I agree! I did toss out the first set of eggs he produced with one of my hens because I didn’t want them to hatch while I was on vacation, but now that I’m back, I’m eager to breed from him.
“Rocket” is settling in nicely. I banded him with my own bands as well, he’s here to stay :)
You’re definitely correct. I think a lot of small-time racers have their pigeons’ best interests at heart but when you get in the big leagues and big sums of money for the winner become involved, there is always unethical behavior. The same can be said about practically all animal racing, sadly...
Pellets are okay. I find that they make the droppings looser and messier if they constitute most of the diet though. I will mix pellets into the seed mix whenever I am breeding birds to provide easy nutrition to the babies and feeding parents.
I feed Versele Laga or Brown’s brand pigeon feed...
I’m always impressed by the power of a bird’s gizzard to process such foods. Once in a while I will have wood ducks walk up from the water to gorge on acorns in the yard.
The girls aren’t letting him leave:
I’m glad he was okay! I still remember a few years ago I had to grab one of my young birds and hold him upside down with his beak open after he swallowed the biggest acorn I’ve ever seen and was stumbling around trying and failing to get it up. That was the only time I’ve had anything like that...
New blue bar showed up bright and early after my flock did a loft fly today, trapped inside, flew out again with them later in the day and came back in again tonight.
Really weird band on this guy though, I can see he has a racing chip but there is absolutely no information on it. He is...
The canker was mentioned because the pigeon was presenting a lump (pictured in the other thread) that was definitely under the skin and below the beak/nostrils.
I haven’t had so much as a mouse get into this loft since it was built...
I guess he went in through the trap door yesterday and I didn’t notice and locked him in all night, poor guy. At least he was a really polite cat and there’s not a feather out of place. It could’ve been a total massacre...
Typo on my end, but still 17 is pretty old. I am still on the hunt for a similarly elderly male pigeon that I can try to pair her up with. Her old mate was just a random young bird that unfortunately got taken by a hawk and she has been a widow since.
That’s interesting! I have lost more males...
My loft maxes out around 10-12 birds so I am typically only adding 1-2 young birds each year to the flock to offset any losses to predators. There’s definitely different schools of thought as far as flying these birds goes, having separate lofts for old and young birds, etc. I’ve been doing...
Thanks for sharing! Many of the pigeon fanciers locally that I’ve met are in your father’s generation or a similar age.
The Faircount Pigeon Show in Connecticut is still popular. It’s the only pigeon show I’ve been able to find in the New England area.
American robins, eastern bluebirds, and other members of the thrush family are going crazy for the holly berries in my yard right now and leaving the same droppings. You’re watching seed distribution at work :)
You don’t want the droppings to accumulate especially near your flock. But as far as...
I’ve never had an issue with pigeons using milk crates as nest boxes as long as a bowl is provided in the bottom for the nest itself. If you provide them with nesting material they’ll stuff the crate and make a nest also.
When I bred my giant runts they used a standard sized milk crate. It did...
It’s interesting you bring up avian influenza since the cases that they just revealed in California were from poultry house workers, not people helping injured wildlife. It’s a shame BYC doesn’t yet have a medal for leaving a judgmental comment that contributes nothing :hmm
A common disease...
Exactly. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in many of these cases with livestock if the vultures were attracted to the birth site by smell and sight simply to clean up the mess, and then decided to take advantage of an easy meal later on.
On the flip side, I wouldn’t trust black vultures around...
If they can access the food in the run, they unfortunately probably won’t differentiate that between the food set out specifically for them.
Maybe seasonal changes are causing more frenzied feeding by the wild birds? I would probably stop putting out food for the wild birds if you’re attracting...
I’m not sure if you’re using an insulated container.
If you’re just using very hot water to break ice out of a jug, it doesn’t stay dangerously hot for more than a couple seconds when exposed to the freezing air/dumped into a frozen waterer. I do this for my pigeons and just keep their face...