CHAPTER V. 
WATER AND FEED. 
Necessity of Pure Water and Plenty of It—Lhe find of Drinking Dish 
to Use and the Kind Not to Use—Management of the Drinking 
Tountain and Bath Pan—The Feed Trough and Nelf Feeder—Feeding 
Habits—What Grains to Use—How to Mix Red Wheat and Cracked 
Coru—Use of Grit, Oyster Shell and Salt—How to Feed the Dainties 
—Keep Feed Before Your Flock All the Time. 
Fure water and plenty of it is a great blessing for pigeons. It is the 
custom of pigeons to get right into water, wherever it is. When they 
cannot bathe in it, they will stick their dirty feet into it. When they 
cannot get in their feet, they will douse their heads. They are after 
water, water all the time. When feeding the squabs, the old bird will 
fill up its crop with grain, then fly to the water and take a drink, then 
return and dole out to the squabs the watery and milky mixture on which 
they fatten. Therefore you should study the water problem and make 
preparations to give the birds plenty of it, both bathing and drinking 
water. 
The source of drinking water should be separate from the bath pan. 
They will drink from the bath pan, to be sure, while the water remains 
comparatively clean, but after a few have bathed in it it is unfit for any 
bird to drink, and inside of twenty minutes the pan is not only covered 
with a whitish, greasy scum, but is dyed greenish from the dung which 
has washed off their feet. 
There should be drinking water inside the squab house, provided you 
have not a running stream or some such clean water device in the flying 
pen. 
The kind of water dish you do not want in the squab house is the 
kind with the open top, into which the birds can wade, and which they can 
foul with their droppings. The best device which we have found is the 
so-called self-feeding poultry fountain, such as we illustrate. This fountain 
is made either of crockery or tin or galvanized iron. Tin or galvanized 
iron is better than crockery, because if water freezes in such a dish, the 
-dish will not be cracked. We calculate to use the crockery dishes in 
houses where it is never cold enough to freeze. It will be seen by exam- 
ination of the self-drinker that it is impossible for the pigeons to foul the 
water. The reservoir holds quite a supply of water, which feeds down 
as fast as it is drunk by the pigeons. We have seen beginners puzzled 
by these self-drinking dishes; they cannot imagine why the water does 
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