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 cents per dozen.
From the eggs set on her own place during the season she raises from ten
to twelve hundred ducks each year. The ducklings are hatched from the
first of April up to about the first of August.
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