Ducks as Mothers.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 197, 2 April 1887, Page 2

Ducks as Mothers.

A correspondent of Land and *. Water thinks that it is better to let ducks hatch their own eggs than to set them under hens. He gays : " I know it is a popular belief that ducks are careless and indifferent mothers so far that a custom prevails with keepers of setting ducks' eggs under hens. I think both this principle and this practice are wrong. The only advantage hen mothers have over ducks i 3 that they are ready to sit earlier in the year. Apart from that I believe there is not any advantage in s>uch a custom. From ray own observation I can pay that hens kill many more young ducks than duck mothers do. Naturally the feet of a hen are not calculated for treading about among little things which slide and struggle rilone the ground. Her chickens can jump and spring out of the way of her feet; but I have frequently seen a hen stand with her threat outspread toes upon the back of a young duckling who was vainly struggling to get from under it, the hen all the while reaching after something to eat, apparently unsconscious that she was slaughtering her p c eudo offspring. A duck * teefc aie all one, are flat and &play, and .*>he hhu files about without lifting thorn much from the ground. Ido not lemember ducklings being ever trod upon, or as the people about here say, 1 squabble i ' by a duck mother. '• No doubt we are very wi?e people in our goneiation, but from all eternity God had been Aviser than avc ; and hens were intended to hatch and bring up chickens, and ducks to rear young ducks.'