. The national standard squab book. Pigeons. APPENDIX G 331 HOW I WET $4000 A YEAR WITH SQUABS, by Oscar Maerzke. 1 have been in the squab business thirteen years. I nave a mixed flock containing both common pigeons and Homers. The squabs from the Homers are larger and biing more money, and the Homers breed better than the com- mons. I make $4000 a year profit. I always have run the business alone, up to last year, when I took a partner, Charles Lutovsky. In the county where we live (Wisconsin) many of the farmers breed common pigeons. We have an automo- bile with a rack on back to hold pigeon
. The national standard squab book. Pigeons. APPENDIX G 331 HOW I WET $4000 A YEAR WITH SQUABS, by Oscar Maerzke. 1 have been in the squab business thirteen years. I nave a mixed flock containing both common pigeons and Homers. The squabs from the Homers are larger and biing more money, and the Homers breed better than the com- mons. I make $4000 a year profit. I always have run the business alone, up to last year, when I took a partner, Charles Lutovsky. In the county where we live (Wisconsin) many of the farmers breed common pigeons. We have an automo- bile with a rack on back to hold pigeon crates. My part- ner goes out daily in this automobile, to gather up the squabs from the farmers, cover- ing regular routes. He brings them home aUve and I kill and pluck them and ship them along with the squabs we raise. We have shipped squabs as far East as New York. Just now we are shipping to Chicago, about 150 miles distant. We use any kind of a second-hand box, provided it is clean and fairly tight, for shipping, put- ting a layer of ice on top of the squabs and nailing the box up tight, empties are not returned to us. My home is half a mile down the street from the squab plant. I have built one residence from squab profits and am now building another alongside my present home. It costs us $3500 a year to feed our birds, or a little less than $1 a year a pair. An im- portant part of the daily ration is a wild seed mixture, bought cheaply. We get it from a brewery. It is what is left after cleaning barley for malt. The brewery, having no further use for this refuse, sells it cheap. It is perfectly clean, dry, sweet and good, how- ever. The pigeons are very fond of it and it does them good. Of course, when they are eating it they are not eating the more expensive wheat and corn. The mixture contains the small black kernels of wild buckwheat, also cockle seed, flaxseed, the seed of pigeon grass, and some barley. We store it in bins and it does not have much of a tendency to
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishe, booksubjectpigeons
