WATER AND FEED 57 
disclosed that he was feeding nothing but wheat, with the 
exception of a handful of peas in the middle of the week and 
a handful of hemp-seed on Sunday ! 
A properly balanced ration is necessary to egg production 
in the case of pigeons, same as poultry. 
Wheat is a good regulator for pigeons but corn is the great 
fattener and the main staple. 
When anybody fails with pigeons, if you pick up and handle 
the birds you will find in nine cases out of ten that they have 
sharp breastbones, which means that they are improperly 
nourished, out of condition, and of course cannot produce 
eggs because they have not the blood and fat to do it. 
All the grains which you feed should be old, hard, dry and 
sweet. If they smell sour or taste bad to your own tongue, 
don’t feed them to your pigeons. Above all, keep your grain 
dry. If you have the grain stored in bins ‘which are damp 
from ground water, or which catch the drippings from the 
eaves, or through holes in the roof, first you will get sour grain 
and then some of the grain will sprout, and this sprouted grain 
will derange the bowels of your birds and bring on dysentery. 
Do not let rank little growths spring up in a dirty squab house 
or in the yard of your flying pen. Pigeons will peck at green 
leaves and grass and will not be harmed, but do not give them 
a chance to peck up sprouted grain and eat the sprout, grain 
and all, for if they do they will have diarrhoea. A pigeon in 
good condition and busy with a nest ordinarily will not touch 
a nasty little green sprout, but in the moulting season, when 
pigeons are in the dumps generally, and feeling like having a 
stimulant, they will experiment with these sprouts. Keep 
the floor of your squab house clean and the yard of the flying 
pen raked up and you need not worry about this matter. 
Ground oyster shell should be placed in a box handy for the 
pigeons to get at. The purpose of this oyster shell is to 
provide the constituents of the eggshell. The female pigeon 
needs it in order to form the egg. 
Grit is needed by the pigeons to enable them to reduce to 
powder the feed which they take into their crops The 
muscles of the crop work the grit on the grains and reduce 
the grains so that they mix with the digestive fluids. Cart 
two or three bushels of gravel or sharp sand into your flying 
pen and cover the ground with it. It is not necessary to 
