straight Homer is the best for the practical squab raiser. 

 Runts are expensive, costing from $6 to $io a pair, because 

 f;hey are hard to raise. Some squab breeders have a few 

 pairs of Runts in order to cross occasionally with Homers, 

 "but we do not advise it. You will obtain better results by 

 judiciously out-breeding from selected Homers, forcing 

 along the path of advancement the strains that are produc- 

 ing the most and the biggest squabs. 



Neither the squab-breeder nor the flying-Homer breeder 

 is much concerned about the color of feathers. There are 

 blue checkers, red checkers, black checkers, silver, blue, 

 brown, red, in fact about all the colors of the rainbow. Color 

 has no relation to the ability of a pair to breed a large pair 

 •of squabs. We wish specially to emphasize the fact that the 

 color of the feathers has no influence on the color of the skin 

 of the squab. A white-feathered bird does not mean a whiter- 

 skmned squab. The feed afifects the color of the meat a 

 little. A corn-fed pigeon will be yellower than, one fed on 

 a mixture. Squabs with dark skins (almost black in some 

 cases) are the product of blood matings. The trouble with 

 a dark-colored squab is in the blood and the only remedy 

 is to get rid of them either by killing the parents or by re- 

 mating. Usually the trotible comes from one parent bird, 

 which you can find by turning up the feathers and examining 

 the skin. Having found the bird which is at fault, kill it. 

 This point has come up continually in our correspondence. 

 The erroneous belief that white-feathered birds produce the 

 whitest-skinned squabs seems to be widespread and we are 



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