APPENDIX G 



307 



1 GIVE UP CHICKENS 

 IN FAVOR OF SQUABS, 

 by Thomas F. Cook. Two 



years ago I had had no 

 experience whatever with 

 squabs, in fact had no inten- 

 tion of ever raising any, 

 when a gentleman living 

 near me, who was forced by 

 lack of time to sell his pens 

 of birds, numbering about 

 400 Homers, offered them 

 to me, and as I had read 

 quite a bit at that time of 

 how well others were doing 

 raising squabs, I decided to 

 try my luck. Of course 

 moving them disturbed 

 them but after a few weeks 

 they settled down to work 

 and were doing very fairly, 

 when some one told m3 

 where I could btiy some very 

 cheap feed, viz.: frozen 

 Manitoba wheat , which 

 turned out to be the dear- 

 est feed I ever bought. 

 The pigeons did not like it 

 and would not eat it if they 

 could help it, but I kept 

 feeding it to them as I 

 thought it was cheap and 

 plenty good enough for pig- 

 eons. The result was they 

 gotpoor and practically quit 

 laying, and the few squabs I did succeed in 

 raising were sn thin I could not market them. 



It took me months to get them back in good 

 trim again, but I finally succeeded in doing 

 so and they were paying me very well indeed 

 when one night in last August my bam was 

 burned down and the pigeon house with it. I 

 managed to save about 100 birds, but their 

 breeding was over for some time till I could 

 get another house and pair them up again, 

 but I had seen plainly that, rightly managed, 

 there was money in squabs so hearing of a lot 

 of about 900 that were for sale in Thornhill 

 (about 15 miles from here) I bought them with 

 the building they were in (a one-story frame 

 structure fifty feet long by fifteen feet wide), 

 shut the birds up in the house and pulled the 

 flying pens down, then sawed the whole build- 

 ing in two through the centre pen. We 

 moved it up here on trucks and set it down on 

 a good foundation and built twenty more feet 

 in the centre of the one we moved, making a 

 building seventy feet long. 



It was quite a bit of trouble and expense 

 moving the building that way but it paid me, 

 as the birds went right on breeding, in fact 

 with the exception of a very few eggs that 

 rolled out of some of the nests they did not 

 seem to know they had been moved. 



As a main feed I use com, Canada peas and 

 buckwheat alternately, with a little hemp, 

 kaffir com and wheat as dainties, also plenty 

 of grit and a lump of rock salt always in each 

 pen, also lots of clean water before them at all 



SQUAB PLANT MOVED FIFTEEN MILES. 



times, and a bath placed in each flying pen 

 every morning during the summer. In the 

 winter I give them a bath only on nice bright 

 days when it is warm enough so that there is 

 no danger of the water freezing. 



I might say that all my birds are thorough- 

 bred Homers. I intend to buy some Car- 

 neaux later on and intend to cross with the 

 Homers, as of course the larger'the squabs the 

 more I can get for them. My squabs now 

 average about nine to ten pounds to the dozen. 



I have been raising quite a lot of chickens, 

 but am gradually dropping them and intend 

 to increase the pigeons, as they pay better, 

 take up less room, are less trouble, and the re- 

 turns come in every week. There is no slack 

 time with them as far as my experience goes. 

 Under proper conditions and right treatment 

 they breed every month in the year, 



HOW TO GET GOOD FEEDERS, by 



James Y. Egbert, Feeding qualities of pig- 

 eons in a flock vary almost as much as the 

 number of birds in the pen. Some feed their 

 young early and often and stuff them full, 

 making large, plump squabs. Others feed 

 moderately and their squabs are not so fat. 

 Some parent birds can raise three and oc- 

 casionally four squabs, but the latter is rare. 

 A squab breeder should observe his birds and 

 mate those of good feeding qualities. In this 

 way he would build up aflock of large, sturdy, 

 well-fed birds. Good feeding qualities are 

 handed down from one generation to another 



