I found this pigeon in my farm but it cant fly much

[Lolame777]

Hi everyone,

I found this pigeon in our driveway on our farm and I caught it and kept it in my aviary with my quails. I think it's a female but can't be certain, sometimes it acts like a male but can't tell. I went and got some high flyer pigeons to keep it company so seems happy.

For some reason it can fly but no higher than a max of 2 metres up but goes down pretty quick. I did a full body inspection and nothing is wrong and looks healthy. I would have left it out in the wild but I've got 3 cats and as you know they were all stalking it to try catch it. My other pigeons bred and now there are 5 pigeons. As much as I want them to fly and be free I can't as my cats are always around and waiting for an opportunity. Also if I let the other pigeons go the pigeon won't be able to catch up due to its limited ability of flying.

Can anyone help me or just give me suggestions on what to do, what not to do, whether it's a female or male, what breed of pigeon it is?. We named it Brownie (Brown pigeon) and her 2 other buddies are Snowy and Snowflake (pure white and greyish white) and they've got their young gorgeous babies which we haven't named yet )

 

[Qwerty3159]

That’s pretty odd. This definitely happens with heavier bodied breeds but this is a fairly typical pigeon.

I noticed that the primary wing feathers on the red pigeon are proportionally much shorter than on the other pigeons you have. Theirs extend at least to the halfway point of the tail. Your red pigeon also has a really short tail. I’m assuming this is causing some of its difficulties with flight. Could be a developmental deformity or merely a breed trait. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to encourage it to fly more, and I agree with you that letting this one out isn’t a good idea.

I’m not sure what breed of pigeon this might be, sorry!

 

[Lolame777]

Yeah its interesting how it turned up at our property in the first place....I can see what you mean about the feathers, it certainly has shorter feathers than the other 2 high flyers which probably explains why it's like that. Well at least it's in a big enclosure with some friends and they get along really well, I'm just hoping it finds the love of its life as I'm still not sure whether it's female or male, now that I've got another 2 young pigeons perhaps it might pair up with one of them although it doesn't seem all that interested, it acts more like a female than a male altogether so let's see anyway. Thanks so much for your help