42 National Standard Squab Book. 
which are cheapest, but some of our customers in the millet sections of 
the country feed a good deal of millet. In such cases they look on millet 
as one of their staples, and the hard-to-get grains are classed by them as 
dainties. The staple grains of which you will feed the most to your 
pigeons are the ones which are cheapest for you. The more expensive 
grains will be ciassed by you as dainties. 
A good way to feed the dainties is to throw them out on the floor of 
the squab house by hand. You will see the pigeons make a rush for 
them and eat them with as much relish as a child eats candy. You should 
feed the dainties about three times a week, throwing handfuls on the floor 
until you see that the pigeons are satisfied and do not care for any more, 
Do not throw any feed on the ground of the flying pen, for the earth is 
liable to be damp, and this dampness will sour the grain, especially cracked 
corn, and if the pigeons eat it, they will get sour crops, and the fluids 
from the sour crops of the parent pigeons will make the squabs sick and 
perhaps kill them, Do all your feeding in the squab house (supplemented, 
if you wish, by the protected self feeder out in the flying pen) and your 
pigeons will not have sour crops. 
Do not lay in a big stock of cracked corn at a time, for cracked corn 
exposed to sudden changes of the weather is liable to take up dampness, 
and sour. Smell and taste it once a week or so and determine to your 
own satisfaction that it is not sour. 
Some squab breeders feed twice a day, as much as the birds will eat up 
clean, but we do not believe in that system of feeding. Our own success, 
and the suecess of our customers in squab raising, is based largely on 
the fact that we insist on a continuous supply of food for the pigeons. 
Focd should be at hand for them all the time. They do not gorge, as a 
horse will if an unlimited supply of food is set before him. They are not 
gluttons, and never get fat and pot-bellied. They always know when to 
stop eating, and never waste food by eating grain that they do not want. 
They do not lose their racy shape. A squab when hungry will squeak 
loudly to inform its parents of that fact and if you observe a squab house 
where the two meals a day are in vogue, you will note quite a chorus of 
squeaks. In a house where there is feed always at hand, you will not 
hear many hungry squeaks. It is greatly to your interest that the crops of 
your young birds be filled with food. The more their crops are stuffed 
with food, the quicker they will fatten and the fatter they will get. The 
parent birds should at al] times be able to fill up their ‘crops with feed 
and water and then fly to the nest to disgorge for the benefit of the 
squabs. 
Some small parent Homers are such good feeders, such good fathers and 
mothers, that they stuff their squabs with grain and bring them up to a 
surprising fatness. You cannot predict that the squabs from small par- 
ents will be small, for this element of stuffing the feed into the young ones 
is worth taking account of. We have had pairs of squabs which actually 
at four weeks of age were bigger than their parents. This is not surpris- 
