National Standard Squab Book. 37 
dainty. They flap their wings in the water and enjoy it thoroughly. A 
pigapn will never run away from water, as you will discover if when you 
are watering your lawn you turn the hose on them. A summer shower 
will find them perched on the roof where they can get it. In the winter 
time, if ice forms in the bath pan, they will break it and bathe. 
Let the dirty water stand in the bath pan all day if you choose, or you 
may go to it an hour or two after you have filled the pan, and empty the 
water. One bath a day is enough. 
If there is a stream of water running through your property handy to 
your squab house, build your flying pen out over it and you need never 
trouble with bath pans or drinking water. If it is a deep stream, you will 
have to contrive a shallow bath tub at the shore, or divert part of the 
stream into a shaliow run. The squab raiser with a stream of water 
handy should by all means make use of it and save himself the work of 
carrying water in pails. 
The bath pan may rest in a basin, if you choose, and the overflow 
eaused by the splashing of the wings may be conducted to a sewer and 
drained away. You may conduct water in pipes and have a faucet open- 
ing out over the bath pan, which faucet you may control either directly, 
or from a central station. An easy home-made arrangement to be used in 
conjunction with the bath pan consists of a wet sink in which the bath 
pan sits, and out of which the splashed water runs. In the winter it may 
be advisable to give your pigeons their bath in the squab house instead 
of in the yard of the flying pen, in which case you should have some 
~device on the wet sink principle to prevent the floor of the squab house 
from getting damp. 
Feed may ‘be given to pigeons in a less guarded way, for they do not 
soil the feed dish so freely as they do the drinking dishes. You may put 
the feed in open dishes in the squab house. If you observe them when 
eating, you will notice that they stand up to the feed dish in a somewhat 
orderly manner and peck at its contents. They do not sit in the dish and 
roll around in the feed as they do in the water. But they have one fault 
when eating from an open dish and that is, to scatter the grains. They 
will push in their bills and toss them around in a search after tidbits, and 
seatter out on the floor kernel after kernel, and it will make your bump 
of economy ache to see this grain scattered around. There do not seem 
to be any neat, saving pigeons which go to the floor in the wake of their 
prodigal brethren and eat the crumbs. They all have a fancy to the first 
table and they get right at it and scatter the grain like the rest of their 
fellows, and apparently the pigeon who scatters the most grain is the one 
which struts around with the biggest front. The way to fool them is to 
provide in the squab house a covered trough, that is, covered except at the 
slit or points where they stick in their bills for food. With a. little in- 
genuity you can cover an ordinary v-shaped trough so that it will be 
hard for the pigeons to waste the grain. You may havea self-feeder made 
