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REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the
subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED
STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any
first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._

POULTRY NOTES.

Poultry-raisers. Write For Your Paper.

A DUCK FARM.

You will not find it on the map because it is not mentioned there, and I
shall not tell you where it is because I promised the little woman who
owns it, and who gave me permission to tell other women what she had
done, that I would not mention her name or the name of the place where
she lives and works. How did I happen to find her? I didn't find her; it
just happened--i.e., if anything ever happens in this queer old world of
ours. We bumped our heads together once in a railway accident, and we
have been firm friends ever since.

Her farm is only a bit of land, some thirty acres, but for the last five
years she has made from ten to twelve hundred dollars a year from it,
and most of the money came from the ducks. She sells eggs for hatching,
and ducks for breeding and for exhibition, but the main object is ducks
and feathers for market. She thinks ducks are less trouble and quite as
profitable as hens. She keeps twenty-four stock ducks, eight males and
sixteen females, through the winter. The ducks commence laying from the
middle of February to the first of March, and lay from 100 to 125 eggs
each in a season. The first laid eggs are set to get ducks to sell for
breeding stock and for the early summer market. For this purpose the
eggs from the ducks that are two or three years old are used, and when
hatched the ducklings from those eggs are marked by punching a small
round hole in the web of the feet. She thinks, and rightly, too, that
the eggs from the older ducks procure larger and more vigorous birds
than the first eggs from the young ducks.

As soon as the weather gets warm enough to ship without danger of
chilling on the way, she sells eggs for hatching at $3 per dozen, and
finds no difficulty in disposing of as many as she cares to spare at
that price. Her sales of eggs for hatching amount to about $100 yearly.
Besides the eggs used and sold for hatching she generally sends a
twenty-four-dozen case to New York just before Easter. These large,
finely-shaped, pure white eggs sell readily for Easter eggs, and bring
from forty to fifty ce