Pekin Duck

An American breed of domestic duck, also called the White Pekin, raised chiefly for meat, descended from birds carried to the United States from China in the 1800s and now kept worldwide. Its history traces to 1872, when James E. Palmer of Connecticut arranged for fifteen white ducks to be shipped from China; nine survived the 124 day voyage and arrived in New York on March 13, 1873, and Palmer's four surviving birds became the foundation stock of the American Pekin, which also picked up the name Long Island Duck because so many were later raised on Long Island, New York, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Pekin is large and solidly built, its rectangular body carried at roughly 40 degrees to horizontal, with creamy white plumage, yellowish orange legs and feet, and a short yellow bill. It is raised almost exclusively for meat, growing to more than 3.5 kilograms in seven weeks with excellent feed conversion, calm temperament and good fertility, its white feathers making the carcass easy to clean, and it can also lay more than 150 white eggs a year, with some birds kept for showing.