CHAPTER NI. 
GETTING AHEAD. 
Make Your Birds Pay for Themselves as They Go Along, Unless You 
Wish to Wait Patiently Until a Small Flock Increases to a Large 
One—Better to Take the Money Made from Sale of Squabs and 
Buy More Adult Birds than to Raise the Squabs, Because It Is a 
Long Jump from Ffour Weeks (the Killing Age) to Six Months, at 
Which Age the Birds Begin Breeding—Shipping Points. 
It is the birds and not the buildings which count in squab raising and 
if you have $50 to start, put $35 or $40 into your birds and the balance 
into your building. We have had customers start with a $100 building 
and put a $10 lot of birds into it, continuing to buy $10 lots of us about 
once a month until they had their flock to a good size, but we believe it is 
best to let the buildings follow the birds, and not the birds the buildings. 
In other words, let your birds earn buildings as they go along. It is 
quite a drag on a small flock to weigh it down with an expensive building 
much too large for it. 
It takes patience to look ahead to the good time coming when you are 
going to draw dividends. The time to make a squab plant pay is at the 
beginning, or near it. When you can get fifty to seventy-five cents for a 
pair of squabs four weeks old, kill them and take your money. 
Put this down in your mind solid, where you will not forget it: Make 
your pigeons pay for themselves as they go. 
We sell to a great many poultrymen, and we like to get their orders, 
for they kave been through the mill of raising feathered animals and are 
practical, and they are quick to see the money in squabs, and when their 
order for breeding stock comes along, it is in nine cases out of ten a large 
order, even if they have had no previous experience. They know that 
in order to sell squabs they have got to have birds enough to breed 
syuabs and it is just as easy for them to spend $50 or $100 at the start 
as it is for them to spend $10 or $i5 and use up $100 worth of time while 
waiting a sear to begin selling squabs. 
Many ‘beginners are so skeptical that they do not believe squabs grow 
to market size in one month, or they have no confidence in their ability to 
feed the mature birds so as to keep them alive. They wish to make a 
start with a few pairs and actually convince themselves. We do not 
believe in untried hands plunging into something of which they know 
nothing, and we commend the caution of the beginner with squabs who 
wishes to feel his way and “make haste slowly” as the saying is, never- 
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