APPENDIX A 
correct and we will prepay all charges, thus 
utting on ourselves and not on you the dif- 
erence, if there is any. 
COMMON PIGEONS AGAIN. We have 
had some of the old-time raisers of squabs 
from common pigeons on the ranches in the 
Middle West write us for more proofs that 
Homers are ahead of common pigeons. 
In reply we will print here the letter 
which we received in January, 1903, from a 
customer as follows: 
“‘T have for sale between four and five 
hundred pen-fed common pigeons. Can you 
use them, and at what price? Should you 
not be in a position to use them yourself 
probably you can refer me to some one that 
is in the market for some fine pen-fed birds. 
The Homers which I purchased of you some 
time last summer are doing very nicely, and 
have to make more room for them is the 
treason of wanting to dispqse of my common 
birds. Thanking you in.advance for favor 
asked.” zh 
We asked him to tell us if he had not 
found our Homers more profitable than com- 
mon pigeons. He replied as follows: 
“Tn reply to yours will say that your state- 
ment of the Homers being more profitable 
than the common birds is true, as the fact 
has been demonstrated to me in the past 
five or six months, by my experience of hav- 
ing the two lots side by side in separate pens. 
My common birds referred to are fine birds 
and will sell them f.0. b. at $2.50 per dozen, 
which, taking the plumpness of the bird in 
consideration, is very reasonable.”’ 
The above breeder lives in Missouri_and 
we expect to sell a good many of our Hom- 
ers to him and to those in his State who 
know of his experience. His letters are at 
our Boston office, where they may be seen. 
We will not give his name by mail because 
he is a customer, but if you think the above 
letters are made up by us, you write to the 
Boston office of Dun’s or Bradstreet’s com- 
mercial agencies and ask for one of their 
men to be sent to our office to investigate. 
PIGEON MANURE. Our advice in the 
Manual as to pigeon manure has interested 
pigeon breeders all over the country, nearly 
all of whom say that they never have taken 
pains to save it, and when it got too thick 
they have aye it up as best they could 
and used it for fertilizer. They want to know 
how we keep it pure, and all about the 
market, etc. 
The pigeon breeder who does not make 
provision for the purity of the manure and 
the steady sale of it is just throwing bank- 
bills straight into the fire. We have erected 
two buildings at our place for the manure, 
and take every precaution to keep the ma- 
nure free from straw, sawdust, sand, etc. 
The first building stands at the back of one 
of the long houses, and about halfway in the 
whole plant, so that we can reach it easily 
147 
with a wheelbarrow from the houses. There 
is a slide cut in the north wall of what we 
call No. 2 squab house, and through this 
slide the manure is shovelled from the wheel- 
barrow (standing in the passageway) directly 
into the manure house, where it stays -until 
there is from $50 to $100 worth of it, when 
we bag it up and send it off. In the other 
building, which is larger, we dry and store a 
larger quantity of the manure. 
e take the wheelbarrow empty down 
a passageway and stop at a unit pen, then 
go into the unit pen with a bushel basket 
and scrapers. We use a trowel to clean off 
.the nest-bowls, a tree scraper to clean out 
the nest-boxes and a hoe or a floor chisel 
(same as is used to clean off snow and ice 
from city sidewalks), six inches wide at the 
blade and with a long handle so that it can 
be easily used while the operator is standing. 
In scrapinz the floor, the manure rolls w 
with little exertion off the blade of the chisel. 
It is shovelled into the bushel basket and 
the basket taken out into the passageway 
and dumped into the wheelbarrow. It 
takes one man not over thirty minutes to 
clean a pen thoroughly and the product of 
each pen is between two and three bushels, 
or from $1.20 to $1.80 for half an_hour’s 
work, which is pretty good pay. (We have 
been getting in the winter of 1903 sixty 
cents a bushel from the American Hide and 
Leather Company of Lowell, eae We 
ship the manure by freight in bags. , We buy 
these bags when we can from farmers 
who have large herds of cows and who use 
considerable grain, and they let the bags go 
for one and two cents apiece. Second-hand 
bags in the Boston junkshops cost from four 
to nine cents apiece. The leather people let 
the bags pile up and then send them back 
to us ina bunch. We are particular to save 
not only the manure in the unit pens, but 
in the sorting and mating cages and coops. 
We cover the floors of these cages with bur- 
lap, not tacking the burlap down, but stretch- 
ing it over three finish nails tacked at the 
backs of the cages and two nails tacked at 
the front of the cages. The manure cakes 
and dries on the burlap as it would on the 
floor. When there is a layer about half an 
inch thick, all tramped hard, dry and odor- 
less. by the constant hammering of the feet 
of the birds, we take the burlap off the nails 
and stretch it outside, bottom up, then 
sprinkle water on the back and the manure 
drops off in large cakes. The burlap then is 
dried and replaced. This method saves an 
immense amount of time which otherwise 
would be consumed in scraping the floors of 
the cages. We have 108 of these cages at 
the farm and in our Boston shipping room, 
each capable of holding from 12 to 20 pairs 
of birds, and we have burlap carpets on all 
of them. We use a large amount of burlap 
not only for this purpose but for small grain 
bags to go with orders for breeders to dis- 
tant points, and also for the floors of our 
