment, because I knew that the English breeders claimed for their birds a superiority in all the points essential for a good market bird, namely, delicacy and flavor of flesh, size, precocity, and greater egg production,--laying special stress on their hardiness and vitality. I bred those birds clear and crossed them, carefully noting the result. Our first batch of Pekins and those crosses numbered about 300, nearly equally divided. These were mixed and confined in two yards. For the first two weeks there was no perceptible difference, when gradually the young Pekins began to outgrow the crosses, the difference increasing with age. The former were very even in size, the latter irregular, while the mortality was as six to one in favor of the Pekins. When we began to kill those birds the Pekins were all in the market at the end of eleven weeks, while the crosses remained in the yards fully one week behind. The weight was in favor of the Pekins about one pound per pair.

The same difficulty existed as in former years--the tenacity of the feathers. The pickers grumbled, while the birds were more or less disfigured. I notified the dealers of the breeds of those ducks, and of the claim made by the English breeders, and wished them to ascertain if possible if there was any difference in favor of the Aylesburys. They said their customers found no preference, for themselves they preferred the Pekins on account of the larger size and finer appearance of the dressed birds. But I found it made a vast deal more difference than that to me. One pound per pair on 2,000 pairs of ducklings, at an average price of twenty-five cents per pound, made a difference of more than $500 to me; especially the extra ten days required to mature the Aylesburys cost more than the feed for extra pound of flesh grown upon the Pekins. I do not keep Aylesburys now, and have not since that experiment; I never shall again.

Precocity.

There is one point which I wish to impress, which is too often overlooked, and yet is of the most vital importance to the poultry grower, and that is the early maturity of his market birds. I often hear growers say that as there is very little change in the poultry market during nine months of the year, and as they do not contend for the early spring prices anyway, if their birds are three or four weeks longer in maturing it does not matter. Does is not? I have always contended that it requires just so much to sustain life in either bird or animal, and the profit consists in what we can get them to consume and digest over and above that; and if the time required to do this is protracted longer than is necessary, it is done at the expense of the grower.

If it takes ten weeks to grow five pounds of flesh on one bird and fourteen weeks on another the one must necessarily cost more than the other per pound, simply because you have to sustain life four weeks longer in one case than in the other, and that cannot be done for nothing. That is why, though I can easily grow a pound of duck for six cents, I must have eight cents to grow a pound of chicken, because the ducks will take on six pounds of flesh in ten weeks, while the chicken requires twenty weeks to obtain the same size. These appear trivial matters when a person grows only a few dozen fowls yearly, but when he makes a life business of it and grows fowls by the thousands, it is of the utmost importance.

First-Class Breeding Stock.

The above shows the necessity of first-class breeding stock to start with. I do not mean fancy stock at all, as many of the points of excellence claimed by the American standard militate directly against the market value of the birds. A few years ago several men came here to buy Pekin ducks for breeding stock. On looking at the birds and getting the price, one man said: "Those are the best birds I ever saw. I want thirty of the best birds you have." Another said: "They are fine birds, but I cannot afford to pay two dollars for a duck; have you no cheaper birds?" "Yes, I have some later birds--culls from which the rest have been selected. They are not as large as these. My late birds never attain the size of the earlier-hatched ones, and they will not lay quite as early. You can have your choice of these at one dollar each, which is about their market value."

He took those birds, and I consider when he made that choice that he threw away more than $100 of his first season's work alone, for, with a fair share of success he might easily expect to raise 100 young birds from each of his breeding ducks, and as the birds he chose were at least one-third lighter than those he rejected, their progeny would not be as heavy at a marketable age by at least one pound per bird. The excess in cost to him, had he bought the better birds, would have been but one cent on each of the young birds he raised. He lost, on making the choice he did, more than twenty cents on each bird, and this is not all; those birds will be small for generations to come. He never can get them up to the standard of the others. They will go upon the market as small birds, and as such, command at least two cents per pound less than the larger ones; in fact, his losses in this transaction will represent a large share of the profits.

How to Begin.

I will now suppose that the breeder has secured his stock, erected his building, and is ready for business. The next thing is to feed them well, keep them warm and comfortable, giving them as great a variety of green food as is obtainable during the winter months, in order to induce winter laying and insure fertility of the eggs. This matter requires close attention, because the profits in one week of the early market will always equal the profits in four or five of the late. The proportion of the sexes in the early spring should be about one drake to five or six ducks.

One point here I wish to emphasize particularly and that is in the selection of drakes. The drakes should be, at least, two months older than the ducks, as the latter will mature some two or three months earlier and begin their egg production two or three months before the drakes are ready for breeding. As a consequence, we always select our February hatched drakes for breeding purposes.

This comes a little hard, as these birds will average to dress seven to nine pounds at ten weeks old and will always bring, at least, 30c per pound at that time in the market, making them worth about $2.50 each. Would-be purchasers think we are crazy when we charge $3 each for these birds at eight months old, expecting us to keep them for six months and coop them for less than fifty cents.

Now this selection of early hatched birds is absolutely necessary for good profits, as early hatched, means early reproduction and these great profits can hardly be ignored. We sold thousands of birds the past spring for 30c per pound, having almost complete control of Boston and New York markets for at least six weeks.

Later in the season, when many of the ducks are off duty from a desire to incubate, the proportion should be about one drake to ten ducks. Be particular about this, as the eggs will be much more fertile if a part of the drakes are removed. The feeding boxes should be long and roomy; mine are 6x7 feet long, eight inches wide and three inches high. This is essential, as the birds are rapid eaters, and if there is not room, some will gorge themselves to repletion, while others will get but little. Do not keep food by them, as that will clog their appetites, and always effects the egg production, as well as the condition of the birds.

Keep the Feed Clean.

I have often visited poultry establishments where the food was lying around in all conditions,--in troughs, on the ground, trodden upon, mixed with excrement and filth; had become sour and offensive, so that the birds would not eat it. The attendant would go his rounds periodically and throw more food upon the already offensive mass; the owner looking on, passively complaining that his ducks did not lay and his ducklings would not fat.

I require my men to go the rounds after feeding, and if there is any food left, to take it up clean. If this is insisted on they will soon learn to feed just what is required and no more. Clean feeding is of the utmost importance, both for young and old birds, as neither will thrive from overfeeding, as it destroys the appetite completely. Another essential thing is that ducks will not produce their proper quota of fertile eggs on hard food alone.

The natural food of the duck is principally vegetable and animal, and is obtained in brooks, puddles, swales, and consists of flag, grass roots, small fish, pollywogs, etc. Unlike the hen, the duck has no crop,--the passage or duct leading from the throat to gizzard direct, is very small compared to the size of the bird. Consequently it does not assimilate or thrive on hard food. I am continually receiving letters from amateurs during the months of March and April, complaining that their ducks do not lay, at the same time saying that they give them all the corn they will eat. I write back suggesting soft food, giving ingredients and proportions. In an incredibly short space of time a postal will come to hand saying, "Thanks, my ducks are all laying." Success or failure in the poultry business often date their origin from just such trivial things as the above. So insignificant in themselves as to be entirely overlooked by the novice who, if he is persevering, will eventually discover both cause and remedy; but only through years of costly experiment and a loss of valuable time which he can never recall.

How to Feed Breeding Ducks for Eggs.

There should be quite a distinction between feeding ducks to obtain a supply of eggs and feeding them for market, as in one case the object is to lay on fat and the other is to furnish the most available supply of egg material. As before hinted, soft food is much more readily utilized in a duck's organization than a hen's. We make a habit of turning out our breeding ducks to pasture during the moulting season, housing them in the fall according to the nature of the season, say, from the middle of November to the first of December. We feed soft food morning and evening composed largely of bran with a little meal, keeping them purposely short to induce them to forage for themselves, but when the birds are housed this is all changed.

They are then fed on equal parts of corn meal, wheat-bran and low-grade flour, with about twelve or fifteen per cent. of animal food. One fourth of this food should be composed of vegetables cooked--say, small potatoes, turnips, etc., with all the green rye and refuse cabbage they will eat. We feed this compound morning and evening with a little corn, wheat and oats at noon. Feed all the birds will eat clean and no more. The birds, young and old, may be expected to lay in three weeks from the time they are housed. This part of the thing seems to be under perfect control. You turn in the proper variety of food and they cannot help turning out a generous supply of eggs.

The fertility however, cannot, at this season of the year be so perfectly controlled, as the standard of fertility in the first eggs is apt to be very low, but soon comes to a high point. The fecundity of these birds is wonderful. As a general thing each bird can be depended upon for 140 eggs each season, and as the eggs always command from 5 to 10 cents per dozen more than those from hens it makes the Pekin ducks more profitable for eggs alone than any other fowl.

Incubators.

With the necessary buildings constructed and the stock selected, the next thing required is the incubator, for I do not suppose the modern poultry grower is going to do his incubating with hens, for the simple reason that he cannot afford to. Hens show no desire to incubate when you want them to the most, or in time to command the high prices for ducks and chicks in the early spring, and this is attended with a loss of at least one-half of the season's profits.

I often have letters filled with questions concerning incubators. Which is the best incubator? Can a person of ordinary intelligence run one successfully? Do they require watching during the night? Is there an incubator in the market today that will hatch as well as the average hen? and many more of like import. To the first I would say that modesty forbids a candid answer. There are objections to many machines, though the same do not apply to all. It does not become me to mention their failings. But first of all do not buy a cheap incubator, as the conditions to which the material of an incubator is exposed are of the severest kind. It must be exposed constantly to a temperature of 103 degrees, and that in an atmosphere surcharged with moisture; and unless the material of which the machine is constructed is of the choicest kind, well kiln-dried and put together, the chances are that it will warp out of shape, admit drafts of air and injure, if not destroy, the regulation.

I do not think an incubator can ever be complete unless it is a double-cased machine. It requires that to effectually resist thermal changes. Years of careful experiment, and of experience in the competitive show room have convinced me of the truth of this. Extreme cold will affect the uniformity of heat in the egg-chamber of single-cased machines. Imagine if you can a single-cased machine constructed of five-eighth inch stuff, with a temperature of 103 degrees inside, and that of freezing outside. How can the eggs at the extreme corners and the thin cold sides of that machine be as warm as those in the centre? Of course that difference does not exist in warm weather, but that is the time when incubators are usually let alone and the business is given up to the old hen. Now, I say this frankly, as much for the benefit of incubator manufacturers as for their customers. I have letters every day from parties ordering circulars and saying that they have used from one to three machines of different makes, denouncing the machines and their makers in the most emphatic terms as frauds. Now, this is all wrong; one-half of the time you will find that it is the purchasers, not the makers, who are at fault. There are probably just as many honest incubator makers as there are in any other branch of business. But there is such a thing as a man being honest and yet ignorant.

Many of the manufacturers of incubators know very little about the first principles of artificial incubation. They have the idea that a simple heat regulator is all that is necessary to insure the success of an incubator, when in reality it is only one of the many requirements. I will enumerate some of the most essential points, viz.: heat regulation; uniformity of heat in egg-chamber; absolute control of heat by the operator on any given egg-tray; automatic moisture supply; accurate thermometers; thorough construction and good material to avoid warping and shrinkage, together with a safe lamp adjustment.

There are many other minor points which will come up with care of machines. I am often asked, "Why do so many fail to hatch with incubators?" I will answer by saying: "Not because it is difficult; for I have always found it a far more difficult thing to grow ducks and chicks successfully after they are hatched, than it is to hatch them." Doubtless everyone knows that an incubator, different from other machines, must run three weeks continually night and day, (and when filled with duck eggs, four weeks,) and preserve an even temperature all the while.