76 AMERICAN SQUAB CULTURE 



For instance, birds in one nest room will leave wheat, while 

 kafir com will be left in another, and still another will have 

 all the grain cleaned up, so the left over wheat or kafir com 

 can be switched over to the pens where there was none of that 

 porticular kind left, and then the regular mixture of feed poured 

 on top of it. Open troughs that are placed in the nest room must 

 be protected in some way to keep birds from perching on the 

 edge of the trough and fouling the grain. 



As to the best kind of feed trough, it depends on the construc- 

 tion of the nest room. If the Eggleston plan of nest room con- 

 struction is followed, feeding boxes or feeding troughs can be 

 placed in the aisle outside of the nest room, which will prevent 

 the birds from fouling the grain and at the same time place the 

 troughs where they are easily accessible and can be quickly 

 filled or emptied and cleaned. All pigeons have a habit of 

 throwing the grain out of the trough, which causes considerable 

 waste. They do this while hunting for choice kinds of grain. 

 The troughs, therefore, should be built in a way to prevent as 

 much of this waste as possible. 



The aisle feeding trough, you will note, is built with the two 

 ends and the back higher than the front. This is done to pre- 

 vent the birds from throwing the grain out, and if the feed 

 trough is in the aisle the feed thrown out can be easily swept up 

 and used over again. By personal experience and the experience 

 of others, I find that birds should be fed twice a day, early in the 

 morning and at noon. 



There are several important things to take into consideration 

 when feeding birds, viz.: to supply feed for squabs ten days 

 old or older, which is carried to them principally by the male 

 bird; to supply feed for squabs under ten days, which is carried 

 to them by both male and female, but principally by the female; 

 to supply feed for maintenance of the male and female that 

 have no squabs; for the maintenance of the yoimg birds in the 

 loft that receive little or no feed from their parents; to supply 

 feed to the female that has eggs or very young squabs, causing 

 her to remain on the nest the greater part of the day. 



The female sits on the eggs at night and until nine or ten 

 o'clock in the morning, and again takes her place on the nest 



