You ever have any dealings with carrier pigeons? Are those the same as homing pigeons? What kind of distances do this birds travel and at what speed? Was curious and I knew you raised pigeons.

Flying pigeons can be a lot of fun. All pigeons are different, some fly short distances son long. Some fly better North to South and some better East to West. There is a to know about flying pigeons. Join a combine (Club) in your area if there is one. Remember when building a loft, make sure it is easy to clean.

Carrier pigeons have become a show breed now. The eye ceres and wattles make it hard for the adult birds to see straight ahead, which negatively effects their flying abilities. Carrier pigeons have also been bred to be very long bodied and long legged, which also hurts their flying ability.

These are not mine. I don't have any carriers.



For distance and carrying messages the best pigeon breed to use is homing pigeons, which are also called racing homers. They are the fastest flying bird in the world. One homing pigeon flew 92 miles per hour in a wind tunnel for 20 minutes. Another homing pigeon averaged 126 miles per hour, for over 500 miles during a race with a very strong tail wind pushing it along. The only birds that are faster are falcons, while on a dive, where they are basically falling. On a straight flight, homing pigeons are faster.

Homing pigeons are commonly raced back from 1200 miles. The record return flight was made by a homing pigeon from Great Britain, that was sold to a loft in China. It got loose and was back in it's original home loft in 17 days.

Homing pigeons have magnetic iron in their skulls, so they can determine the earth's magnetic fields.. They can see 6 times farther than humans. They can differentiate 60 shades of red. They have UV scale vision well past humans and can see colors we can't. They can hear very low frequency sound waves, up to 1 1/2 miles long, so my homing pigeons, sitting here in Ohio can actually hear both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans breaking against the shores.

Keith

That's high speed internet right there, 126 miles per hour. Lol. Keith or GT either one of y'all ever raced pigeons? I guess you have to raise them from chicks so they will no where home is?

How do they know where to go to and comeback to. How do they figure out home if there a continent away.

Homing pigeons mostly only fly back to their home lofts. Some have been trained to fly back and forth between 2 lofts and some, especially in WWII, were taught to look for and fly back to mobile lofts. Homing pigeons have magnetic iron in their skulls, so they can determine the earth's magnetic fields. They can see 6 times farther than humans. They can differentiate 60 shades of red. They have UV scale vision well past humans and can see colors we can't. They can hear very low frequency sound waves, up to 1 1/2 miles long, so my homing pigeons, sitting here in Ohio can actually hear both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans breaking against the shores. They use the compass points, their vision and extremely low frequency sounds to navigate, back to their homes.

Keith

That’s cool info.
We had a banded pigeon show up at the house so the wife started feeding it. It stayed so long and got so used to her she could catch it. She got the number off the band and started researching. Turns out the pigeon had never returned to its “loft” in GA after being let go in the Carolinas on a race I’m guessing. She called the club that the bird belonged too and they said they’d come get it. She also found out of a bird does that, they kill it.
So...she cut the band and ole boy stayed at the house for a few months roosting on the edge of the roof every night. He was so used to my wife she would get a ladder and get him off the roost and sit on the front porch just talking to him and petting him. When she was done she’d set him back on the roof.
We knew when he started coming in with friends that he wouldn’t stay long. They’d circle several time but he was the only one that would land.
Eventually he would come in and circle then head off with his friends for the night.

Now fast forward a couple of months and my wife is driving by one of our schools and sees pigeons on the roof. She pulls in and parks and gets out and starts walking to the birds. All fly but one. She does her little “whistle” she would do when he would circle the house before landing and this bird flies down at her feet. She sits down and is able to pick him up. They have their bonding moment and when she set him down he flew off to join his friends who had moved down the roof about 50 yards. That made my wife’s day, lol.

I have never raced, though I have owned 6 National Champions, that I bought from a friend of mine, who had the best record in Ohio for 22 years. I sold the 2 birds that hatched the combine race winner for Ohio a few years ago.

I raise a lot of rare colored racing homers. I enjoy playing with color genetics. I like really good birds too, so I cross them into my color projects.

I an not a big fan of betting. Much of racing is about betting. I'll probably never race. I have birds, that if well handled, could beat about anything in the US, from friends of mine, who are the best breeders in the US.

I had a huge surge in cheap, good, homing pigeon sales when Covid started. People bought them to use basically as cellphones, figuring there would be a collapse. I had runs on quail, chickens and rabbits, for producing food too. Covid was financially very, very good for me last year. I have a huge spike in sales since the election too.

Keith

You'd be a great dog breeder.

So I’m assuming during a race they take them far away and turn them loose and see which one gets back first.

A lot of young homing pigeons get lost during training. Storms, birds of prey that cause a young bird to panic fly and solar flares, that disrupt the earth's magnetic field cause a lot of the losses. It's typically not worth the expense of picking up a run of the mill homer that gets lost. Typically racers will tell the people who found it to let it go and it will fly home, if the bird is to far to conveniently pick up.

Some of those birds do turn out decent. My friend, who had the best record for 22 years, bought a trapped young homing pigeon, that was in with a bunch of trapped feral pigeons at the Lucasville Ohio Swapmeet for $3.00. He traced the band and contacted the owner, who was in New York. The owner told him what it was out of and that he should keep and breed it. It sired Shorty, a National Champion, who sired and grandsired many National Champions. I have a lot of that bird's genetics in my loft and a lot of other guys do too.

Keith

Keith have you ever gotten in any gold band races? There can be big money in racing pigeons if you are willing to bet. JMO

The homing pigeons typically fly back to different lofts, that can be over 100 miles apart, so the winner is decided by average wing speed during the race. There is a microchip in a band, on the pigeons leg. It is scanned into a computer before the race when it is shipped to the release site. When the bird gets home the microchip is read by a clock attached to a wire as it enters it's loft. The clock is taken to the club and the results are downloaded into the computer.

Keith

That's some interesting stuff Keith. When used as messengers I guess the message was fixed to the leg?

How is it calculated? Is the avg. wing speed in, Ft/per/min, yd/per/min, mi/per/min, etc?

I have only sort of sent birds to one futurity race. A guy I have sold a lot of birds to talked me into banding some young birds for him for a big futurity race. He paid full price for the birds and offered to split the winnings with me. We had 3 birds place in the low end of the top 20 and all 6 birds made it through the season and money race. I got a total of slightly less than $500.00, plus my price for the birds.

I have some friends, one in particular, who send lots of birds to one loft and futurity races.

Keith

You can buy pigeon message capsules, that attach to the leg of pigeons, on Ebay and from Amazon.

Keith

I believe all American Union races are in yards per minute and all International Federation races in meters per minute.

To do well on a 500 mile race, under normal conditions, a homing pigeon needs to fly faster than 60 miles an hour. To do well in a 1200 mile race, under normal conditions, a homer needs to fly over 50 miles an hour. Bad weather, especially a head wind, can slow down the speed of a winning pigeon a lot.

Keith

Howdy Keith, great information. Ive been meaning to ask you a question on "Rollers?"
Not sure if that's the proper term, but was wondering if you had any experience with them?
Know of someone? I think they'd be a hoot to have around.
I imagine i could section off an elevated roost for them in my chicken shed so they cant
mess below but,...now im thinking out loud.

Didnt mean to hijack but thought 2 pigeon threads may be redundant. My bad...

One loft races are races for young birds, where all of the birds are trained from and race back to the same loft. Young birds are birds that were permanently banded that year that are raced that year. The one loft races can be very expensive to enter. Some charge many thousands of dollars for a perch fee. The big African race pays $1,000,000.00 to the winning homer.

Some of the large Taiwanese races pay close to 2 million dollars for first place.

Last year the highest selling racing homer sold for $1,900,000.00.

Keith