Lexington gazette. [volume] (Lexington, Va.) 1871-1962, 1904-06-01
QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
A NeighbOrhoOd Where his Il
Ever Pervading Sound

Ever Pervading Sound
The following interesting article
on duck raising appeared in a re
cent issue of the Staunton Specta
tor:
With quack, quack. quackine
from the loud mouths of 10000
ducks, was aroused from sleep
early one morning at about the
hour of dawn. The evening before
l had arrived at the picturesque
village of Riverton, Va, at the
forks of the Shenandoah river and
after walk of some minutes up
that stream was domiciled for the
night at a home on its banks.
Next morning the sight that met
my wondering gaze was novel in
the extreme. Before me lay the
large buildings and spreading
acres of a duck farm, or ranch,
where ducks by the hundred, by
the thousand and by the tens of
thousand ar: raised-a farm of
eighteen acres given over for the
exclusive purpose of raising these
fowls. The ducks were all of the
snow white Pekin variety, with
not dark feather among the
whole bunch of them. 1t was a
great sight to see them wave up to
the feeding troughs and as COM
pactly recede at the too near APP
proach of stranger. Never scat
tering but always moving en- masse,
an undulating, animated mass of
white futter-and web-footed pat
ter.
Not all the livery stables in
Staunton consume the quantity of
feed that Is daily devoured by this
army of hungry fowls. Last year
they consumed 5000 bushels of
corn, 50 tons of chopped beef
scrap, four times that much of
bran, middlings and -four, 80 tons
of chopped hay, 60 tons of green
clover, rye and oats, 81 tons of
prepared clover, 5 tons of crushed
oyster shells and other items of
large expenditure that I had not the
time or patience to take down
suffice it that the stuff comes in
carload lots and arrives every
week in large consignments, some
times filling a side track with a
long line of loaded cars. Besides
all this the farm itself produces
much that goes to help feed the
multitude of ravenous mouths.
The first great division of this
expensive family l found in the
nursery-a two story, steam heat
ed building nearly 800 feet long.
In it were 1000 young baby ducks,
with not a mother among them
all were orphans-the helpless off
spring of many incubators, that
increased the family of hatchlings
500 each day.
Mr.. j. w. Morgan, the founder
and owner of this wonderful ranch,
will, | think, bear me out in most
of the statements / am here max
ing. Many years ago Mr.. Morgan
began raising ducks in a small
way, only giving such time to it as
he could spare from other bust
ness, but becoming interested and
seeing its large possibilities he laid
aside every other duty and threw
his entire personality into the en-
terprise. This Was in lS99-and
in the five years since he has de-
veloped possibly the largest bust
ness of its kind in the country.
Last year7-if l mistake not-he
shipped more dressed ducks than
any other conc ern in the United
States, his sales reaching the
enormous total Of 80, 500 fowls.
The nursery, where these thou
sands are kept, looks like the
enormous barn of some of our
wealthy Valley farmers, only it lie
two or three times as long, and is
divided off into departments, each
for the varying sizes of the ducks
as they grow older and stronger.
A forty-horse power boiler furn-
ishes steam heat for the whole
building. The heat can therefore
be regulated in each department
according to the weather and the
needs of the fowls.
When / found Mr.. Morgan he
was at home among his thousands
of little ones. Said he, "When |
the ducks come from the incuba-
tor they are kept in the junior de
partment for a week, where the
thermometer registers 90 to 95 de-
grees. At the end of that time
they are promoted to another room
where the heat is reduced 5 de-
grees, and so each week they are
driven from room to room, each
degrees cooler than the one pre-
ceding, until the fowls are six
weeks old, at which time they are
turned into open pens where are
long sheds under which they can
huddle at night, or when the
weather Is COOL"
His method of feeding is reduced
to science, and from the first
week, thu ducks are fattened and
grown at surprising rate. This
process is called crushing the
and rushed they certainly
seem to be. for at s and 10 weeks