48 NATIONAL STANDARD SQUAB BOOK 
send us your freight receipt and count the amount as cash. 
.Or you may order your birds at the same time you do the 
nest bowls (and other supplies) and when you get your freight 
receipt send it to us. Orders for one dozen to four dozen 
bowls should go by express with the birds (tied to the basket), 
unless it is desired to have the bowls go with grain, grit, shells, 
etc., by freight. 
Place one nest bowl in each one of your nest boxes. Let 
the pairs choose to suit themselves. At the end of the month, 
when you take out the squabs, take out the nest bowl, clean 
it and put it back. 
Many customers who do not use egg crates or orange 
boxes, but build their nest boxes of half-inch or five-eighths 
lumber, have written us that they used the construction 
which we illustrate on page 30, and which is good, because 
cleaning can be better done. The bottoms of the nest boxes 
are removable and rest on cleats, as the picture shows. The 
cleats are seven-eighths or one inch square and are nailed 
to the uprights. When this construction is employed, it is 
not necessary that you have a block or base screwed to our 
wood-fibre nest bowl. The nest bowl may be screwed 
directly onto this removable bottom. If you use egg crates 
or solid-built nest boxes, you will have to give the wood-fibre 
nest bowl stability by screwing it to a base of wood seven 
inches square and about three-quarters of an inch thick. 
When the squab house is ready for the birds, each of the 
nest boxes has one of these nest bowls. The pigeons build 
their own nests in them, taking the nesting material and flying 
to the nest bowl with it. The average nest has from one to 
two inches of straw compactly and prettily laid by the birds. 
Some birds use more nesting material than others. After the 
squabs are hatched, they quickly show that Nature never 
intended them to have a dirty nest. When they wish to 
make manure, they back up to the edge of the nest and ‘‘shoot”’ 
outward and over the edge of the nest bowl into the nest box, 
which is just where the breeder wants to find it. In a week 
or two there will be a circle of solid manure in the nest box, 
but it is out of the nest, and off and away from the feet of 
the squabs. As the squabs grow older, their claws tread and 
throw out the straw on which they were hatched, and the nest 
bowl gets bare again as it was in the first place. The small 
