WATER AND FEED 61 



this book and elsewhere, are many cases of small flocks 

 increased enormously, and the writers take pains to state 

 that they are using the self-feeder. That is talk that means 

 something. The loudest advocate of no self-feeder is the 

 man who is trying hard to sell his Homers by some kind of a 

 story different from what we tell. It does not matter to him 

 what he says, so long as he combats us. It is the game of such 

 chaps to contradict all others and pose as the only real, 

 simon-pure know-it-alls on pigeons. 



Some small parent Homers are such good feeders, such good 

 fathers and mothers, that they stuff their squabs with grain 

 and bring them up to a surprising fatness. We have had 

 pairs of squabs which actually at four weeks of age were 

 bigger than their parents. This is not surprising when you 

 think that the squabs sit in their nest hour after hour doing 

 nothing but accumulate fat, and taking no exercise to train 

 off this fat. The old birds are flying around and do not have 

 much fat on them; they are trim and muscular, and hard 

 fleshed. You can tell an old pigeon after it is cooked when 

 you put your teeth into it, just as you can tell an old fowl. 



Provide salt for your pigeons to keep them strong and 

 healthy. The safest kind of salt for you to use is rock salt, 

 such as is sold for horses. Put a couple of big lumps of it in 

 the squab house and let the pigeons peck at it when they wish. 

 Put two more lumps out in the flying pen. When rain comes 

 the water will wash some salt off the lumps into the gravel. 

 (Empty the bath pans upon the lumps of salt.) The pigeons 

 will eat this salt-impregnated gravel all around the lumps for 

 an inch or so down into the ground. 



Do not feed powdered salt, for if you do the birds may eat 

 too much of it and it will kill them. Coarse ground salt may 

 be used, but the rock salt is best. 



Some green stuff is much relished by pigeons. It is good 

 for them and will increase the egg, and, consequently, squab 

 production. They are very fond of cabbage now and then, 

 which should be chopped fine before being fed. (We mean 

 raw, not cooked, cabbage.) When vines grow over the flying 

 pen, they will be seen pecking at the green leaves. Green 

 clover may be cut up and fed to them in conjunction with 

 grain. It should be remembered that green stuff, as enu- 

 merated in this paragraph, is fed only as a relish. 



