In going along with the pigeon racing promotion theme in this weeks discussion of the week we would like to know,
How did you get involved in pigeon racing or pigeon keeping in general?
You see, if we could figure out what got you interested in pigeon racing or pigeons in general for that matter we might be able to duplicate that to get more people interested in the sport and hobby. What worked for you should work for others right?. You already know my story you can read it here (About Me), I didn’t know anything about pigeons but when I realized how interesting and amazing they were I was hooked.
So go ahead and post your comments I’m looking forward to reading them! and see what we can do to help promote this great hobby of ours.
Discussion of the week, How did you get involved with pigeons?
The Leading Online Pigeon Racing and Racing Pigeons Magazine – The Pigeon Insider
Wow, a loving kid thats in to this huby in this day and age and a girl to boot! I have about 50 white homers and i would be willing to barter for a Pair of Roolers. have your father contact me at 1845-701-2893 if interested. i will give you some young ones that i rased if your father is interested in bartering with me. He sounds like a really nice man and your both lucky to have this love of the hubby in comon, it made me and my father feel close also.
i was moved by your story. “when you called the higher power answered”. wild pigions are the desendents of Rock Doves and you where correct in releasing them as these street birds carry dealy germs and can wipe out whole lofts if you allow them to eat or drink out of your domestic pigions feeders and water cans. Do you vacsenate your Birds?
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Ok so how we got started….
My daughter wanted a bird as a pet. But we had two cats, so i said we couldn’t have one in the house. She was 7 at the time. She told me that night as i tucked her into bed that she was going to pray and ask God for a bird. I laughed and told her she had my permsiion to go over my head. Ha ha….
A few days afterwards a pigeon landed on our house roof. I had been outside building something. The sound of the saw is what I think attracted it to our house. It was banded. We set out water and some wild bird seed. I made it a small house after a week as it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. One night I got out the ladder and climbed up onto the roof and with a flash light got the band numbers. We contacted the owner through a website for the racing pigeon group she was registered with. The nice lady said my daughter Shawnin could keep the bird if it choose to stay. So I set to work and made a aviary on the outside of our garage. It was made of old doors. The bottom a solid wood door the outside a glass screen door and the ends old windows with a roof and shingles. We named him racer. But come fall racer got a strange look in his eye when i let him out for his daily flight. I knew what he was thinking. Can’t explain it I just knew. Sure enough he headed south. He was from somewhere around St.Catherines. Shawnin was very upset. So I told her we would see about getting her a pair of birds.
After searching the internet and learning about all the different kinds of pigeons we settled on Rollers as they tended to stay close to home and they rolled! You see Shawnin like birds because they always caught her eye. She was born weighing only one pound four ounces. She was litterly the size of a barbie doll. She spend the first 5 months of her life in the hospitial until she was big enough to come home. During that time they gave her IV fluids to keep her hydrated. At once time they gave her too much. This pulled at her retinas and she has had to wear glasses since. Her vision may have been impaired but she never missed a bird flying by and it always made her happy to have seen one.
I contacted Ken Currie in North Bay and he agreed to try and breed us a pair come spring. But his birds were not producing. Come fathers day he called to say he still had none. The middle of summer I called and it was the same. So Knowing her birthday in August was comming soon I built a large coop in the garage and made an entrance into the aviary. Then the day before her birthday i took a net and whent into the city where i spend the day looking like a mad man and managed to catch only one male pigeon. The next day a wild female flew onto our rooftop. She was so hungry she flew down to eat out of my hand. So into the coop she went. I called Shawnin and took her in to see her birds. The phone rang. My wife brought the wireless one out into the coop. It was Mr.Currie, he has two pigeons for us and would be over the next weekend. He advised letting the wild ones go as they might make the young birds ill. So after i explained things we watched the two birds take to the air and vanish. The next weekend Mr.Currie came by and we got our first two birds. We named one Wisdom and one Dove. Turned out they were both male. Christmas day Wisdom was out flying and hit a cloths line at a neighbors behind our house. It has been calm but suddelny got very gusty. I didn’t find him for two days.
Dove seemed very lonely so come February we travelled to Barrie and picked up three birds from Tom Rankin. When spring came we sent for bands and enrolled Shawnin in the Canadian Pigeon Fanciers Association as a junior member. And there we were about 35 birds later going through our third winter. It was just this past year that I decided to breed white homers for wedding releases. We’ve given away many of our Rollers. Out of 35 we have 4 left. I am hoping to build up a descent sized wedding release business to provide my children with a part time job and income. We have close to 40 white homers now. Of course Dad gets to do most of the work..ha, ha. Well that is how we got started. I got the bug from my daughter and I think marketing this hobby to parents of those kids who just love being outside and involved with nature will bring alot of familes into the hobby. Just don’t let Dad know he’llbe doing more than building a coop or the whole idea couldget squashed before it gets started. 😉
I was brought up beside the railway station during the racing season
large liberations up to 35 thousand racing pigeons were released almost in my back yard
at the early age of 7 yrs my friends and I would catch those birds that failed to leave the site we would also retreve any eggs that were laid in hampers at that time well over 50 yrs ago most of the local lads had a bird or two
I then progressed on to going to older members that were racing on race days I would run almost a mile to the only clock in the club it was a case of first come first served, the fastest runners were always in demand
I supose I have been facinated by pigeons all of my life
while like all young lads growing up in a large family I never realy had the money to persue racing searous
having to wait to marry and raise my own family before taking up racing
like most on this site I would like to see more youth get involved
and everything must be done to incourage them into becoming involved in what
can only be described as a SUPER HOBBY
regards to all
petert
We had had a Mourning Dove for 3 years and when it died a friend of mine, who had raised homwers years before, obtained two young Blue Bars and gave them to me. A loft was rapidly constructed on the back of the garage and the birds moved in. Both were males. He obtained a pair of older females and we were in business. I joined a local pigeon club and started learning. The first Young Bird Season I didn’t race and the second YB season I started training with about 30 birds and had 13 left for the first hundred mile race which I entered. Three of the 13 came home the next day and the other 10 disappeared into a Pigeon Black Hole. The third, and latest year, I raised 80 or so young birds and flew six races gaining a club second place on one 200 mile race. Two 300 mile races were not flown considering that divorces are pretty expensive here. SHE said that the 300 miles was too much for the little fellows. Maybe next year.
I am 67 years old and grew up on the westside of n y city where my father flew homing pigions on the roof. he also bred and showed fancey short face tumblers as did his father before him up in Harlem. on everyother street guys flew Birds. it was a working mans hobby and i use to love to watch my father training them. i would tag along for the ride in his old Modal T ford that we do about 50 M.P.H. with all the windows rooled down in the summer as we had no A.C. or a radio. there where no electronic devices to destaract us from interacting with each other as my father and my older brother would discuss stradegy and after carfull examination of the birds feathering and eyes they would perdict which birds would be the first back to the loft and they where correct more times then not. we would live a guy on the roof with a Chico and when he saw the birds coming up over the water towers he would let the Chico go and the birds would brake and dive from out of the Pins as we called it, that where birds are flying so high that they looked like Pin heads so we did indeed have our own word coulture that let you know who really took the sport seriousrley or was just a flash in the pan novalest. l miss that about this sport today. they are some great memories. today i fly white homers in my yeard but my older brother still races them in Harden Park down in the bronx N.y.
ive been working with birds since i was about 6 and ever since i do this for ever now i have all my kid involved in it and a gain alot of friends thruog it so i quess ill die doing birds about you guy i met you guys by way of internet and its been nice and informative so far tyhanks for keeping the hubbie alive,,,,
Hi Chris,
I have always like pigeons. At the age of 7, I was going to a pigeon loft close to our home and found them so attractive. At the age of 17, I got my first pigeons and I still have some at the age of 74. What attracted me all this time has been all the process we might work to breed good and healthy pigeons: Selection, feedings, special mixture of seeds, health, medicine, genetics, etc.
I participated in races of racing homer for about 12 years and did very well, winning up to 15-20 first positions quite often. I was one of the first fancier in Canada to use the darkening system, studying all ‘Ad Schaerlaeckens articles’ and I still read all of them. Since that time I stopped racing them but I still have the same line that gave me so much success in those years. Each Fall, to make my selection of the young ones, I go to release them at 50 miles (80km) and keep only those that arrive first. I no longer have the possibilities to train them a lot more.
Now my pleasure is to breed some fancy pigeons and Saddle Homers with all those nice colors. I like to show them and even I visited pigeon show in USA, Europe and Canada
Raymond Julien,
Canada.
When I was about 13 hyears old a friend of mine talked about pigeons and I went to his house to see. He had rollers and there were so many pretty combinations and they were nothing like pigeons I had seen around town before that. He talked about daughter to this one and son to another and he flew them as they rocketing up in flight together in a tight group. They rolled like fire balls and it was so incredibe like nthing I have ever seen. I went to visit a few times and eventually he brought me to his source a big breeder and very popular guy in the roller world at the time,Marty Slazas;I continued to visit and view these spectacular demonstrations and then There was a Homer guy also not far from me. This was an old timer. He was a big racer and eventually I met numerous pigeon racers and Pigeon keepers within a short bike ride away. I then tried to build a loft in our garage and received 5 homers from one of these homer guys. I had fun training them but had a difficult time with no trap as they would fly through the main garage door and retrieve them after dark. I eventually lost them and later built a real coop but this time I settled for rollers and enjoyed them for a veryu long time. This was my start with pigeons. If there were clubs that shared experiences with little cost maybe young people would take an interest!
I had liked birds all my life, especially since 2nd grade, that was when they became my favorite animal. When I was 9, my dad decided to get me two pairs of utility kings. I figured I’d try it, since I’d had chickens forever. My dad had told me stories about his birds. Of course it wasn’t long before I wanted homers, rollers, and every other neat-o breed my dad had. It wasn’t long before I knew more about pigeons than everyone else I knew. In my free time, I was out with them, or learning/talking about them. Altogether, I’ve had Homers, Rollers (flying and show), Indian Fantails, WOE Tumblers, Kings, Carneau, Runts, Nuns, Satinettes, and Lahores. (As of now, I only have my homers, satinettes for droppers, and indian fantails just for fun.)
Of course the idea of racing caught my attention. I had wanted to for years, but finally in the fall of 07, I decided I’d try it. So in 2008, I flew my first young bird season, and I don’t plan on quitting until I’m forced to. I won my first two races on the club level, and hopefully I’ll be able to repeat that. This year I only flew one race, so next year I’m planning on coming back with a bang!
In 1975, a good friend of mine, who also raced pigeons, gave me a Brittany Spaniel puppy when I lived in Iowa. I went to the library and checked out a book on training bird dogs. The book suggested that you use either quail or pigeons to train the dog as pheasants had less scent during the summer and were harder to use training a new bird dog. I didn’t know where to get any quail, but had access to an old barn with pigeons. When the friend found out I was using pigeons to train the dog, he gave me a dozen youngbirds, and told me how to settle and train them. I worked approximately 25 miles from where I worked so I trained them to my work before training them on line. In the fall I joined the local Ames, IA racing pigeon club that flew with the Des Moines RPC. On the very first race, I shipped 6 of the 12 birds. On race day I’ll bet I had 50 birds arrive at my house, only 2 of which were mine. I won that race and have not been without racing pigeons since. When I moved to Georgia in 1976, the pigeons came with me!