62 NATIONAL STANDARD SQUAB BOOK 
Table scraps, or what is commonly known as swill, should 
not be fed to pigeons. 
Rice may be fed, if plentiful and cheap. It has a tendency 
to correct diarrhoea caused by too much wheat. 
Some of our customers have been influenced by adverse 
criticism of our self-feeder to abandon it and feed in open 
troughs, but they have gone back to the self-feeder. One of 
these customers was Mr. Tyson, who started with several 
hundred pairs of our birds three years ago and now (1907) has 
the largest and best plant in the State of New Hampshire. 
His wife and son, with himself, have attained a high degree of 
skill and proficiency in the handling of their pigeons. The 
squabs they are breeding weigh at least nine pounds to the 
dozen. They ship to New York City, where they get very 
high prices. Mr. Tyson started by using the self-feeder for 
grain, as we advise, but being influenced by something seen in 
print, abandoned it and gave the open-trough method of feed- 
ing, twice or three times a day, a thorough trial. Immediately 
the birds began to fall off in production, and the squabs fell 
off in weight, some lots getting so skinny as to lose nearly two 
pounds to the dozen. That experience was enough. The 
Tysons went back to the self-feeder and now their squabs are 
plump, as they were in the first place, the old birds are in 
better condition, and breeding better. 
Do not put into the self-feeder a great lot of grain, but only 
enough to last about two days. A great quantity is liable to 
take up moisture in a spell of rainy weather and go stale, and 
is not relished by the birds as if it were supplied fresh every 
two or three days. 
