National Standard Squab Book. 37 



daiuty. They Rap thi'ir wings ju the Abater aiiil eujoy it thorouglily. A 

 pigeon will nfvci- rim iwny from water, as you will discover if when you 

 are watering your lawn you tuin the hose on them. A summer shower 

 will find them perched on the roof where they can get it. In the winter 

 time, if ice forms in the bath pan, they will break it and bathe. 



Let the dirty water stand in the bath pan all day if you choose, or you 

 may go to it an hour or two after ,tou have filled the pan, and empty the 

 water. One bath a day is enough. 



If there is a stream of water running through your proiierty haudy to 

 your squab house, build youi flying pen out over it and you need never 

 trouble with bath pans or drinking water. If it is a deep stream, you will 

 have to contrive a shallow liath tub at the shore, or divert part of the 

 .stream into a shallow run. The squab raiser with a stream of water 

 handy should by all means make use of it and save himself the work of 

 carrying water in pails. 



The bath pan may rest in a basin, if you choose, and the overflow 

 caused by the splashing of the wings may be conducted to a sewer and 

 drained away. You may conduct -nater in pipes and have a faucet open- 

 ing out over the bath pan, which faucet you may control either directly, 

 or from a central station. An easy home-made arrangement to be used in 

 conjunction with the bath pan consists of a wet sink in which the bath 

 pan sits, and out of which the splashed water runs. In the winter it may 

 be advisable to give your pigeons their bath in the squab house instead 

 of in the yard of the flying pen. in which case you should have some 

 device on the wot sink principle to prevent the floor of the squab house 

 from getting damp. 



Feed may be given to pigeons in a less guarded way, for they do not 

 soil the feed dish so freely as rhey do the drinking dishes. You may put 

 the feed in open dishes in the squab house. If yon observe them when 

 eating, yon will notice that they .stand up to the feed dish in a somewhat 

 orderly manner and peck at its contents. They do not sit in the dish and 

 roll around in the feed as they do in the water. But they have one fault 

 when eating from an open dish and that is, to scatter the grains. They 

 will push in their bills and toss them around in a search after tidbits, and 

 scatter out on the floor kernel after kernel, and it will make your bump 

 of economy ache to see this grain scattered around. There do not seem 

 to be any neat, saving pigeons which go to the floor in the wake of their 

 prodigal brethren and eat the crumbs. They all have a fancy to the first 

 table and they get right at it and scatter the grain like the rest of their 

 fellows, and apparently the pigeon who scatters the most grain is the one 

 which struts around with the biggest front. The way to fool them is to 

 provide in the sciuab house a covered trough, that is, covered except at the 

 slit or points where they stick in their bills for food. With a little in- 

 genuity you can cover an ordinary v-shaped trough so that it will be 

 hard for "the pigeons to waste the grain. You may have a self-feeder made 



