DUCK RASING IN CHINA

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4313, 23 March 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

DUCK RASING IN CHINA

Duck-hatching is reduced to a fine art in China, where the incubators arc huge ovens, built like beehives, of mud and straw. So perfectly are they ventilated and arranged that their percentage, in many places, is as high as 98. There is very, seldom more than one attendant on these ovens, generally an old man who lias held the position since boyhood, and probably bis father and grandfather before him. The ovens are filled with shelves, into which the trays or baskets of eggs fit. Most of them are filled on the one day. It is seldom that this rule is broken, although there are separate and distinct chambers which could bo filled on different dates, but the records showed a smaller percentage at those than the others. 1 asked one of the attendants if it mattered if eggs were put in on different dates. His reply* was to get • wildly excited, and finally he explained (or so I understood) that the temperature of the incubating duckling varies every hour. There are seldom more than two of these public ovens in a district, and the charge made for hatching is so small that one ■ wonders how it oan pay tbo proprietors. At Kn-liang, about eighty miles from SooCiion, there are a dozen or more, it being the centre of a big rice-growing district, and where there are ricefields in China you always find duck farms. Ku-liang itself is but a small village, on the edge of a canal. For mues on everv side there is a complete system of canals, creeks, lagoons, and rivers, each one utilised by the Chows, it is simply wonderful the way the Chinese work the water all over a tract of country, and all by manual labour, for they use little or no machinery; simply millions of workmen arc put on to the work they want done, and they labour from daylight till dark like so many bees or slaves. The pay is wretched, the living worse than hard, so to oko out any sort of living they one and all raise ducks. A young couple, while still no more than boy and girl, will marry, and set up a homo on much loss > than one penny a day. Then they will manage to acquire either a few small duclas or eggs; if the latter, they are taken to the public oven, and for a small tee hatched. It is a _ very interesting sight when the oven is being filled. It is heated and prepared to receive the eggs much as a baker's oven is prepared tor the bread. Notice is posted on. the walls and all over the district that such and such an oven will be ready to take eevs on a certain date. But usually there is a first notice that the oven will be opened for the sale of ducklings, and quite the most comical sight I have ever seen was the distributing oi the little yellow and black A price is fixed for the birds early in the . season by the big duck dealers in the : cities. As a rule, it is dealers, who : buy. They buy up as many as they can, then 'hand them' over to the, poorer , ’ classes, who work in the rice swamps, I and to the boat population. Lots of • the oven-owners don’t own a single duck, some running their ovens merely for the ■ benefit of the farmers, who pay a very small fee, the oven claiming all infertile ' eggs and ail diicklingH hatched over ant above 80 per cent., and as they very : often hatch from 90 to 96 per cent, of [ the fertile eggs, the oven, proprietors • do not do badly. ,

A Chinaman testing eggs is a sight to remember. It is always dono by the chief attendant, who has probably been doing it since he was 12 years of age. He does not do it with a light as we do, but merely by the “feel’ of the egg some difference in the temperature. Some say it th© weight of the egg tells him whether it contains a living germ, or hot. If not certain, the tester will hold the egg up to the light, but this is very rare., I saw eleven hundred! tested in about an! hour, ■ and only five ■or six were held' up. Out of that number there were twenty-eight miertuo, and these were disposed of, among a lot of others, to the egg shops, whore they were ■ sold; no doubt, as fresh, After'the ninth day all the eggs are gone over again, and those containing) weak or dead germs are removed. In this way every duck that is hatched is pretty sure to be strong. Apropos of the infertile eggs removed from the ovens, there is a regular trade done with these. Hundreds of dozens are sold to the dealers from the duck-hatoh-in<r districts, and for some reason or other, best known to themselves, _ are carried into the big cities, and there distributed among the shops, _ where in many instances they are mixed with the fresher eggs and sold. To the uninitiated it may sound rather uncanny to use eggs that have been ui an incubator for several days; in reality, it is not so at all, for in consequence of their being infertile,, their condition remains as it was when they were put in. Eggs have been used after they had been 1 sat on for a fortnight; they would not be nice for boiling" perhaps, but for puddings, cakes, etc.) they are equal to limed or otherwise preserved egos. Many persons would not notice any difference between them aud fresh oscs as the yolks are not even broken; but there is a difference, the white or albumen being teach thinner and weaker. Mi- Lance Rawson, in Queenslander.”