LAYING AND HATCHING 65 
the second eggs. No doubt, after she has laid the first egg, 
she hurries the other along and lays it as soon after the first 
as she can, and it takes forty-eight hours for the egg, complete 
in its wonderful construction, toform. Hen pigeons ina ship- 
ping crate or close coop do not lay eggs, because they know 
that there are no facilities there for raising young. Once in 
a while you will find an egg in a shipping crate when the 
birds are taken out, but it is a comparatively rare occurrence. 
Of course, in order to lay a fertile egg, the hen pigeon 
must have received the attention of the cock bird. It is 
common for a hen pigeon at five months, and sometimes 
four, to lay an egg, but as a rule those first eggs from a young 
hen are not fertile because she has not yet mated with the 
cock bird. After a hen pigeon has reached six months of age, 
and is paired with a male, it is safe to assume as an almost 
invariable rule that the eggs she lays will be fertile. When 
the male bird gets tobe six to ten years old, he may lose his 
vitality, and the eggs laid by his mate will not be fertile. 
Then it is necessary to provide the female with a new mate. 
The breeders we sell are of prime breeding age, from eight 
months to eighteen months old, and the eggs laid by hens 
of that age will be fertile and of full size, and the squabs 
bred from them will not be scrawny and lacking in vitality. 
From the day of its hatching to market time the squab 
is fed by its parents. The first food is a liquid secreted in 
the crop of both cock and hen, and called pigeons’ milk. 
The parent pigeons open their bills and the squabs thrust 
their bills within to get sustenance. This supply of pigeons’ 
milk lasts from five to six days. It gradually grows thicker 
and in a week is found to be mixed with corn and wheat in small 
particles. When about ten days old, the squabs are eating 
hard grain from the crops of the mature cock and hen. They: 
fill up at the trough, then take a drink of water and fly to 
the nest to minister to the little ones. You see how im- 
portant it is to have food available at all times. - 
In fourteen, fifteen or sixteen days after the first pair-of 
squabs have been hatched, the cock begins ‘“‘ driving’ the 
hen again. This shows the necessity of a second nest for the 
pair. In this second nest the hen lays two more eggs, and 
the care of the first pair of squabs, now between two and three 
weeks old, devolves upon the cock. When this pair is four 
