LAYING AND HATCHING 73 



to put the young birds by themselves into a rearing pen, 

 where they cannot bother anybody. 



Of course there is Hkely to be a httle inbreeding when you 

 eave the birds to choose for themselves, but not much. If 

 the breeder has not the time to make forced matings, then 

 he may not care to make them. Remember in mating that 

 like begets like. The parent bird that feeds its young the 

 most, and most often, will raise the biggest squab. Some- 

 times a parent bird will have fine nursing abilities and will 

 stuff its offspring with food. These good-feeding qualities 

 are transmitted from one generation to another and are as 

 much under the control of the breeder as size and flesh-color. 

 Your biggest squabs will be found to have an extra-attentive 

 father or mother, or both. A pigeon with a dark skin, if 

 mated to a white-skinned bird will produce a mulatto-like 

 squab. It is the large, fat, white-fleshed squab which you are 

 after. Disregard the color of the feathers when mating. 

 If when plucking your squabs you come across a "nigger," 

 that is, a squab with a dark skin, find out what pair of breeders 

 it came from and whether the cock or the hen is at fault, 

 and get rid of the faulty one. It is important to start with 

 adult birds that are not related, then you will not begin 

 inbreeding. That is why we make a special effort with our 

 adult birds to have them unrelated. 



Some letters from customers make plain to us that a clear 

 knowledge of what inbreeding means is not possessed by 

 everybody. Several have written to this effect: " If I "buy 

 two or three dozen pairs from you to start, how can I increase 

 the size of my flock without inbreeding?" When (1) a 

 brother is mated to sister or (2) a father to a daughter, or (3) 

 a mother to a son, or (4) a grandson to his grandmother, etc. 

 that is inbreeding. We know it is forbidden by law for 

 human beings to mate in that manner, because (o) God in the 

 Scriptures has forbidden it, and Q)) because the State does 

 not wish to have to care for the puny, weak-minded offspring 

 that would result from such unions. We all know that the 

 marriages of cousins often result in demented, diseased chil- 

 dren. Now suppose you buy two dozen pairs of pigeons of 

 us, and number them pairs one to twenty-four. If you mate 

 the offspring of pair two (or any other pair) to the offspring of 

 pair one (or any other pair) that is outbreeding or cross- 



