How did you get involved in pigeon racing or pigeon keeping in general?

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?

 

How did you get involved with pigeon racing?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?

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225 thoughts on “How did you get involved in pigeon racing or pigeon keeping in general?

  1. I am 94. Times change. The environment fostering pigeon raising and racing is gone. Fanciers have not changed their rhetoric so the sport is dying. In my youth pigeons were everywhere. Everyone had a back yard in which they could build a loft. X % of boys were interested by themselves in watching, hearing, then starting in the sport. Now a big part in numbers live in apartments. They have never handled a tool. There is no space for a loft. BUT THE INNER URGE WITHIN ALL PEOPLE IS TO RELATE TO ANIMALS AND BIRDS. THEY KEEP DOGS, CANNARIES, AND GOLDFISH. They would love to keep pigeons but 1. Don’t even know the sport, never ever heard of it. 2. They are restricted, a big %, in no available space.

    You need, to promote, money, publicity, and smarts. 1. You should get a program, see smart people to read it and make suggestions. Then change and improve your program. You could then write writers journals and offer $500 _ $1000 for any author who wrote and got published a pigeon article in a general publication read by part of the general public.. you could give suggested chapter headings saying all info will be freely given to any writer who asked a pigeon racing club. Subjects such as where did it start, when, where is it centred , cost of pigeons, often free to a young enthusiast up to xxxxxx
    For champion stock in Belgium or where ever.. start a fund to promote pigeon racing, suggest fanciers leave something in their wills to the fund.
    Take a cross section survey of 12,or 16 year olds and find what % know anything about 1.keeping pigeons or 2. Racing pigeons. You will find only a tiny% has ever heard of it. We don’t like animals I cages, here is a sport where birds fly many miles to get back to their home. They are allowed to fly and go free every day but instead, they want to go back to a lift that the boy built where it can be fed and watered and handled by the handler. I am not a story teller. . No one in the sport has ever hired a good pro writer to visit a couple lofts, see the bird truck loaded, see how they time the birds, nor seen these birds close up or handled them. The papers, journals, and mags are dying together the good material that pigeon fanciers never send in…I have left part of my estate to nature charities, wilderness, animals, etc. Butaltho pigeon racing used to be the poor mans sport, many now have big bucks. Couldn’t or wouldn’t they leave a thousand or two to the fund promoting your great sport? Good luck.

  2. Well for me Chris , I have to say it’s in the blood , my grandfather, my dad , his brothers , and his brother in-laws were all in the sport of racing pigeons. I was 12 yrs old before my father allowed me to have my own loft . The first pair of birds I had were gifted to me by a fancier friend of my fathers ,a cheq hen she had one eye and a Blue cock called hoppy ,yes he had one leg ( lost it while racing ) I didn’t care I thought they were great birds . I won my first race at the same age with a Black cock I had bred my self , 89 miles I guess you would call it a sprint race by today’s standards. I have been privileged to meet some wonderful people through being in the sport some went on to become very well known fliers and even the ones that didn’t ,still wonderful people.Apart learning a great deal from my father and uncles . One person in particular that I learnt a great deal about pigeons from . A Mr Peter Crawford from Ipswich U.K. A very well respected pigeon man today Mr Crawford is now 91 yrs of age and still flying.My self well I have had some 20yrs away from the sport but it’s still there . In fact I have now got a team of birds and I shall once again indulge in the sport and I’m now soon to be 68 yrs old .So as I said before it’s in the blood ,once it’s there you can’t ignore it . Even my wife back in the day “ If I can’t compete with the birds I had better Join you “ So she became a fancier with her own loft and team of birds and she done very well even I say so . In fact she is joining me as a partner in this latest venture
    .

  3. I actually got involved in the sport after marrying a former flyer. After 10, yrs of marriage, we were in a feed store some miles away from home, and while looking at a bulletin board, found a notice about a R.P.Club looking for new members. WE copied down the contact number and attended their next club meeting where my husband was voted in , Not me just yet, I was still skeptacle about the whole thing, but the guys started fixing him up with y.b.s and breeder pairs and AWAY WE GO! After spectating for a couple of years, I fell for the sport AND ALL OF IT’S ATTRIBUTES, JOINED THE CLUB, AND SET A CLUB SPEED RECORD MY FIRST SEASON FLYING. Not bad for a NEWBIE! However, circumstances befell that caused us to have to stop flying for several years, and then my husband retired and one day out of the blue, a white pigeon, no doubt released at a wedding or funeral, I suppose, landed in our back yard and simply let my husband walk up to it and catch it on the ground, Well I’m guessing you know the rest….. he searched the web looking for birds, found a man from ALma, AR. called him and he gave us ten pr. of breeder pairs of birds and this is our 4th yr. back flying. Enjoying it greatly! And that is my story, and I am currently the SEC./TREAS. of our club.

  4. I grew up around rooster people who kept rollers for the hawks to chase so they weren’t eat baby chicks then some ???? people (ASPA) started getting in everyone’s business finally stop a family’s & friends freedoms do we have to stick together and fight for what we love if not people who have no morals or values for our right will be trying to stop our love for our feathered friends so remember stick together and fight

  5. Hi I got started in pigeons when we were given 5 ark angles now we have rollers and some good homers

  6. I remember I was six years old at the time, (1970) when my step father brought home some pigeons. He used to work on the docks where there were pigeons by the hundreds. I was fascinated by the different colors of these birds. We had a little coop (6×4) with about twelve pigeons. Some of them had rings, some were pretty splash street pigeons. In late 1970, we had to move from where we were living, (lower Belmont, Suffolk Road) at the time to about a mile and a half further up the road in Belmont.

    After we moved to our new address, all the pigeons came with the family, me my parents and three siblings, two girls and a boy. Anyway, most of the pigeons got away and went back to their old home and stuck around the area, while two remained – a pair of blue bars. A slate hen and a blue white flight cock. Out of that pair came a dozen. By that time I was about eight and my parents handed over the coop to me.

    It wasn’t until I was fourteen, when I came home from school, I saw a beautiful looking pigeon hanging around the coop. It was a blue checker cock, but I used to called him the “spotted one” as I didn’t know the coloring terms for pigeons. When the Spotted pigeon trapped, I handled the bird and I was surprised at how big he felt and had smooth feathers. He stayed with my common pigeons and bred with them. I found out that his off springs were flying longer and faster than the pigeons I had, and that was when I decided to get flying pigeons like the Spotted One.

    It wasn’t until in the early eighties that I bought my very first pair of pigeons for ten dollars from a man in the area who we used to call, Boo Jay. The cock was a red check and the hen was a pretty dark check gay pied. I took the hen and bred her with the Spotted One, and later on, I bought a red hen from Boo Jay to put with the red checker cock. That was when I got hooked on racing pigeons, and as the years went by, I used to buy Pigeon Pictorials and got a wealth of information from them.

    Around 1984-5 I made friends with a fancier who lived Industry Lane named Petrie. It was him who I got a wealth of information on racing pigeons, and he gave me about four pairs of pigeons to start off my new foundation stock. Of course the common street pigeons that I had before died out. Petrie had some Sions, Bricoux and Busshaerts as most of them were red checks and blue checks.
    Alas! My Spotted pigeon died in early1990. I was so sad, as I had him for thirteen years.

    By the early nineties, I had moved eighteen miles away from Belmont to Arima. That time I was working as a Security Officer and had built a13 x 4 loft with two sections – one for the old birds, the other for young birds. I started doing my own thing by carrying the descendants from Boo Jay and Petrie cross to toss all over the country.

    By 2001, I later joined a local pigeon club, and flew my birds. I won two young bird races back then, and well…as the saying goes,the pigeon racing bug bit me.
    Since my wife passed away in 2003, I took a Sabbatical from racing pigeons.

    Now I am in my early fifties, I can truly say, that pigeons will always be with me, as I am back in the game of racing pigeons.

  7. I was in my teens when a neighbor found a pigeon in her backyard with a bruised wing. I nursed it back to health in a 3X3X3 wire cage. The man next door brought me a hen for its mate from the wild pigeons where he worked. From there I went on to racing pigeons with a purchase of Charles Heitzman’s Sions. An interesting side benefit in all this was that my Dad loved the birds and helped me build a loft and take care of them. Before that, we weren’t very close.

  8. I only had pigeons for training dogs for years. I used homers because I never killed them or let the dogs mouth them and they came back to my big barn. When I retired from dogs I kept them. Then I thought – if I’m gonna have them can’t I race them so now I’m well on my way to racing just this year! They’re spoiled and my babies follow me around the inside the coop….funny how they get attached.

  9. I got started in pigeons when an old Greek gentleman gave me 2 pair of king. then later on after I was married a friend gave me some roller. and later my x wife’s uncle gave me some homers and I was hooked I have roller and homers today and love it and try to keep the hobby going by giving any one interested some birds to hook them and keep the sport going me three youngest son are hook as bad or worse than I am make it even more fun

  10. My uncle and his friend keep a lot of pigeons so as a youngster a spent lot of time with them and there birds and enjoy the race days but love the long distant channel races the best just think they are special birds with heart of a lion they still amaze me to this day .

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