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Show DUCKS AND OTHER LIVE STOCK Hovr an Ingenious Fanner Gets Plenty ! Water, Ducks and Fish. I will endeavor to tell my readers as briefly as possible how I have plenty of stock water convenient to my lots, plenty of fish for my table and plenty of fin Pekin ducks for the table, and also for their fine feathers. Some five or six years ago, not having water convenient, I built a tank, say thirty steps from my lots and a little above them, by building a large dam across a ravine, and just here I will say to prevent leaking plow a land the width of the base of the dam across the ravine or wherever the dara is to be made, then build on top of plowed land. My tank i9 in black land with yellow clay subsoil and will hold water from January till the late fall rains. In it we put a few small perch and yellow and speckled or blue catfish; they multiplied very rapidly and we now have all the fish we want for table use both of perch and catfish, the former I think the finest I ever saw. For a while after the tank was built I was fearful of it being ruined by crawfish, they being very numerous in it. I noticed, however, that the ducks feivSted upon them. So I went to work to raise more ducks; procured a tiio of Pekins, and at this time have forty-one of them and no crawfish to be seen. The ducks are a very superior fowl, being be-ing entirely free from disease, and unsurpassed un-surpassed for the table, besides nearly equaling the goose for feathers, of a very-fine very-fine quality. So you see I have plenty of water for stock, fish for the table, and the white beauties for the table and also for their feathers, besides the pleasure afforded my wife by showing them to her friends. Now perhaps some one will want to know how to raise them. Our best success has been in the following follow-ing way: We hatch them under a chicken hen. Then put in a pen made by placing three or four planks a foot wide edgewise on a drj spot of ground, with cover at one side to house them in bad weather. Keep them in pen until they are at least 1 a month old, with all the feed they want, and just enough water to drink, as they are injured by having water to dabble in when young. They will then do well in the yard with just enough water to drink, but much better if they have a pond or plenty of water. Ours spend nearly all their time on the water, coming com-ing out to eat two or three times a day. E. V. Taylor in Southern Farm. |