THE UNIT HOUSE 43 
squab house and pen capable of accommodating two hundred 
and twenty pairs of breeders at a cost of one hundred and 
thirty dollars. In ordering, simply say you wish plans and 
-specifications for squab houses. 
Some beginners with plenty of means and anxious for the 
best construction write us to ask if a cement floor is not 
better than a wood floor. A cement floor is positively 
wrong, for this reason: when it is freshly laid, it is good, 
but the first winter causes the dirt foundation to shrink and 
swell, then come cracks in the cement. Rats and mice burrow 
in the dirt up to the cement and find their way through the 
cracks to the squabs. In a short time, they are a nuisance. 
We have seen a squab house built with cement floor which 
cracked as described and every time the owner and his dog 
took a walk down the alleyway, they found. rats to kill. 
Finally the whole lot of cement had to be pounded to pieces, 
shoveled up and carted off. The way to stop rats and mice 
is to erect the building on posts as we have described. Rats 
and mice live in the dirt and they cannot get up into the 
squab house. Let your dog or cat every day under such a 
house, between the flooring and the ground, and they will 
keep down the vermin as fast as they show themselves, and 
your squabs never will be troubled. 
In our early plans for the unit. squab house, we provided 
for a building with a ‘‘ jog’ in the roof, making a long, low 
slope for the south side of the roof, and on this slope the 
birds would sun themselves and make love. This “ jag” 
construction is more expensive than is needed, and now we 
have a better way. We have an ordinary pitch roof, sloping 
equally from the ridgepole to both north and south. We run 
the flying pen out on the south side, not from the ridgepole, 
but from the eaves, and then out in the fiving pen we erect 
perches as shown in the picture. The fact that the birds 
rest easily on these. perches (as the photograph in Appen- 
dix A shows) is proof that they are contented and pleased 
by such an arrangement. We have found, too, that they 
can hear the squeaks of their young for food better than if 
they are up on the roof, and better attention to the squabs 
is the result. It was formerly thought unsafe to erect perch- 
ing poles in the flying pen directly in front of the windows, 
the fear being that birds darting suddenly out of the windows 
