^A^ EASY START 25 



and they court its direct rays all the time. Build the flying 

 pen, if you choose, up over the roof, so the birds may sun 

 themselves there. If that side of the roof which faces the 

 flying pen is too steep for the pigeons to get a foothold, nail 

 footholds along the roof, same as carpenters use when they 

 are shingling a roof, and the pigeons will rest on these to sun 

 themselves. For the flying pen you want the ordinary 

 poultry netting, either of one-inch or two-inch mesh. Th« 

 two-inch mesh is almost invariably used by squab raisers, 

 because it is very much cheaper than the one-inch mesh. 

 The one-inch mesh is used only by squab raisers who are afraid 

 that small birds (the English sparrows here in New England) 

 will steal through the large meshes of the two-inch netting 

 and eat the grain which you have bought for the pigeons. 

 You can buy this wire netting in rolls of any width from one 

 foot up to six feet. If your flying pen is twelve feet high, 

 you should use rolls of the six-foot wire. If it is ten feet high, 

 rolls which are five feet wide are what you want. If your 

 flying pen is to be eight feet high, buy rolls which are four 

 feet wide. In joining one width of wire netting to its neighbor, 

 in constructing your flying pen, do not cut small pieces of tie 

 wire and tie them together, for that takes too much time and 

 is a bungling job, but buy a coil of No. 18 or 20 iron wire and 

 weave this from one selvage to another of your wire netting 

 in and out of tne meshes, and you have the best joint. 



You can line the three walls of the interior of your squab 

 house with nest boxes if you choose. The fourth wall is the 

 one in which the window or windows are. On this fourth 

 wall you should not have nest boxes, but perches. These 

 perches, or roosts, should be tacked up about fifteen inches 

 apart, so as to give the birds room without interfering with 

 one another. The advantage of the V-shaped roost which we 

 advise is that a bird perched on it cannot soil the bird under- 

 neath. We sell for five cents each pigeon perches as illus- 

 trated on page 32 of this book, which is cheaper than they 

 can be made of lumber. 



Please note particularly at this point the following terms 

 which we use, and do not become confused. The nest box 

 is something in which rests the nest bowl in which the nest 

 is built. Do not ,;peak or think of nests when you mean nest 

 boxes, 



