LAYING AND HATCHING 73 
to put the young birds by themselves into a rearing pen, 
where they cannot bother anybody. 
Of course there is likely to be a little inbreeding when you 
‘eave the birds to choose for themselves, but not much. If 
the breeder has not the time to make forced matings, then 
he may not care to make them. Remember in mating that 
like begets like. The parent bird that feeds its young the 
most, and most often, will raise the biggest squab. Some- 
times a parent bird will have fine nursing abilities and will 
stuff its offspring with food. These good-feeding qualities 
are transmitted from one generation to another and are as 
much under the control of the breeder as size and flesh-color. 
Your biggest squabs will be found to have an extra-attentive 
father or mother, or both. A pigeon with a dark skin, if 
mated to a white-skinned bird will produce a mulatto-like 
squab. It is the large, fat, white-fleshed squab which you are 
after. Disregard the color of the feathers when mating. 
If when plucking your squabs you come across a “ nigger,”’ 
that is, a squab with a dark skin, find out what pair of breeders 
it came from and whether the cock or the hen is at fault, 
and get rid of the faulty one. It is important to start with 
adult birds that are not related, then you will not begin 
inbreeding. That is why we make a special effort with our 
adult birds to have them unrelated. 
Some letters from customers make plain to us that a clear 
knowledge of what inbreeding means is not possessed by 
everybody. Several have written to this effect: “If I buy 
two or three dozen pairs from you to start, how can I increase 
the size of my flock without inbreeding?’ When (l)a 
brother is mated to sister or (2) a father to a daughter, or (3) 
a mother to a son, or (4) a grandson to his grandmother, etc. 
that is inbreeding. We know it is forbidden by law for 
human beings to mate in that manner, because (a) God in the 
Scriptures has forbidden it, and (b) because the State does 
not wish to have to care for the puny, weak-minded offspring 
that would result from such unions. We all know that the 
marriages of cousins often result in demented, diseased chil- 
dren. Now suppose you buy two dozen pairs of pigeons of 
us, and number them pairs one to twenty-four. If you mate 
the offspring of pair two (or any other pair)to the offspring of 
pair one (or any other pair) that is outbreeding or cross 
