“In equipping a [Greek:  peristereon] pigeons of good age should be secured, neither squabs nor veterans, and as many males as females.  Nothing is more prolific than the pigeon, for in forty days they conceive, lay, hatch and raise a brood, and they keep this up nearly all the year, stopping only from the winter solstice until spring.  Squabs are hatched in pairs, and as soon as they have grown up and have strength breed with their own mothers.  Those who fatten squabs in order to sell them dearer, make a practice of isolating them as soon as they are covered with feathers, then they cram them with white bread which has been chewed:[178] in winter this is fed twice a day, in summer three times a day, morning, noon and night, the midday meal being omitted in winter.  Those which are just beginning to have feathers are left in the nests, but their legs are broken, and, in order that they may be crammed, the food is put before the mothers, for they will feed themselves and their squabs on it all day long.  Squabs which are reared in this way become fat more quickly than others and have whiter flesh.

“A pair of pigeons will commonly sell at Rome for two hundred nummi, if they are well made, of good colour, without blemish, and of good breed:  some times they even bring a thousand nummi, and there is a report that recently L. Axius, a Roman of the equestrian order, declined that sum, refusing to sell for less than four hundred deniers."[179]

“If I could procure a fully equipped [Greek:  peristereon],” cried Axius, “as readily as I have bought a supply of earthen ware nests, I would have had it already on the way to my farm.”

“As if,” remarked Pica, “there were not many of them here in town.  But perhaps those who have pigeon houses on their roofs do not seem to you to be justified in calling them [Greek:  peristereonas] even though some of them represent an investment of more than one hundred thousand sesterces.  I advise you to buy out one of them and learn how to pocket a profit here in town, before you build on a large scale in the country.”

Of turtle doves

VIII.  “So much for that then,” said Axius.  “Proceed, please, to the next subject, Merula.”

“For turtle doves,” said Merula, “in like manner a house should be constructed proportioned to the number you intend to feed, and this, like the pigeon house, I have described, should have a door and windows and fresh water and walls and a vaulted roof, but in place of breeding nests the mutules should be extended through the walls or poles set in them in regular order with hempen mats on them, the lowest rank being not more than three feet from the floor, the rest at intervals of nine inches, the top rank six inches from the vault, and of equal breadth as the mutule stands out from the wall.  On these the doves are fed day and night.  For food they are given dry wheat, usually a half modius for every one hundred and twenty doves.  Every day the house should be cleaned out, that they may not be injured by the accumulation of manure, and because also it has its place in the economy of the farm.  The best time for fattening doves is about the harvest, for then the mothers are in their best condition and produce young ones not only in the largest number but the best for cramming:  so that is the time when they are most profitable.”