National Standard Squab Book. 15 



Some of our customers wvito from placvs like Oregon and Idaho, where 

 there is a wet aud a dry season, and are puzzled to know what to do. In 

 such cases we say, arrange your buildings as you see poultry houses ar- 

 ranged. The pigeous will do as well or better under 'the same conditions 

 as hens and chickens. 



Suppose you have a vacant building or shack ot any kind in which you 

 wish to raise squabs. \A'(' lAill take for granted that it has either a flat 

 nj((f or a ridgepole with sloping roof, and that it is built in rectangular 

 form. Never mind what the dimensions are: our ailrice will apply to 

 cithi'r the large or the small structure. 



Fiist rajse it off the ground, or build a new tloor off the ground, so that 

 rats cannot breed out of your sight in the darkness and get up into the 

 squab house. If there is au old floor, patch up all the holes in it. Now 

 yon need one door, to get yourself in and out of the squab house, and 

 you need at leiSst one window through which the pigeons can fly from the 

 squab house ialjo the flying pen and back from the flying pen into the 

 house. You will shut this window on cold nights, or on cold winter days. 

 You must cover the whole wimlow with wire netting so that the birds 

 cannot break the panes of glass by flying against Iheni. If you have no 

 wire netting over the window, some of the birds, w'hea it is closed, will 

 not figure out for themsoles that the glass stops their progress, but will 

 bang against the panes at full speed, sometimes hurting their heads and 

 dazing them and at other times breaking the glass. 



The flying pen which you will build on the windcm' side of tne s(iuab 

 house may be as small or as large as you have room. The idea of it ir, 

 not lo give the birds an opportunity for long flight, but simply to get 

 them out into the open air and .sunlight. They enjoy the sun very much 

 and it does them good aud they court its direct rays all the time. Build 

 the flying pen, if you choose, up over the roof, so the birds may sun 

 themselves there. If that side of the roof which faces the flying pen is 

 too steep for the pigeons to get a foothold, nail footholds along the roof, 

 same as carpenters use when they are shnigling a roof, and the pigeons 

 will rest on the.se to sun themselves. T'or the flying pen you want the 

 ordinary poultry netting, either of one-inch or two-inch mesh. The two- 

 inch mesh is almost invariably used by squab raisers, because it is very 

 much cheaper than the one-inch mesh. The one-inch mesh is used only 

 by squab rai.sers who are afraid that small birds (the English sparrows 

 here in New England) will steal through the large meshes of the two- 

 inch netting and eat the grain which you 'have "bought for the pigeons. 

 You can l)uy this wire netting in rolls of any width from one foot up to 

 six feet. If your flying pen is 12 feet high, you should use rolls of the 

 si.x-foot wire. It it is ten feet high, rolls which are five feet wide are 

 what you want. If your flying pen is to be eight feet high, buy rolls 

 which are four feet wide. In joining one width of wire netting to its 

 neighbor, in constructing your fl.ving pen, do not cut small pieces ot tie 

 wire and tie them together, for that takes too much time and is a bungling 



