The Feather's Practical Pigeon Book 



part, is given a mate with virility enough to vitaUze 

 her eggs the better for the plans of the fancier. Some- 

 times, though rarely in the case of pigeons, both eggs, 

 which, on examination on the tenth day, appear to be 

 all right, do not hatch, and the time is wasted. What 

 may have caused it is often a mystery, but it may be a 

 chill, or it may be an extra amount of heat from the 

 body of one of the pair. The temperature of one or 

 both of the pair may be above the normal, and this be 

 the cause, as too much heat as well as not enough will 

 kill the embryo in the egg. 



As the time for hatching approaches, the food which 

 the parent birds take. into their crops undergoes a pe- 

 culiar change, turning into a milky fluid, similar to the 

 chyle of the human stomach, and is known among fan- 

 ciers as "pigeon's milk." This is a singular and won- 

 derful provision of Nature, as the little pigeons are born 

 blind and utterly helpless, almost naked, save a slight 

 covering of yellowish down, and naturally need to be 

 kept warm. This the parents provide for by continuing 

 to cover them, as they did the eggs, and frequently feed- 

 ing them with the soft food or "milk" by taking the bill 

 of the "squab" in their own, and by a spasmodic action 

 of the crop and neck injecting the food into the throat 

 of the young bird. As the squabs increase in size, the 

 food furnished by the old birds grows coarser and 

 coarser, until at the end it is fed almost in the condition 

 that the parents . take it from the hoppers or feeding- 

 dishes. In this feeding process lies one of the great 

 secrets of success in breeding. The birds you have seen 

 fit to mate together because of their combining elements, 

 which one believes will produce nearly perfect speci- 

 mens, may be happily and properly mated, may be good 

 sitters, and yet fail utterly as feeders, and so all your 



71 



