LAYING AND HATCHING 71 



either by killing the parents or by remating. Usually the 

 trouble comes from one parent bird, which you find by turning 

 up the feathers and exathining the skin. Having found the 

 bird which is at fault, kill it. This point has come up con- 

 tinually in our correspondence. The erroneous belief that 

 white-feathered birds produce the whitest-skinned squabs 

 seems to be widespread and we are asked sometimes for a 

 flock of breeders " all white." Our experience with all white 

 Homers is that they are smaller and have less stamina than 

 the colored ones. The marketmen will take two cr three pairs 

 of dark-skinned squabs in a bunch without comment, but 

 an excess of dark ones will provoke a cut in price. Breeders 

 who are shipping only the undressed squabs should pluck 

 feathers now and then to see just what color of squabs they 

 are getting. The dark-colored squabs are just as good eating 

 as the light-colored ones, but buyers for the hotels and clubs, 

 and those who visit the stalls, generally pick out the plump 

 white-skinned squabs in preference to the plump dark-skinned 

 pnes. As a rule, squabs from Homer pigeons are white- 

 skinned — ^the dark-colored squab is an exception. 



Many beginners wish to know if it will be all right for them 

 to buy a flock and keep it in one house for six months or a 

 year, paying no attention to the mating or pairing of the 

 young birds, but leaving that to themselves, so as to get 

 without much trouble a large flock before the killing of the 

 squabs for market begins. Certainly, you may do this, 

 providing extra nest boxes from time to time until your 

 squab house has been filled Tvith nests; then you will have 

 to provide overflow quarters. We are asked if the flock will 

 not become weakened by inbreeding, that is, a brother bird 

 mating up to a sister, by chance. According to the law of 

 chances, such matings would take place not very often. 

 Pigeons in a wild state, on the face of a cliff, or in an abandoned 

 building, would pair by natural selection. The stronger 

 bird gets the object of its affection, the weaker one is killed 

 off or gets a weaker mate, whose young are shorter-lived, so 

 the inevitable result is more strength and larger size. Nature 

 works slowly, if surely. A lot of pigeons in one pen mating or 

 pairing as they please when old enough is the natural way, 

 and if you follow this, you cannot go very far wrong. We 

 advocate matings by the breeder because it hurries Nature 



