PIGEONS’ AILMENTS 91 
cure. It will get more fresh air, and a great deal more exercise, 
and more sun, than it would get if left in company with the 
other birds. In about a week you will notice that it will hold 
its bill tighter, and if there is a sore on the outside of the bill 
you will see this sore dry up. In two weeks the chances are 
that the yellowish deposit on the interior of the mouth will 
be entirely gone. The pigeon will hover around the other 
pigeons. It will fly to the outside of the netting and look at 
its fellows. Place a dish on the ground now and then with a 
little feed and you will attract it. Catch it when you have a 
favorable opportunity either with a net on the end of a pole, 
or with a broom, pinning it into a corner. You may have to 
try several times, but you will get it after a while. Its eye 
will be brighter and signs of disease. will be gone, and you can 
put it back into the squab house with the others. The exer- 
cise, sunlight, change of food, and scanty food, have made 
the cure. There are few pigeons so bad with canker that they 
cannot be cured in this way. For that reason we have not 
much hesitation in saying that canker is a captivity disease, 
caused by lack of exercise as well as unavoidable filth and too 
much of the wrong kind of feed. We have observed wild 
pigeons in the streets and we never saw a case of canker among 
then. You may say to yourself that it is quite a risk to 
throw out into the open air a pigeon which has cost you from 
seventy-five cents to a dollar, but it is better to do this than 
to take the advice of all other breeders and books and kill it. 
If you do not wish to throw a sick pigeon out into the air 
to get well, construct a box with wire netting over the front, 
and put the pigeon in there for special feeding and watering 
until it gets well. 
Powdered alum sprinkled in the drinking water now and 
then will tend to ward off canker from a flock. 
It does not pay to dose sick pigeons, because a cure seldom 
is obtained by dosing, and you are out your time. 
The squab breeder who follows the advice as to feed and 
water, and cleanliness of squab house, given in this Manual, 
will not have any sick pigeons. It is so very easy to keep a 
pigeon in perfect health that the fear of disease is a bugbear 
not worth taking into account. The element of disease is a 
constant source of worry to the chicken breeder, and a source 
of heavy loss to the best of them. We wish to assure all who 
