Connecticut western news., 1889-08-28
A DUCK FACTORY.
MANUFACTURING QUACK AT
 WHOLESALE.
Ten Thousand Ducks per Year.

Ten Thousand Ducks per Year.
 A factory, according to Webster, is Ca place where workmen are employ ed ill fabricating goods, wares or uten- sils," and as MT. Rankin's farm is 8 place where ducks are manufactured, .. e., hatched, reared, dressed and ship ped to n( rket, it is no misuse of the term to call it "factory." Such it certainly is, and visit to factory where some 10000 ducks are manu- factured annually is of great interest to poultry-man. Not much of his large farm (of some 100 acres) is de- voted to ducks, perhaps half dozen acres in all, and these, of course, are grouped close about the buildings, the farm barn being the geographical cen tre. First in interest is the incubator house, a low structure, bank-walled to the caves, in which are the GOO egg machines, and at the further end a smaller one which is used as a tender to supply eggs to fill the gaps made by removing the infertile eggs from the large machines. MT. Rankin says this small machine is the most valuable one in the house, as by using it thus he keeps all six of the large ones running full. E
 A large sized Monarch incubator is called 600 egg machine and will hold on an average about 56O hens eggs. As ducks eggs are considerably larger than hens eggs large machine will only hold about 425 of them, so that when MT. Rankin has his ma chimes all full he has about 25O0 eggs in process of incubation and they are timed so as to come off at regular in- tervals of say five days. One machine was hatching on the day we were there and we saw the operation of sort ing out the half dried ducklings and putting them in the bottom of the in- cubator where layer of clean sawdust was their temporary home. The next step is to the brooder house, 135 feet long, divided into 20 pens of 6x8 and 7x10 feet each. At the east end of this house is small boiler for heating with hot water and an ingenious attachment forces the heated water down hill and back again up hill to be relocated.
 The ducklngs are removed from the incubator to the brooder house when they are about 24 hours old. The first hatch is placed in the warmest pens next the boiler end of the house and stay there till a second lot is ready when they are driven down into the next teir of pens, lot No. 3 taking their former quarters. When third lot comes the process is repeated and by the time the first lot is down at the further and cooler end of the brooder- house they are four or five weeks old and can be kept in house without heat. They are then driven off pen full at a time, to pens in one of the three houses, each 75 feet long and 10 feet wide divided into pens about 7x1O feet in size and having yards about 100 feet deep on the side. The brooder-house pens have yards cores bonding also.
 It takes about ten weeks to grow and fat Pekin ducks, and before the houses are full to overflowing the first batch is ready for market. An experienced picker then puts in all appearance, locating himself in the basement of the barn where he has all the conven. fences for his work, and he kills and dresses about 300 per week.
 Ducks eggs are sufficiently fertile to begin setting about February 1st so that early in May the product be- gins to go to market, and from that time to July the process of manufac. ture is in full blast. The incubators just across the way from the barn are hatching the ducklings, which go through the round described above til they reach the dresser in the barn base. ment, from which they are shipped tc the Boston and New York markets MT. Rankin winters about four hun. dred breeding ducks and raises about ten thousand ducklings each season. but has not more than six thousand l (probably), in the buildings at one time, as the first four thousand have gone to market by the time the tentl comes from the inucbators. Not all of the ten thousand are killed, though because some must be saved to satisfy the calls of patrons for breeding.
 MT. Rankin says it cost him five cents pound to grow, fatten, dress and ship his ducks, and he gets from 35 cents pound for the first shipments down through 32, 30, 28, 25, etc., til the latter shipments bring about 1t cents. Even at the latter figure he makes two hundred per cent profit and as the average is (probably) above 50 cents pound, and as the ducks average nine pounds to the pair, five thousand pairs, weighing about forty. five thousand pounds, would yield { profit which would keep the "wolf'