AGRICULTURE: Quack Farmer Trouble

Nowhere in the world were there meatier, tastier ducks than those which the Emperor Tung Chi raised in the Imperial aviaries at Peking, China. In 1873 a Connecticut Yankee named James E. Palmer contrived to bring three of the Emperor’s ducks and one indispensable drake to the U.S. This quacking quartet hatched an industry.

On Long Island, which now raises five to six million Pekin ducks a year—about half the total U.S. supply—duck farmers last week were half-wishing the Emperor had kept his ducks. Their feed costs were the highest ever, but the price of ducks had dropped 13% in a month. Now, at the peak of their season, Long Islanders are shipping some 200,000 ducks a week to market. But wholesale prices have fallen to 26¢ a pound, 2½¢ below the old OPA ceiling.

Long Island’s production comes from about 76 farms. In one half-mile stretch on Big Seatuck Creek alone, nearly 1,000,000 ducks are being raised this year. It all started when Farmer W. W. Hallock bought some of Yankee Palmer’s eggs and began raising “Pekin” ducks. The ducks thrived on the sandy soil and the tidal streams. Quack Farmer Hallock soon had plenty of rivals.

Russell Hallock, his grandson, now runs the Farmers’ Commission House Inc. in Manhattan, which buys 60% of all Long Island ducks, processes and freezes them to sell to the big packers.

As ducks do not have much sense, a dog’s bark or a floating feather may scare them into piling up in great heaps in which the bottom ducks smother. Sometimes dive-bombing seagulls frighten them into drowning. Diseases may wipe out whole hatches. Yet when the Long Island Duck Farmers’ Association recently hired a retired physician to conduct research into cures, he had difficulty getting information from tight-lipped quack farmers. During the prosperous war years, duck farmers netted anywhere from $7,000 to $50,000 a year—thanks partially to the 90¢ a pound they got for duck feathers for airmen’s vests.

The farmers simply measure their profits by money in the bank (or sock), their deficits by money owed the bank (many of them borrow at the start of the season). Last week, most of them thought they were losing money, but none knew for sure. This much they did know: a duck eats 25 pounds of feed in the nine weeks it takes to reach the five-pound-plus marketing size. At $100 a ton for feed, that is $1.25 for a duck which now brings around $1.22½ at the commission house.