Page:Ducks- and how to make them pay (IA cu31924003102971).pdf/28

14 ducks for laying purposes, if they have just a little place to keep them in, and can allow them to have a run sometimes, even if it is only up a garden path or passage, twice or three times a day.

Most gardeners are troubled with slugs, grubs, and wire-worms in their kitchen gardens, so much so that, in some cases, the slugs strip everything off, viz., cabbage plants, peas, lettuces, &c. Where this is the case I recommend them to have a pen of ducks running about their kitchen garden just for, say, half-an-hour first thing in the morning, almost before it is daylight. The ducks eat up the slugs, grubs, and a great number of the worms; in fact, they will clear the whole garden of such pests. Occasionally they may peck up some of the young stuff which is growing; but if they are well supplied with green stuff in the little run where they are kept they will seldom do any damage in the kitchen garden. Ducks are quite different from fowls; they can find the slugs with their beaks very often when they cannot see them. They will collect them before it is daylight in the morning. I know some gentlemen who have large old-fashioned kitchen gardens who always keep a pen of ducks purposely to clear the slugs off. Ducks which have their liberty and run about (especially in the Spring) over a grass field or park scarcely require any feeding at all. I have known them not to eat a particle of corn for weeks when it has been given them; they have simply lived on the slugs and worms. But with those which are kept in confined runs it is quite another matter; they have to be