OCR Text |
Show PROFIT IN RAISING PIGEONS Pennsylvania Farmer's Wife Clears $600 in Year Girl Does the Housework. "On two hundred pairs of pigeons I have cleared $600 a year for the last four years," declared the wife of a Pennsylvania farmer living near Har-risburg, Har-risburg, when asked about the chances women on the farm had of making money. "I had been a school teacher when I married, and having seen a lot of farmers and their wives while teaching in rural communities I determined deter-mined ' that I would be different. 1 would keep a hired girl, paying her wages by money earned by keeping bees and chickens for profit. "I stuck to that idea for nearly ten years, and during that time nevei cleared more than $50 a year on my chickens. It was always the bees that paid my girl. Finally I heard of a man in Montgomery county, this state, who was making a fortune raising squabs. "The children had always had a few pairs of pigeons flying around the place eating up the garden and doing every thing else we didn't want them to, but 1 had never thought of making money by raising the birds. Being discouraged discour-aged by my experience as a chicken raiser I determined to pay the man in Montgomery county a visit. Again, it was the bees that paid expenses. "There were several thousand pairs of pigeons on this Montgomery county farm, and it was quite evident that the White English Owl Pigeons. owner not only knew his business, but was interested in his birds. He gave me all the information I wanted, and I was so much encouraged that I went back and invested in twenty pairs oi homers and an equal number of runts "Following the advice I had received I bought only mated birds, and as a consequence I began to make money from the start. At the end of that year my profits were sufficient to lead my husband to advise me to sell all the chickens excepting just enough tc keep the family supplied in eggs and devote my money and time to pigeons. "According to my experience it takes four times as much time and money to raise chickens as to raise squabs. Incubators In-cubators and brooders are not needed for one thing. Pigeons hatch their own eggs. They are careful to keep the young squabs covered for the first few days or until the young ones grow feathers. They also attend to feeding their young, which relieves you of mixing mix-ing and sometimes even cooking food as you have to do for young chickens. All you have to do is to give the old birds the proper food. "When the squab is from twenty to twenty-five days old it is ready for the market, and if properly fattened should weigh something under one pound Squabs are sold wholesale by the dozen, and the standard weight is eight ppunds to the dozen, but where there is a cross of runts and homers the weight is almost four pounds heavier I often have squabs that weigh a pound each. "The pigeon house must be kept clean or the death rate among the squabs will eat up all the profit. Tne rooms of all my pigeon houses are as impervious to rain and snow as the roof of the best dwelling, but at all times there should be an abundance of ventilation. "Concrete floors are the best, because be-cause they keep out rats, which are about the worst enemy of the squab raiser." I keep my floor covered at feast an inch deep in sand and air slacked lime. This is raked over once a week and a fresh sprinkling of lime added. "The nests are built along the back of the house in six tiers, allowing two nests for each pair of birds. In each nest there is a shallow earthen dish, in which the nest is built. "Tobacco stems, the refuse from tobacco to-bacco factories, make the best materials materi-als for the birds to build their nests. A good supply should be kept in each pen for this purpose. Where hay or straw is used it is next to impossible to keep the nests and birds free from vermin. My runs or flying yards are ail covered with wire netting and built in such a way as to have a tree or the shade of one over at least part of it. Though pigeons are fond of the sun and take delight in sun baths, there are days in the summer when they seek tho shade." |