National Standard Squab Book. 
There is a minor criticism in the above 
letter in the matter of express charges, Ac- 
cording to the figures which we give in the 
circular headed ‘‘Express Rates,’’ the cus- 
tomer should have been asked to pay about 
$83, instead of $37, as he did pay. We be- 
lieve the figures which we give to be correct 
in every case—the slight variation which 
may come as it came in this case is due to 
the fact that no two persons will weigh up 
the same lot of goods exactly the same, and 
that, of course, the birds vary in weight, 
The weight when the shipment starts is less 
than when it finishes, because at the end 
the bottoms of the baskets are covered with 
manure. (The grain which we send for feed 
is not weighed in and charged for transpor- 
tation.) If the waybill is lost or delayed, 
and the agent at destination weighs the 
shipment, he will get a greater weight, and 
consequently a higher rate, than the express 
employee who weighed the shipment here jn 
Boston. 
We wish to say further that if you think 
we have figured the express rates to you too 
low, send us money which we claim to be 
correct and we will prepay all charges, thus 
putting on ourselves and not on you the dif- 
ference, if there is any. 
COMMON PIGEONS AGAIN.—We have had 
some of the old-time raisers of squabs from 
common pigeons on the ranches in the Mid- 
dle West write us for more proofs that Hom- 
ers are ahead of common pigeons. 
In reply we will print here the letter 
which we received in January, 1903, from. a 
customer as follows: 
“I have for sale between four and five 
hundred pen fed common pigeons. Can you 
use them, and at what price? Should you 
not be in a position to use them yourself 
Probably you could refer me to some one 
that is in the market for some ‘fine pen fed 
birds. The Homers which I purchased of 
you some time last summer are doing very 
nicely, and have to make more room for them 
is the reason of wanting to dispose of my 
common birds. Thanking you in advance for 
favor asked.” 
We asked him to tell us if he had not 
found our Homers more profitable than com- 
mon pigeons. He replied as follows: 
“In reply to yours will say that your state- 
aunent of the Homers being more profitable 
than the common birds is true, as the fact 
has been demonstrated to me in the past 
five or six months, by my experience of hav- 
ing the two lots side by side in separate 
Pens. My common birds referred to are fine 
birds and will sell them F. O. B. at $2.50 per 
dozen, which, taking the plumpness of the 
bird in consideration, is very reasonable.’’ 
The above breeder lives in Missouri and 
we expect to sell a good many of our Hom- 
ers to him and to those in his state who 
oy 
know of his experience. His letters are at 
our Boston office, where they May be seen. 
We will not give his name by mail because 
he is a customer, but if you think the above 
letters are made up by us, you write to the 
Boston office of Dun’s or Bradstreet’s com- 
mercial agencies and ask for one of their 
men to be sent to our office to investigate. 
PIGEON MANURE.—Our advice in the 
Manual as to pigeon manure has interested 
pigeon breeders all over the country, nearly 
all of whom say that they never have taken 
pains to save it, and when it got too thick 
they have scraped it up as best they could 
and used it for fertilizer. They want to know 
how we keep it pure, and all about the 
market, ete. : 
The pigeon breeder who does not make pro- 
vision for the purity of the manure and the 
steady sale of it is just throwing bank bills 
straight into the fire. We have erected_a 
special building at our place for just the 
manure, and take every precaution to keep 
the manure free from straw, sawdust, sand, 
etc. ‘The building stands at the back of one 
of the long houses, and about halfway in the 
whole plant, so that we can reach it easily 
with a wheelbarrow from the houses. There 
is a slide cut in the north wall of what we 
call No. 2 squab house, and through this 
slide the manure is shovelled from the 
wheelbarrow (standing in the passageway) 
directly into the manure house, where it 
stays until there is from $50 to $100 worth 
of it, when we bag it up and send it off. 
First we take the wheelbarrow empty down 
a passageway and stop at a unit pen, then 
go into the unit pen with a bushel basket 
and scrapers. We use a trowel to clean off 
the nest-pans, a tree-scraper to clean out 
the nest-boxes and a hoe or a floor chisel 
(same as is used to clean off snow and ice 
from city sidewalks), six inches wide at the 
blade and with a long handle so that it can 
be used easily while the operator is standing. 
In scraping the floor, the manure rolls up 
with little exertion off the blade of the 
chisel. It is shovelled into the bushel 
basket and the basket taken out into the 
passageway and dumped into the wheelbar- 
row. It takes one man not over thirty min- 
utes to clean a pen thoroughly and the 
product of each pen is between two and three 
bushels, or from $1.20 to $1.80 for half 
an hour’s work, which is pretty good pay. 
(We have been getting in the winter of 1903 
sixty cents a bushel from the American Hide 
and Leather Company of Lowell, Mass.) We 
ship the manure by freight in bags. We buy 
these bags when we can from farmers who 
have large herds of cows and who use con- 
siderable grain, and they let the bags go for 
one and two cents apiece. Second-hand bags 
in the Boston junk shops cost from four to 
nine cents apiece. The leather people let 
