Ducklings when confined to yards are sometimes troubled with sore eyes.
The adjacent parts become inflamed, the head slightly swelled. This is
caused by feeding sloppy food, and from filthy quarters. The feathers
around the eyes become filled with the food, the dust adheres to them.
The eye is naturally inflamed. Washing out thoroughly and bathing the
eye with a little sweet oil will usually effect a cure.
Diarrhoea.
Young ducklings are sometimes afflicted with diarrhoea. This disease is
caused more by overheating brooders and the exhausted condition of the
mother bird than from improper food. Do not overfeed or overheat the
ducklings. Feed bread or cracker crumbs, moistened with boiled milk,
into which a little powdered chalk has been dusted.
Abnormal Livers.
This disease is the most dangerous to which young ducks are subject. It
is seldom prevalent except during the warm weather, and usually in young
birds of from two to six weeks of age. The livers of the young birds
enlarge to such an extent as to force up their backs,--a deformity which
will cling to them through life. It is caused by a complete stagnation
of the digestive organs, and often makes its appearance after a heavy
rain, or long wet spell, when the yards are invariably wet, sloppy and
offensive. The young birds will, while in constant contact with this
mud, absorb more or less of it, clogging the digestive organs, and
deranging their appetites. Remove the birds to some dry, shady place,
feed sparingly, and give a little of the "Douglas mixture" in the
drinking water.
Ducklings must be Carefully Yarded While Young.
A great mortality often occurs to young ducklings when allowed free
range during warm weather, from devouring injurious insects. Bees,
wasps, hornets, bugs of all descriptions, are eagerly swallowed alive
but not always with impunity, and the birds often pay the penalty with
their lives. Always confine them, even when designed for breeding
purposes, until they are six weeks old, when they can be allowed their
liberty.
The most of the diseases to which ducks and fowls are subject can
usually be traced to some infraction of conditions, and of course are
always more or less under the control of the careful operator. Two young
men called here a short time ago wishing to know what was the trouble
with their fowls. Hitherto they had occupied a cold building, so open
that the snow sifted through on them, and they had never to their
recollection had a diseased fowl. Within a year they had put up a nice,
warm building with a glass front, and their fowls had been diseased ever
since. They had shut their birds in a building that would run up to 100
degrees during the day and that would go down nearly to zero at night,
subjecting their fowls to thermal changes, under which neither animal or
vegetable life could possibly live, and then expect them to thrive.
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