“Oh, what a lot. Then I’ll take goslings, by all means!”
“Better not take them now, ’cause you’ll want to fix up a separate coop and yard for ’em. If you let them run with the hens, they’ll soon have their down picked off and then they’ll get nipped and bitten by the hens that don’t agree, nohow, with geese.”
“Will you bring them over to Green Hill for me, some time when you pass there?” asked Janet.
“Yeh. And I should advise you to leave the hens here until that chicken house is well cleaned and ready for new chickens. All them chicks have to be bathed, you know, to keep lice from increasing and getting on the Rhode Island Reds.”
As they left the chicken yard Janet saw the pigeons on the barn-roof, cooing and billing tenderly.
“Dear me, I do so want to have pigeons, too. I love to watch them mount up in the sky and drop like a stone until they almost reach the ground, and then suddenly soar again. I have seen those tumbler pigeons of yours do this until they remind me of an aviator doing the loop-the-loop in his aero-plane,” said Janet
“Pigeons is easy to rear, but you don’t want to take everything at once and not be able to care for anything,” was Farmer Ames’ wise advice.
“I don’t think pigeons are so easy to raise, Uncle,” was Dorothy’s opinion. “They want quiet and protection, as they never fight for their lives, like chickens and other kinds of fowl do. A cat or a rat can catch and kill a pigeon without combat from the victim. One has to have a mighty good pigeon-loft that is proof against prowlers, if one wants to keep the birds.”
“I forgot you had so many pigeons, Dorothy. I think I’ll come over and let you show me how to care for them before I buy any,” remarked Janet.
Mr. Ames considered this a wise plan, and so the girls left him with his promise to deliver the chickens and goslings as soon as the coops were in order to receive them. Then Frances drove to Four Corners for the mail, and Janet bought a white-wash brush and the materials with which to cleanse the coops.