Page:Ducks- and how to make them pay (IA cu31924003102971).pdf/57

Rh a long price, this food should be used till they are about six or seven weeks old. Then add extra meat and fat, and also a little barleymeal to the other things. This is what I term the best way of feeding young ducklings when one wants to make splendid birds either for stock or fattening. When the ducks are only going to be kept just for ordinary stock the extra barleymeal and fat should be kept out, and a little extra oatmeal and bonemeal added.

There are plenty of people who only rear one or two broods at a time—just for their own family consumption— who would say it was too much trouble to mix all these things. It is possible to get very fair ducks and not use all these different kinds of meal I have described. Numbers of people rear very fair ducks, and give them nothing else but a little barley-meal and sharps, mixed together with some granulated meat or scraps from the house, and they do not have anything else from the time they are four days old. But these do not grow to anything like the size of those fed in the manner I have mentioned. When young ducklings are intended for selling for stock, after they are about five or six weeks old they should have a little grain put in their water troughs the last thing at night, such as French buck-wheat, wheat, or barley; if not, the digestive organs become weak. When they are about 12 or 13 weeks old some of them begin to shed their first feathers. After this they should have good oats put in their water at night. This will keep their plumage in as good condition as anything they can have. A little sulphur put in their soft food in the morning, say a teaspoonful to every six or eight