APPENDIX G 



333 



HOW AN IOWA FAMILY 

 MAKES SQUABS PAY, by R. 

 L. Allen. I am very much in- 

 terested in the pigeon business. 

 I believe it is only in its infancy 

 and that better times are com- 

 ing. I send you a picture of 

 our unit house which, as you 

 see, has eight separate apart- 

 ments. We have three other 

 houses not shown in this pic- 

 ture. These apartments are 

 each eight by ten feet. They 

 are eight feet high on the high 

 side and six feet high on the 

 low side. The fly yards are 

 ten by sixteen feet, eight feet 

 high. 



Each of these apartments 

 has an average of one hundred 

 and twenty-two nests, and an 

 average of one hundred and 

 twelve mated, working pigeons. 

 We find it better to have more 

 nests than birds. 



The girl in the picture is Lila 

 Allen, sixteen years old, another 

 member of the firm, who has 

 charge of the feed supplies. 

 Once every day she goes all 

 through the plant and refills 

 the automatic feeders that are 

 in need of grain. In these 

 feeders there are compartments 

 to accommodate two kinds of grain. We 

 also have a little contrivance of our own in- 

 vention to keep salt and grit always before 

 them. We are not prepared at this time to 

 furnish the pictures of Mrs. Allen, who is 

 bookkeeper and secretary, or of Mr. R. L. 

 Allen, general manager. In this pigeon plant, 

 each member of the family and firm has his 

 or her work to do, and each receives a share 

 in the receipts. We have one thousand 

 breeding pigeons. 



I find in traveling about over the country 

 that where there is a bunch of pigeons that the 

 owner is " sick of '' and complaining because 

 there is no money in them, the house is in 

 bad condition, feed and water supply is poor, 

 and the pigeons are not evenly proportioned 

 in regard to sex. Under such conditions good 

 results are out of the question. The owner 

 is trying to sell them cheap, and if he gets a 

 buyer, unless the latter is a good judge and 

 understands how to cull them closely, he 

 too finds out a little later that there is no 

 money in the pigeon business. Then the poor 

 pigeons get the blame for it all. 



HOW THEY BREED IN ONTARIO, by 

 W. Ernest Williams. In March last I pur- 

 chased three pairs of Plymouth Rock Extra 

 Homers and to date (October 27) I have twelve 

 pairs of youngsters that have been spared for 

 breeders. In March all three pairs had eggs 

 within two weeks of being in their new home. 

 In my pen I have up to the present twelve 

 pairs of youngsters that are flying about, and 



VIEWS ON THE .\UXS S(jUAB FARM. 



have killed two pairs for catin^j;. One pair 

 fell out of its nest or was pushed out and killed 

 when only two weeks old. Now I have one 

 pair about four days old and two pairs on eggs. 

 Mr. Baker and Mr. Burgess will no doubt 

 want to buy my birds after seeing this, but 

 not for S5 a pair if I know it. Just look: 

 sixteen pairs and two pairs of eggs. This 

 is a straight fact and no fairy tale, I can assure 

 you. 



I have been getting three dollars per dozen 

 for my squabs. At one of the Chicago markets 

 I asked the man what he would pay me for what 

 he called fancy Homer squabs. He said they 

 were too high for his market, and that the 

 hotels and big restaurants paid six and seven 

 dollars a dozen for them dre'^sed, done up in 

 one-half dozen lots, and they had to weigh 

 just so much. I also spoke to a party that 

 used to be in a meat market where squabs were 

 handled, and he told me they paid around 

 forty cents apiece for squabs and sold them as 

 high as seventy-five cents apiece. — Henry 

 Huecker, Illinois. 



I ordered three pairs of Extra Plymouth Rock 

 Homers six months ago. I had other Homers 

 in my house but in the scramble for nestboxes, 

 the new ones were easy winners, they were so 

 much bigger and stronger. I am raising some 

 big squabs from them. The largest I had 

 were a pair of red checks, one weighing twenty 

 ounces and the other twenty-two ounces. — 

 Walter Sieverling, Ohio. 



