THE UNIT HOUSE 43 



squab house and pen capable of accommodating two hundred 

 and twenty pairs of breeders at a cost of one hundred and 

 thirty dollars. In ordering, simply say you wish plans and 

 specifications for squab houses. 



Some beginners with plenty of means and anxious for the 

 best construction write us to ask if a cement floor is not 

 better than a wood floor. A cement floor is positively 

 wrong, for this reason: when it is freshly laid, it is good, 

 but the first winter causes the dirt foundation to shrink and 

 swell, then come cracks in the cement. Rats and mice burrow 

 in the dirt up to the cement and find their way through the 

 cracks to the squabs. In a short time, they are a nuisance. 

 We have seen a squab house built with cement floor which 

 cracked as described and every time the owner and his dog 

 took a walk down the alleyway, they found rats to kill. 

 Finally the whole lot of cement had to be pounded to pieces, 

 shoveled up and carted off. The way to stop rats and mice 

 is to erect the building on posts as we have described. Rats 

 and mice live in the dirt and they cannot get up into the 

 squab house. Let your dog or cat every day under such a 

 house, between the flooring and the ground, and they will 

 keep down the vermin as fast as they show themselves, and 

 your squabs never will be troubled. 



In our early plans for the unit squab house, we provided 

 for a building with a " jog " in the roof, making a long, low 

 slope for the south side of the roof, and on this slope the 

 birds would sun themselves and make love. This " jog " 

 construction is more expensive than is needed, and now we 

 have a better way. We have an ordinary pitch roof, sloping 

 equally from the ridgepole to both north and south. We run 

 the flying pen out on the south side, not from the ridgepole, 

 but from the eaves, and then out in the living pen we erect 

 perches as shown in the picture. The fact that the birds 

 rest easily on these perches (as the photograph in Appen- 

 dix A shows) is proof that they are contented and pleased 

 by such an arrangement. We have found, too, that they 

 can hear the squeaks of their young for food better than if 

 they are up on the roof, and better attention to the squabs 

 is the result. It was formerly thought unsafe to erect perch- 

 ing poles in the flying pen directly in front of the windows, 

 the fear being that birds darting suddenly out of the windows 



