MAKING A MARKET—PREPARING SQUABS FOR MARKET
We make one of the sub-heads of this chapter, "Making a Market," although the market for squabs is already established, and the demand for them in the larger cities is constantly increasing.
Notwithstanding this, the enterprising squab-breeder will make his own market and get better prices than he can get if he sends his squabs to the larger cities.
In the beginning he may be obliged to ship to the cities, but he can build up a home trade among those who like to have the best the market affords and by degrees his home demand will grow until he will find a ready sale nearby and will be saved freight and commission charges as well as the cost and trouble of packing and icing for the longer shipments.
We know of numerous cases where squab-breeders have built up a home demand which takes all the squabs and brings them high prices the year around.
Very often the enterprising beginner will turn his attention to raising squabs to sell to others for breeding purposes, and finds this very profitable, although a good market for squabs is about the same as a good demand for breeding stock. Other squab breeders arrange to sell their young stock to those who do breed pigeons to sell as breeding stock and thus have a regular and constant demand for their young birds.
All these ways of disposing of the increase of the loft are open to the beginner, but the food market is the one that should be cultivated. We know of a case where a beginner started in with a view of selling breeding stock only, as he thought he was not so located that he would have any demand for his squabs in the handiest market, a small interior city, where squabs had never been put on sale.
After he got started he found that he could sell a few pairs of squabs to one or two restaurants and the best hotel in the town. He began supplying orders from these places and others began to call on him for squabs for special occasions, such as local banquets, receptions and other social functions.
He started with fifty pairs of breeders. He selected his best squabs to keep for the purpose of increasing his flock and sold the others in his nearest market.
At the end of a year he had saved another fifty pairs for breeding and found he had sold squabs enough to pay for a new house and all of the feed he had bought during this time.
Then he concluded to begin advertising squabs for sale as breeders. He received quite a number of orders, but the demand for squabs for the market became so strong that he gave up the breeding part of the business and began to sell in the market only. At last so many were sold in the town that a prominent provision firm came to him and made him a flat offer of $4.00 a dozen for all the squabs he would raise. He refused this offer, as he was getting more than this for a good many of his squabs and did not think he could afford to make a binding contract on a market where the price was increasing all the time. This same breeder now has a thousand pairs of breeding pigeons and hires a man to take care of them, while he attends to his own business, and makes about $1,000.00 clear money from his pigeons every year.
Another way to build up a private trade is to introduce nicely dressed squabs among the wealthiest families of a town. This can be done by presenting them with two or three pairs, nicely put up in a box, and asking them to try them. One breeder who started out in this way now sells all his squabs at $1.00 a pair. He dresses them neatly, puts a pair in a nice white box with a colored bit of "baby ribbon." He has a demand for all he can get at $1 a pair, although he lives near a large city where the price is often lower than this.
The enterprising squab breeder will be able to find a market for the product of his loft, no matter where he lives. The express companies carry squabs at the regular dressed-poultry rates, and in many places there are fast freight lines which take butter and eggs to distant markets in the shortest possible time.
The Parcel Post now brings a large field of customers right to your door, for dressed squabs may be sent many miles for a few cents and the package will be promptly delivered in good order to your customer. This new branch of the Postal service opens up greater possibilities for the squab producer and the live breeder who first takes advantage of this service will reap the rewards.
Squabs properly packed may be sent 1,000 miles to market and yet be profitable, but there is hardly a place in this country where a good market can not be found within 200 or 300 miles, and even a thousand miles is not a long distance for an express train.
The trouble will not be so much where to find a market as how to produce squabs enough, once the breeder has been in the business long enough to make a name for himself.
If any breeder sends squabs of good size and color and keeps up the quality regularly, it will not be long before there will be a call for his particular brand of squabs, and after that it will be a question of meeting the demand, for this will grow all the time.