62 NATIONAL STANDARD SQUAB BOOK 



Table scraps, or what is commonly known as swill, should 

 not be fed to pigeons. 



Rice may be fed, if plentiful and cheap. It has a tendency 

 to correct diarrhoea caused by too much wheat. 



Some of our customers have been influenced by adverse 

 criticism of our self-feeder to abandon it and feed in open 

 troughs, but they have gone back to the self-feeder. One of 

 these customers was Mr. Tyson, who started with several 

 hundred pairs of our birds three years ago and now (1907) has 

 the largest and best plant in the State of New Hampshire. 

 His wife and son, with himself, have attained a high degree of 

 skill and proficiency in the handling of their pigeons. The 

 squabs they are breeding weigh at least nine pounds to the 

 dozen. They ship to New York City, where they get very 

 high prices. Mr. Tyson started by using the self-feeder for 

 grain, as we advise, but being influenced by something seen in 

 print, abandoned it and gave the open-trough method of feed- 

 ing, twice or three times a day, a thorough trial. Immediately 

 the birds began to fall off in production, and the squabs fell 

 off in weight, some lots getting so skinny as to lose nearly two 

 pounds to the dozen. That experience was enough. The 

 Tysons went back to the self-feeder and now their squabs are 

 plump, as they were in the first place, the old birds are in 

 better condition, and breeding better. 



Do not put into the self-feeder a great lot of grain, but only 

 enough to last about two days. A great quantity is liable to 

 take up moisture in a spell of rainy weather and go stale, and 

 is not relished by the birds as if it were supplied fresh every 

 two or three days. 



