FANCY PIGEONS
If I were a boy or a girl to-day there is nothing I should so much like to do as to raise pigeons. Not that I think it an easy job. (Wouldn't you almost as soon work as to look for an easy job, anyhow?) There are lots of disappointments, discouragements, and hard labour about pigeon rearing. But young folks with hobbies like this are getting more fun out of life than the idle ones.
Pigeons are hardy, easily tamed, prolific, and can be made to pay their own way. It would be impossible to associate with them, care for them, learn their nature and habits, without becoming thoroughly interested in them. No pets could be more gentle, more beautiful, more docile than pigeons. Success in rearing them will not be immediate, but will come with experience.
The business of raising fancy pigeons for pets is quite distinct from squab raising, treated in the chapter on poultry, and is far more likely to interest boys and girls. If you were to go to a big poultry show you would be bewildered at the number of breeds of fancy pigeons. The pouters, the tumblers, the barbs, the dragoons, nuns, helmets, the fantails, and carriers are all there in endless variety. What you like will be different from what I like, probably, so it is not easy to recommend. Beginners would do well to choose some one variety and try their hand at that before investing very extensively. The flying tumbler is recommended by many good authorities. These are not difficult to breed, are small eaters, do not need to be caged continually, and although they are to be had in nearly all the colours of the rainbow they are not very expensive. It is not good economy to buy cheap stock, in anything. Though by getting good ones you must start with a single pair, it is the best economy. Your increase will be very much more valuable. You should ask the breeder for a written guarantee that the pigeons are as represented, healthy, young, mated stock. If he does not care to give the guarantee, I should not consider him reliable.
Net for capturing pigeons
Pigeons are not much influenced by elaborate dovecotes. They are quite as happy living the simple life in a dry-goods box, provided it contains the conveniences they require, and is placed where the light will be plentiful, the air pure, and the roof rain proof. City boys and girls need not sigh and give up the idea because they have no place for pigeons. The attic or the roof serves them just as well as the barn yard, perhaps better, as mice and rats are less likely to disturb them on housetops. Every precaution should be taken however against these vermin. Cracks, doors and ventilators should be covered with fine wire netting. Even the entrances, holes six inches high by four in width, should be protected by tin guards which rats and mice cannot creep over.
Pigeon roost
Each pair of pigeons will need two nesting compartments. A good kind is described in Farmers' Bulletin No. 177, and is constructed as follows: Inch boards, twelve inches wide, with parallel cross cleats nailed on nine inches apart, are set upright full twelve inches apart against one wall, and securely fastened at top and bottom. Cut twelve-inch squares of inch boards for the bottoms of the nest boxes. It is easy to see how convenient these sliding bottoms will be to clean. Provide small earthenware dishes as nests, with a foundation of tobacco stems, to discourage lice. The birds will build nests of straw above the tobacco stems, the male bringing the material which the female arranges to suit her ideas of house furnishing. Some growers use sawdust in the nest. If your pigeons are allowed their liberty with no shelter save the pigeon loft, perches will be needed inside. As the pigeon's feet are formed for perching on flat surfaces instead of on rounded branches like many of their feathered relatives, you should provide what suits their needs. A good form of perch is made as follows. Cut half-inch, dressed material four or five inches wide into five or six-inch lengths. Nail together two of these pieces in v-shape. This can be nailed to a square foundation piece and hung angle up on the wall of the loft. The slanting sides afford no lodging for droppings and as only one bird at a time can perch on so small a place, quarrelling is avoided. Iron brackets with perches attached are also used.
Two nest dishes are provided for each pair, as very often the hen will lay a second pair of eggs before the earliest young ones are ready to leave the nest. The male pigeon is untiring in his devotion to the young and their mother, taking his turn on the nest regularly during the seventeen days of incubation, doing his share of the work, and even beating his wife if she shows any disposition to slight her duties.
If the pigeons are confined in a wire fly, perches should be provided there, and board walks for them to alight upon and walk about on should be placed at a distance of four or five feet from the ground. Nothing in the shape of roosts or cross pieces should be put in the fly, as the pigeons need all the space in which to exercise their wings.
A fly for pigeons. Put no roosts across the fly. Flying against these would injure the birds
For one hundred birds the fly should be thirty-two feet long, eight feet high, and the entire width of the house. It will be a fine problem in practical arithmetic to figure how much netting will be required to cover the frame of this fly, how many posts, and how much one by four-inch stuff will be needed to complete the frame. The advice of some one who has built a pigeon fly would be most valuable to the inexperienced person, and the pictures in books, bulletins, and magazine articles will be helpful in making your plans.
Holes, at least two, rounded at the top and six inches each way, provide for the going and coming of the birds between house and fly. For yourself, an outside door into the fly is a necessity, of course.
Before installing your pigeons in their house, use the whitewash brush there freely. Into each gallon of your mixture of lime and water put a half-teaspoonful of crude carbolic acid. Clean sand is recommended for the floor of both fly and house. It is very bad practice to scatter food for pigeons on the floor or ground. You will see, if you try it, how much is wasted; any that they leave becomes soiled, moulds, or sours, and if eaten in that condition is nearly sure to injure the birds. A shallow feeding trough should be placed near the centre of the house. Fine charcoal, table salt, and cracked oyster shells should be kept permanently before the birds, the boxes cleaned out at least weekly. Clean water in stone or galvanized iron fountains should always be there, too. Daily or semi-daily is none too frequent to clean these vessels.
Pigeons are not gluttonous feeders but "they want what they want, when they want it." In other words, regularity is important to their well-being. An early morning feed, six-thirty in summer, seven in winter, of equal parts cracked corn, wheat, and peas, and an afternoon feed, at four in summer, three in winter, of equal parts cracked corn (with no fine meal in it), kaffir corn, millet seed, and peas, is a fair ration. Pigeons like a variety but not as a steady diet. Hemp may be substituted for millet once or twice a week; a little broken rice, green vegetable food, like lettuce and onions, will be taken sparingly, and tiny bits of fat bacon seem to be acceptable. Nothing but first-class grain should ever be set before pigeons. The quantity needed should be determined by watching. If food is left in trough, feed less next time.
Water for bathing is as necessary for pigeons as the dust bath is for hens. A broad galvanized iron pan three inches deep makes a first-rate bathtub. Although fancy plumbing is out of place in a pigeon house, it is the greatest convenience to have running water passing through a trough constantly; this solves completely the problem of sanitary drinking water.
The best fanciers clean their houses weekly. With a few birds this may not be necessary. But when your nose gives unmistakable evidence that it is time, do not put it off. A spade to scrape the floor, an old knife for the nest boxes, and a broom are necessary utensils.
Mated birds will choose a nesting box after becoming accustomed to their new quarters. The nest pans, with their foundation of tobacco stems cut in six-inch lengths, should be in place, and a supply of short hay or straw where it can be found. Two eggs are usually laid, with a day between and sitting begins as soon as the second egg is laid.
If the sight of a young squab does not make you sick of your choice of a hobby, you are a hopeless case, and I predict great success for you. Young robins are not beautiful to behold, but squabs are such ghastly looking little beasts, with nothing to recommend them except their entire helplessness. Evidently the parents are well satisfied with the appearance of their offspring which look just as they expected, no doubt, and begin almost immediately to feed them. "Pigeon milk" is injected into their open throats by the parent birds, in whose stomachs it has been manufactured. The squabs gain rapidly after a few days of this "milk" diet; pin-feathers replace the scanty yellow down in about a week. At three weeks they are able to walk, but are still fed by their parents, although grain is brought to them instead of the predigested food.
Although they are hardy, do not suppose that pigeons have no diseases. However, the author of a government bulletin on squab raising says that with "wholesome food, proper housing, and proper care, very little disease is usually encountered." To prevent disease, and avoid dampness in house and fly, keep the food and water untainted, and the house clean.
It is very desirable, whether raising squabs for market or for pets, to keep a record of the performance of each pair. This is usually done by the use of numbered tags on the birds' legs. The record makes it possible to prevent inbreeding, gives you knowledge of whether certain pairs are profitable, and keeps up your own interest far more than haphazard methods do.