by Harold Burch

When I was seven or eight years old, my father decided to go into the business of raising ducks. The Chinese people coming to the market would often ask my father whether he had any ducks for sale. Anyway, one day we ended up with many baby ducks on the farm.

The unusual thing was instead of having mother ducks, they had mother hens. Because ducks were not very efficient in hatching their young, my father used to put the duck eggs under a hen that wanted to hatch her young. The adult ducks always retained a wild part of their life when it came to hatching their young. They would head for the woods, and make a nest to lay their eggs. For some reason, many of the eggs would not hatch, and mother duck would show up with two or three ducklings.

The challenging part for the mother hen was when the ducklings were allowed out into the barnyard. The ducklings had a second sense for water. The creek was a good distance from the barnyard, but the ducklings would head for the creek with mother hen following. When they got to the creek, the baby ducks would hop in the water for a swim, and mother hen would stand on the bank watching them. I am sure she never could figure out what was going on, but she was always a good mother, and patiently waited for them to finish their swim. Of course they were quite ready to get under their “mother”to get warm.

One day our large sow got out of her pen, and into the barnyard where the ducklings were. For some reason she decided to attack the baby ducklings. I happened to be nearby and took after her with a club. She did have a baby duck in her mouth, and I managed to get her to drop it. I picked it up and took it to a safe place. With some help from the rest of the family, we managed to get the sow back in her pen. The baby duck was not badly hurt, but I did keep him in the house for awhile where it was warm, and fed him. In a short time, he was able to go with the other ducklings. From then on he became my pet duck and seemed to know me.

My father never did sell him, but one day he said he had no other choice, and we would have my duck for dinner. This was too much for me, and I certainly didn't eat any duck dinner.