National Standard Squab Book. 41 



Wlutf wheat fed to pigeons here in New Bnglaml causes scours or 

 diarrhoea, but we have customers itr the West who write us that they are 

 feeding white wheat with no bad effects. Use red wheat and you are ab- 

 solutely sure that jour pigeons will not have diavrhoea. 



All the grains which you feed should be old, hard, dry and sweet. If 

 they smell sour or taste bad to your own tongue, don't feed them to your 

 pigeons. Above all, keep your grain dry. If you have the grain stored in 

 bins which are damp from ground water, or which catch the drippings 

 from the eaves, or through holes in the roof, first you will get sour grain 

 and then some of the giain will sprout, and this sprouted grain will de- 

 rauge the bowels of your birds and bring on dysentery. Do not let rank 

 little growths spring up ia a dirty squab house or in the yard of your 

 flying pen. IMgeons will peek at green leaves and grass and will not be 

 harmed, but do not give them a chance to peck up sprouted grain and eat 

 the sprout, grain and ail, for if they do they will have diarrhoea. A 

 pigeon ia good condition and busy with a nest ordinarily will not touch a 

 nasty little gieen sprout, but in the moulting season, when pigeons are iu 

 the dumps generally, and feeling like having a stimulant, they will experi- 

 ment T\ ith these sprouts. Keep the floor of your squab house clean and 

 the yard of the flying pen raked up and you need not worry aboiit this 

 matter. 



Ground oyster shell should be placed iu a box handy foi the pigeons to 

 get at. The purpose of this oyster shell is to provide the constituents of 

 the eggshell. The female pigeou needs it in order to form the egg. 



Grit is ueeiled by the jugeons to enable them to reduce to powder the 

 feed which they take into their crops. The muscles of the crop work 

 the grit on the graius and reduce the grains so that they mix with the di- 

 gestive fluids. There are special grits on the market advertised and for 

 sale at reasonable prices, but if there is a gravel bank near you, or a 

 deposit of fine sand, you do not need to buy grit. Simply cart two or 

 three bushels of the fine gravel or sand into your flying pen and cover the 

 ground wi^h it. It is not necessary to cover the whole space of the ground 

 of the flying pen with grit. Some breeders use pounded glass. 



It is poor policy to mix anything but red wheat and cracked corn to- 

 gether. If you make a mixture of peas and hemp.seed with cracked corn 

 and red wheat, you will find that the pigeons will dig down after the peas 

 and hempseed and toss the other grain around and waste it. The only 

 mixture, therefore, which we feed is a mixture of red wheat and cracked 

 corn. According to the advice we have given, we take a grain scoop or 

 any measure, and in the summer time mix two parts of red wheat to one 

 of cracked corn; in the winter, two pai-ts of cracked corn to one of red 

 wheat. 



AVe call the red wheat and cracked corn staples, because with us in 

 New England it forms the major part of the diet, and is the cheapest. 

 The hemp seed, buckwheat, Canada peas, kafflr corn and millet we cafl 

 dainties. AA'c do not feed much millet, because we have the other grains, 



