National Standard Squab Book. 21 



clapboard it. You may put a skyliglit iu the root to let iQ more sun. Im- 

 prove it all you \Yish. Use your own Judgment. 



To get at your pigeons in such a house, you \Yalk iu through the door 

 and find yourself directly among tliem, the nest boxes all pointing at you. 

 Go to the nest which you wish to investigate or from which you wish to 

 take out the squabs and put your hand iu the opening. The old birds will 

 Gy by your head, perhaps, and may strike you with their wings, but they 

 Will not fly in your face and eyes, they are good dodgers. Don't be afraid 

 that if you enter the house when the housekeeping is going on you will 

 frighten the birds so they never will come back to the eggs or the squabs. 

 They will seem timid at first, but they will get accustomed to you. Iu the 

 course of a few weeks, only a few will make a great hustle to get away 

 from you. Many of them will continue to sit contentedly on the eggs and 

 if you put up your hand to them they will not fly off iu fear but will slap 

 you with their wings, telling you in their language not to bother them. 

 Carry some hempseed iu with you and you wdl teach the birds to come 

 and eat it out of your hand. You can tame them and teach them to love 

 you as any animal is taught. Tiie pigeon, particularly the Homer, the 

 king of them all, is a knowing bird. 



Tack up perches where you have room on that wall or those walls of 

 the squab house which have no nest bo.xes. You do not need a perch for 

 every pigeoa, because while some are on perches, others are in the nests, 

 or out in the flying pen, or on the roof, or on the floor of the squab house. 

 If you have 48 pigeons, 20 perches will be enough, and you can get along 

 with a dozen. ^Make each perch of two pieces of board, one six inches 

 square, the other six inches by five, and toe-nail the perch to the wall of 

 the squab house as shown in the illustration. Y'ou cannot have one long 

 pole for a pigeon perch. It you had such a pole, and your pigeons were 

 perched on it, or some of them were, a bully cock would saunter down the 

 line and push off all the others. 



In the centre of the squab house you place an empty crate or over- 

 turned box. The object of this is to break tlie force of the wind made 

 by the pigeons' mngs as they fly in and out of the squab house. Other- 

 wise the floor of the squab house would be swept clean 'by the force of 

 the wind. It also forms a roosting place for the birds, and finally, it is a 

 convenient resting [>lace for the straw, liay and grass out of which the 

 pigeons build their nests. 



The floor of the .squab house should be kept clean. We used to advise 

 that a layer of sawdust one inch thick 'be kept on the floor of the squab 

 house, to absoi-ib the droppings, but we have found a steady and profitable 

 demand for pigeon manure, and this manure is worth scraping up and 

 carefully saving, for its sale will pay from one-quarter to one-third of the 

 grain bill. Use a hoe to scrape the droivpings from the floor, and pack 

 the manure away in barrelf. Clean the floor about once in three weeks, 

 or oftenpr, depending on the size of your flock. Pigeon manure is in active 

 demand all the time by tanneries. We send tlie manure from our pigeons 



