Produced by Steven Giacomelli, Simon Gardner, La Monte H.P. Yarroll and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) Transcriber's Note This Plain Text version uses the Latin-1 character set. The figure captions have been retained in the same order of appearance as the plates in the original, but moved to follow the section which each illustrates. Minor inconsistencies in spelling have been retained as in the original. Where typographical errors have been corrected and missing references added, these are listed at the end of this book. Bold and small capital typeface in the original is represented in the Plain Text version by UPPER CASE. Italic typeface in the original is indicated in the Plain Text version by _underscores_. * * * * * [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ General view of water yards and ducklings on a large Long Island duck farm. (_Photograph from the Bureau of Animal Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture._)] DUCKS AND GEESE BY HARRY M. LAMON SENIOR POULTRYMAN, BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND ROB R. SLOCUM POULTRYMAN, BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE _Authors of "The Mating and Breeding of Poultry" and "Turkey Raising"_ ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK ORANGE JUDD PUBLISHING COMPANY LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER & CO., LIMITED 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ORANGE JUDD PUBLISHING COMPANY _All Rights Reserved_ PRINTED IN U. S. A. PREFACE Of all lines of poultry keeping, duck raising is unique in that it lends itself to the greatest degree of specialization and intensification along lines which are purely commercial. On a comparatively small area thousands of ducklings can be reared and marketed yearly. The call for information concerning the methods used by these commercial duck raisers has been considerable, and since such information is not available in complete concise form the present book has been prepared partly to furnish just this information. The methods used by successful Long Island duck raisers differ widely in some particulars and since in the space at command, it has been impossible to describe all the methods used, the plan has been adopted of detailing in the main the methods of one successful grower. This it is believed will prove to be more helpful and less confusing than to attempt to give the method of several different men.