Ducks.
DUCKS usually begin to lay in February; and if your
gardener is diligent in picking up snails, grubs, caterpillars,
worms, and other insects and 'lay' them in one place, it will
make your ducks familiar, and is the best food, for change, they
can have. If parsley is sown about the ponds they use, it will
give their flesh an agreeable taste; and be sure always to have
one certain place for them to retire to at night. Partition off
their nests, and make them as near the water as possible, always
feed them there, as it will make them love home: for ducks are
of a very rambling nature.
Take away their eggs every day till you find them inclined to
sit, and then leave them in the place where they have laid them.
Little attendance is required while they sit, except to let them
have some barley or offal corn and water near them, that they
may not hurt their eggs by straggling from the nest.
In winter it is much better to let a hen upon the duck eggs,
than any kind of duck whatever, because the latter will leave
them, when hatched, too soon to the water, where, if the wea-
ther is cold, in all probability some of them will be lost. The
number of eggs to set a duck on is about thirteen. The hen
will cover as many of these as her own, and will bring them up
as carefully.
If the weather is tolerably good at the time the ducklings are
hatched, they will require very little attendance; but if they
happen to be produced in a wet season, it will be necessary to
take them under cover, especially on nights; for though the
duck naturally loves water, it yet requires the assistance of its fea-
thers, and, till grown, is easily hurt by the wet.
The method of fattening ducks is exactly the same, let their
age be what it will. They must be put into a retired place, and
kept in a pen, where they must have plenty of corn and water. Any