Pigeons live together in pairs; and when a cock and hen once form an attachment, the union generally lasts during their lives. The pigeon in a wild state breeds only twice or thrice in the season, but the domestic birds will breed every six weeks, or during the greater part of the year.
Whatever number of broods a pair of pigeons may bring up in a year, the hen never lays but two eggs before she sits. She incubates for eighteen days after the laying of the second egg. Both the cock and hen assist in the hatching: the hen usually sits from the afternoon till about eleven o’clock on the following morning; the cock then takes her place, and sits while she goes out to feed and exercise herself, and generally keeps on the nest until two or three o’clock in the afternoon.
When first hatched, the young are fed for about eight days with a milky secretion prepared in the crop of the parents, and regurgitated into the mouth of the young, and afterwards with grain and seeds the old ones have picked up in the fields and treasured in their crops. In this mode of supplying the young with food from the crop birds of the pigeon kind differ from those of any other family.
Formerly it was common to erect buildings as dove-cotes in the neighbourhood of great country mansions: many of these were of considerable size and elevation, as shown in the [engraving]. The custom, however, has fallen into disuse, and pigeon-houses of more moderate sizes are now generally employed.
A small one is very often formed from a wine-cask, which has holes cut in its sides, and a small platform made before each, to form a resting-place in front for the birds to alight upon. The interior is divided into chambers by the carpenter, or any boy of common carpentering ingenuity may readily do it himself. The cask is then elevated on a stout thick scaffolding pole or the trunk of a straight tree, and made perfectly secure. In arranging the internal chambers for the birds care should be taken that they are large enough for them to turn round in with ease. The cote should be fixed in a warmish spot, and not exposed to cold easterly and northerly winds. The top of the cask should be thatched or boarded, and this protection should come well over the holes and sides of the cote, so as to protect it from the heat of the sun in summer and the drifting of the rain in unseasonable weather.
The young fancier may employ one after the fashion shown on the [following page]: this, with its compartments, may be fixed up against the south or south-west side of a stable, barn, or out-house. The outside should be well painted, and the alighting places slightly slanted, so that the water or rain may not lodge on them, but run off to the ground outside. The whole should be so placed that it can be approached by a ladder, which ought not to be permanently attached to the cote, or it may be a means for the intrusion of cats and vermin.