BREEDING AND REARING. 
339 
of the trouble of liatching eggs and feeding sqiiabs, which most of 
them seem to consider a great bore. Squeakers, when they have 
reached the ripe age of six months, may be put up for breeding. 
Confine a cock and a hen together in a cage out of sight of the 
other birds for two days, and the business is done ; they may then 
haA-e their liberty, and will soon begin to make preparations for 
housekeeping. After making love and sporting about for some time, 
the hen will grow more sedate ; the place will be chosen, the nest 
made, and presently first one egg and then another will be laid, and 
the work of incubation commenced. The cock feeds the hen while 
she is sitting, and takes her place when she goes forth for air and 
exercise ; and then, at the expiration of seventeen days after the 
second egg is laid, the shells burst, and the chicks come forth. 
Breeders must generally rest content with seven broods in a year 
from one pair of birds ; for although as many as twelve have been 
produced, and nine and ten are not uncommon, yet * these are ex- ' 
ceptions to the general rule. There is perhaps nothing in nature 
more helpless than a baby pigeon; naked, and scarcely able to 
move, it can just hold its bill up for the half-digested food which 
the parent bird disgorges from its crop, and that is all. But after 
awhile it gathers strength and grows very rapidly, becoming a 
perfect lump of fat. Soon from squabhood it progresses into 
squeakerhood, and at the end of six months is ready to become a 
* paterfamilias.' This accounts for the rapid increase of pigeons, 
which, although they never lay but two eggs, and frequently only 
hatch one, are yet the most prolific of birds. 
Most persons, no doubt, think that pigeon's milk is a fabulous 
article ; yet the * soft meal' with which the crops of the setting- 
birds become filled, a few days before the chicks come forth, may 
very appropriately be called by this name; it is totally different 
from the substance found in the crops of the birds at other times, 
and appears to be secreted for the express purpose of affording just 
that nourishment which the young requires during the first two or 
three days of its existence. 
If a squab should die, the old pigeons should be provided with 
another from a neighbour who can spare it, or the food in their 
crops, provided for the young, will turn sour, and make them sick ; 
but if such a substitute cannot be found, keep the bereaved parents 
as much on the wing as possible, and supply them when at home 
with a mixture of bread crumbs and salt, with good thick gravel 
on the floor. 
DISEASES AND TEEATMENT. 
Perhaps no birds are less liable to disease than Pigeons, if properly 
fed and cared for. 
Canker is the ailment with which they are most frequently affected ; 
it attacks the head, causing swellings full of cheesy matter, which 
has a foul smell Ail excess of food of a fatty nature is said to 
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