nts 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. Most of the ducklings
are raised by hen mothers, and she keeps some fifty hens for that
purpose. The hens are all pure Buff Cochins, and are kept until they are
two years and a half old. Besides raising two broods of ducks each
season, each hen pays her owner an average profit of seventy-five cents
a year from the sale of eggs for market. When fattened for market at the
end of the second season, these Cochin hens are large and heavy, and the
carcass of the old fowl generally sells for enough to pay for a pullet
to take her place. No chickens are raised on the farm; the pullets are
bought of a neighbor who keeps the Buff Cochins.

She aims to set several hens and the incubator at the same time; when
the eggs hatch the incubator ducklings are divided up among the hens;
one hen will care for twenty ducklings until they are old enough to care
for themselves. The eggs hatch well--those in the incubator quite as
well as those under hens, and when the incubator ducklings are once
mixed up with the others she finds it impossible to distinguish "which
from 'tother."

When the ducklings are ten or twelve hours old they are moved with the
mother hen to coops and safety runs, which are placed in an orchard near
the house. This orchard contains about four and a half acres, and the
coops are scattered over it a few rods apart. On the side of the orchard
that leads to the "pond lot," the bottom board of the fence is a foot
wide and comes close to the ground in order to keep the ducklings from
taking to the water too early in life.

When the ducklings are four weeks old the hens are taken away, but the
ducklings are kept in the orchard until they are six weeks old, or until
they are well feathered on the breast and under part of their bodies,
when they are turned into the pond lot, where they "take to the water
like ducks."

The pond lot contains nearly thirteen acres, five of which are covered
with water. Originally, this lot was a piece of low, rocky, bushy
pasture land, between two low ranges of hills. A stream of clear,
sparkling water, a famous trout brook, ran through the center. The woman
who proposed to raise ducks saw at once the advantage of such a
situation, and had a dam constructed near the upper end of the lot, an