CHAPTER XI. 
GETTING AHEAD. 
Make your Birds Pay for themselves as they Go Along, 
unless you Wish to Wait Patiently until a Small Flock 
Increases to a Large One — Better to Take the Money Made 
from Sale of Squabs and Buy More Adult Birds than to 
Raise the Squabs, Because it is a Long Jump from Four 
Weeks (the Killing Age) to Six Months, at which Age the 
Birds Begin Breeding — Shipping Points. 
It is the birds and not the buildings which count in squab 
raising and if you have fifty dollars to. start, put thirty-five 
dollars or forty dollars into your birds and the balance into 
your building. We have had customers start with a hundred- 
dollar building and put a ten-dollar lot of birds into it, con- 
tinuing to buy ten-dollar lots of us about once a month until 
they had their flock to a good size, but we believe it is best to 
let the buildings follow the birds, and not the birds the 
buildings. In other words, let your birds earn buildings as 
they go along. It is quite a drag on a small flock to weigh it 
down with an expensive building much too large for it. 
Put this down in your mind solid, where you will not forget 
it: Make your pigeons pay for themselves as they go. 
We sell to a great many poultrymen, and we like to get their 
orders, for they have been through the mill of raising feathered 
animals and are practical, and they are quick to see the money 
in squabs, and when their order for breeding stock comes 
along, it is in nine cases out of ten a large order, even if they 
have had no previous experience. They know that in order 
to sell squabs they have got to have birds enough to breed 
squabs and it is just as easy for them to spend fifty dollars or 
one hundred dollars at the start as it is for them to spend ten 
dollars or fifteen dollars and use up one hundred dollars’ worth 
of time while waiting a year to begin selling squabs. 
Many beginners are so skeptical that they do not believe 
squabs grow to market size in one month, or they have no 
confidence in their ability to feed the mature birds so as to 
keep them alive. They wish to make a start with a few pairs 
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