16 NATIONAL STANDARD SQUAB BOOK 



than the average beginner would spend. He is a superin- 

 tendent of a large manufacturing plant, a man of push and 

 energy, and he has four young boys in his family who have 

 helped with the wife and grandfather to make the venture 

 successful. It was a paying venture almost from the very 

 start. Everything that we wrote about squabs aS money 

 makers came true in his case. One of the sons, a lad of nine- 

 teen, came on to see us the first summer and told us the story 

 of their success. He was after more breeding stock. He 

 said he had many calls from oeoole who wished to buy stock 

 of him, and he was unable to supply all of them, but he did 

 not intend to have money offered him very long without 

 being able to pass out the birds. In other words, they were 

 going into squabs for all they were worth. They had not done 

 any advertising, and had not sold live breeders to any extent, 

 but figured their profits solely on the sale of squabs to com- 

 mission houses, and they were getting for them just what 

 we said the commission men would pay. 



We have a great many visitors, some coming from remote 

 points of the United States. One of the visitors to our Melrose 

 farm was Mr. A. L. Furlong, from a httle town in Iowa. 

 Mr. Furlong said to us: " Iowa is quite a squab breeding State. 

 There are plants in Ruthven, Osage, Wallake and Estherville. 

 The owner of a plant in Ruthven I know very well. He showed 

 me his account books; he was shipping from seven hundred 

 to eight hundred dollars worth of squabs last month. He is 

 making a profit of three thousand to five thousand dollars a 

 year. He ships to the Chicago market, as do nearly all the 

 Iowa breeders. He never gets less than two dollars and fifty 

 cents a dozen for his squabs. I am going to start raising 

 squabs myself." 



Mr. Furlong left an order for one of our Manuals, having 

 given his first one to his friend. He said that his friend was 

 breeding common pigeons and would like to know our methods. 

 We discarded common pigeons some time ago. If our Iowa 

 friends will use Homer pigeons instead of common ones, they 

 will produce a much better squab and make more money. 



We had a curious confirmation of the above a month later 

 when Mr. E. H. Grice, who lives in the northern part of 

 Vermont, visited us. Mr. Grice had just returned from a visit 

 to the West, and stopped for a while at Ruthven, Iowa, where 



