Ducks’ eggs bring good prices during February and March. You can easily get them to laying by then, as it depends principally on feeding. Ducks, like geese or cattle, must have a good percentage of bulk material and green stuff, as well as concentrated grain feed. Clover hay, or even mixed hay, chopped and steamed, about half a pailful with a pint of coarsely ground corn-meal and the same of bran mixed through it, is about right. If hay is short, chop corn stalks small, and steam. Chopped vegetables of all kinds are good, but pumpkins, potatoes and beets are fattening; so, unless the weather is very cold, omit the corn when they are fed, using more bran or screenings in its place. In the summer have the children gather plantain, dock, groundsel or any other non-poisonous weeds. Have sugar barrels ready, and pack in the weeds while fresh. Get a heavy, solid board rounded off to fit inside the barrel, put on top of the green stuff, and weight down with heavy stones. Pad up tight with paper, sawdust, straw or any loose material, and replace the head of the barrel. When snow covers the ground, such food will increase the eggs from both ducks and chickens. Oak leaves, acorns and pig hickories do not take long to gather in the fall, and will tone up the appetites of pigs, chickens and ducks late in January, when they are getting tired of grain feed. [Illustration] [Illustration: DUCKS AND GEESE] Imperial Pekin, Rouen and Indian Runners have been the best market breeds of ducks for some years past, and are still splendid fellows, both for eggs and table, and their new rivals, the Buff Orpington ducks, quite equal them as utility birds. Ducks make such bad mothers that it is better to hatch their eggs under hens or in incubators. The first few eggs a duck lays each season are seldom fertile. Eleven are a full sitting, and it requires twenty-eight days for their hatching. Examine the nest every two or three days after setting the hen, for bad eggs. A weak germ that dies causes the egg to decompose, and the odour once smelled can never be forgotten. Examine the nest when the hen comes off to feed, and take away the eggs that are dark and mottled. If you fancy an egg looks wrong, pick it up and smell it; that and its sticky touch assure you, for the egg is porous. If you have been using an incubator to hatch chicks you can test with a proper tester, and this must be done all the time from the fourth to the fifteenth day.