62 NATIONAL STANDARD SQUAB BOOK 



Table scraps, or what is commonly known as swill, should 

 not be fed to pigeons. 



Rice may be fed, if plentiful and cheap. It has a tendency 

 to correct diarrhoea caused by too much wheat. 



Some of our customers have been influenced by adverse 

 criticism of our self-feeder to abandon it and feed in open 

 troughs, but they have gone back to the self-feeder. One of 

 these customers was Mr. Tyson, who started with several 

 hundred pairs of our birds and in three years built up 

 the largest and best plant in the State of New Hampshire. 

 His wife and son, with himself, have attained a high degree of 

 skill and proficiency in the handling of their pigeons. The 

 squabs they are breeding weigh at least nine pounds to the 

 dozen. They ship to New York City, where they get very 

 high prices. Mr. Tyson started by using the self-feeder for 

 grain, as we advise, but being influenced by something seen in 

 print, abandoned it and gave the open-trough method of feed- 

 ing, twice or three times a day, a thorough trial. Immediately 

 the birds began to fall off in production, and the squabs fell 

 off in weight, some lots getting so skinny as to lose nearly two 

 pounds to the dozen. That experience was enough. The 

 Tysons went back to the self-feeder and now their squabs are 

 plump, as they were in the first place, the old birds are in 

 better condition, and breeding bettftr. 



Do not put into the self-feeder a great lot of grain, but only 

 enough to last about two days. A great quantity is liable to 

 take up moisture in a spell of rainy weather and go stale, and 

 is not relished by the birds as if it were supplied fresh every 

 two or three days. 



Remember that grit is not oyster shell, nor is oyster shell grit. 

 You must have both. We sell tons of our Plymouth Rock 

 health grit, and it is the best economy to feed it. We have sold 

 it for twenty years and our customers recommend it unre- 

 servedly. We are shipping it constantly all over the United 

 States. Beware of imitations of the Plymouth Rock health 

 grit, the " just as good " kinds, etc. See page 1 16 of this book 

 for directions for feeding our health grit. See page 286 for a 

 photograph of it. 



