WATER AND FEED 61 
this book and elsewhere, are many cases of small flocks 
increased enormously, and the writers take pains to state 
that they are using the self-feeder. That is talk that means 
something. The loudest advocate of no self-feeder is the 
man who is trying hard to sell his Homers by some kind of a 
story different from what we tell. It does not matter to him 
what he says, solong as he combats us. It is the game of such 
chaps to contradict all others and pose as the only real, 
simon-pure know-it-alls on pigeons. 
Some small parent Homers are such good feeders, such good 
fathers and mothers, that they stuff their squabs with grain 
and bring them up to a surprising fatness. We have had 
pairs of squabs which actually at four weeks of age were 
bigger than their parents. This is not surprising when you 
think that the squabs sit in their nest hour after hour doing 
nothing but accumulate fat, and taking no exercise to train 
off this fat. The old birds are flying around and do not have 
much fat on them; they are trim and muscular, and hard 
fleshed. You can tell an old pigeon after it is cooked when 
you put your teeth into it, just as you can tell an old fowl. 
Provide salt for your pigeons to keep them strong and 
healthy. The safest kind of sali for you to use is rock salt, 
such as is sold for horses. Put a couple of big lumps of it in 
the squab house and let the pigeons peck at it when they wish. 
Put two more lumps out in the flying pen. When rain comes 
the water will wash some salt off the lumps into the gravel. 
(Empty the bath pans upon the lumps of salt.) The pigeons 
will eat this salt-impregnated gravel all around the iumps for 
an inch or so down into the ground. 
Do not feed powdered salt, for if you do the birds may eat 
too much of it and it will kill them. Coarse ground salt may 
be used, but the rock salt is best. 
Some green stuff is much relished by pigeons. It is good 
for them and will increase the egg, and, consequently, squab 
production. They are very fond of cabbage now and then, 
which should be chopped fine before being fed. (We mean 
raw, not cooked, cabbage.) When vines grow over the flying 
pen, they will be seen pecking at the green leaves. Green 
clover may be cut up and fed to them in conjunction with 
grain. It should be remembered that green stuff, as enu- 
merated in this paragraph, is fed only as a relish. 
