National Standard Squab Book. 39 



word variety in your mind all the time in dealing witli your pigeons. 

 Their appetites do not grow keen on a monotonous diet and their health 

 will not be good on it. Vary the diet. 



In order to find out what grains are convenient to you, go to your near- 

 est grain dealer or country general store. The dealer in nine cases out of 

 ten knows nothing aTiout pigeons and tht'ir feed and if you give him the 

 name of a strange grain, he will be liable to shy and say he never heard 

 of it. The trouble with him is that he sells horse feed and is accustomed 

 to handling only the grains which horses need. He can get the grains you 

 wish by writing to his nearest port or railroad junction. There is nothiag 

 odd or out of the way about the grains. They are going from one point 

 to another all the time. Sometimes they are scarce at certain periods of 

 the year. For instance, all this summer there has been no kafiBr corn at 

 a reasonable price obtainable in Boston, so we have not fed it to our 

 pigeons, but have cut it out altogether in favor of the grains selling at a 

 lower price. Most of the katfir corn which we get in Boston comes from 

 Kansas. It is a splendid feed for pigeons. It is small and comparatively 

 soft, and their crops make easy work of it. It is nourishing and they like 

 it. Maybe your grain man sells a mixture for pigeons. If you will look 

 in this mi.xture you will find probably kafBr corn, as well as buckwheat 

 (in black kernels), also red wheat and Canada peas. Do not feed Canada 

 peas in great a'buudance to a house full of squab 'breeders. We have fed 

 a bountiful supply of Canada peas to birds and later on found the crops 

 of some of the scjuabs distended with a great mass of something which on 

 examination was found to be whole Canada peas. The parent birds had 

 simply filled their own crops with the whole peas, then taken a driuk of 

 water and gone directly to the young squabs and allowed them to cram 

 their crops full. Squaibs are killed by these whole grains which the old 

 birds do not take time to prop<erly break up. If you wish to feed Canada 

 peas in good measure, pound them up with a mortar and pestle into finer 

 form and you will be on the safe side. 



For the same reason, we sometimes take cracked corn and pound it even 

 finer th.in it is when we buy it. 



Do not feed iin excess of corn, particularly in the summer time. (By 

 corn, we mean common Indian corn, not kaftir corn. Kaffir corn is harm- 

 less, even when forced on the birds.) The effect of corn is to heat the 

 blood. This is what you want in the winter time, but not in the summer. 

 If fed to excess in the summer time, it will cause canker in the old birds, 

 which is a sort of diphtheria, filling their throats with a thick, cheesy-like 

 compound, and the throats of some squabs also get filled up in the same 

 manner. By an excess of com, we mean that corn forms the major part 

 of the diet." In the summer, feed two parts of red wheat to one part of 

 cracked corn. In the winter feed two parts of cracked corn to one part 

 of red wheat. In olher words, set before the pigeons in the summer 

 twice as much red whea+ as cracked com, in the winter time twice as 

 much cracked corn as red wheat. 



