36 PIGEON RAISING 



four-light window in each gable near the peak 

 and three covered ventilators in the roof. 



The windows in the front or south wall were 

 opened each morning sufficiently to allow the 

 pigeons to pass into the fly-pen, and the man 

 whose building it was told me they would 

 break the ice in the bath tank, if it was not too 

 thick, in order to take a bath. Climate has 

 no effect on them if they have a comfortable 

 home. Such a house was built at an approxi- 

 mate cost of $3 to $5 a running foot. This is 

 complete with flying-pens and all inside fittings. 

 He set the tiers of nests wider apart than those 

 in my plan, which left a space of four feet. 

 His had a space of five feet, so there should 

 be ample room for a two-foot and thirty-inch 

 door into the passage, leaving two feet and six 

 inches for the feeder and drinking fountain. 



He set the house a foot from the ground 

 and made the floor double of fitted boards 

 interlined with building paper. The outer 

 walls were also of fitted boards covered with 

 building paper and then clapboarded. The 

 roof was strongly shingled and the whole build- 

 ing had applied to the inside a thick coat of 

 crude oil and princess brown. He built a house 

 fifty-one feet long, which he divided into six 

 sections, with five fly-pens and a single passage- 



