Natchitoches populist. [volume] (Natchitoches, La.) 1898-1899, 1898-12-09


could not afford to raise them for less
than 80 or GO cents pound. He in
yeStfgated, and learned that the two
and three pound birds shipped from
the West in the fall and winter were
frozen in refrigerators and held for
the early spring trade That drove him
out of the chicken broiler business,
and he started his duck farm.
He began nine years ago with five
ducks. Last year he raised 10000 and
now has on a part of his 150-acre
farm about 10000. The number will
grow less week by week now until his
stock will be reduced to about thou
sand, or maybe 500, which will be the
finest of his hocks and will be kept
for breeding purposes next year New
York takes the whole product of the
farm.
These thousands Of ducks are all
Matched in incubators of Mr.. Mac
Avoy's invention. There are eighteen
of them, with a capacity of 1000 eggs
each and in the height of the hatch
ing season, about the later part Of
May, it takes the entire time of one
man to look after the incubators and
remove the little ducklings to the
brooders, which are placed in a sunny
room in the second story of an ad-
Joining building. Here they are kept
for ten days when they are ready to
be transferred to the field. 1t takes
nature four weeks to hatch a ducks
egg; the incubators can beat nature
by forty-eiglrt hours.
Not every egg that goeA into the IN
cubators produces a duck. The duck
farmer has succeeded in Matching 81
per cent. of the eggs placed in the arti-
fetal hatchery, and at other times has
secured only so per cent. All the eggs
are tested before being placed in the
incuhators, and at the end of the third
day they are again carefully inspected
and those that lack fertility are taken
out and boiled hard and mixed with
the meal cake that furnishes the food
for the ducklings during their earlier
days.
ut must take large amount of
feed for so great a flock" suggested
the writer to Farmer MacAvoy.
"Not so much as is generally be-
lieyed," he replied Il have found
that If ducks are fed regularly it re-
quires little to keep them fat They
get all they can eat The little ones
are fed six times day and the grown
ones three times"
"But you have no ponds for them
to swim in. Ducks cannot be raised
without water, can they?'
"No. They get all the water they
can use, but it is given to them in
troughs. 1t is for them to drink; not
to swim in. There is a creek down
at the end of that field that is for the
grown ducks that are ready for
market They are no fat that
they must have the cooling water
Of the creek for their hath, and they
spend much Of their time under the
trees in the shade. There are wooden
shelters for the others, In which they
run to escape from raln-storms and
from the heat of the sun In the middle
Of the day. Besides you know. wa
ter is not healthy for Young ducks"
and in explanation the duck farmer
went on ''It's q curious fact that if
water gets upon the back of a young
duck before its feathers grow, the
duckIing will die
Adjoining the field OF breeders is
the field for the ducklings, in one end
Of which are the runs connected with
q row of low one-story frame houses,
about 200 feet long. Flocks of 200 or
300 are placed in each run, as it is
found that they do not thrive when
allowed to run in one large flock. In
the field they wander about in fiocks,
and when disturbed by the visit of a
stranger each flock will start n sin
gle file for its particular runway. Ap-
parently they know where they be-
long, as some occasionally get into
oae wrong runways and quickly go
out and into the right one.
Inc ducks, large and small, appear
to know Mr.. MacAvoy and the dozen
men and boys employed TO aid in car
ing for them day and night These
attendants 60 about the fields, aud the
nfds pay no attention to them.
Neither dc they mind the two large
English mastiffs and fiva fox terriers
that guard the tlocSs against thieves,
rats, foxes, and other unwelcome Wis.,
stors. Bealdea the dogs thasa are