Keith C: Conservative Political Platforms?

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

No problem. I raise mostly homers and Birmingham rollers. Rollers are fun. They are easy to rehome to a new loft at any age. They are a small pigeon. Most weigh 6 to 8 ounces. They come in lots of colors. There are probably hundreds of different families or strains of Birmingham rollers.

They breed best on a 16% to 18% protein diet. They roll best on a 9% to 11%, restricted diet that is high in carbohydrates. Just like a fat guy isn't going to run a marathon, a fat roller flys poorly and rarely rolls. Rollers need to be slightly thin on the keel bone to fly well.

Birds of prey, in particular, Cooper's hawks in my area, are the biggest threat to flying rollers. When the rollers come out of a roll, they are lower down, dizzy and tired and hawks and falcons easily catch them. Flying later in the day, after most birds of prey have eaten, can reduce your losses. During the Fall and Spring Passage Flights of birds of prey, it's best to keep your rollers locked in their loft.

Most of my rollers will roll about 30 feet.. I do get occasional roll downs.

What would you like to know?

Keith

My mom had a half dozen or so homing pigeons when I was a kid as a hobby. Different types, different colors, different sizes. I have no idea what breeds. We would take a few in a box in the back of the car if we went anywhere and let them go. Most trips were only across the county. A few trips across the state. The only long trip was on a vacation to WV. When we arrived we opened the box and let them go. They circled the car several times trying to get their bearings and then they all flew off toward the east heading home. We got home a few days later and they were waiting for us. Probably only 200 miles, which is apparently nothing amazing for a pigeon. It seemed impressive to me that they got to WV packed in a box and could find their way home flying across 200 miles of land they had never seen before.

The circling behavior your pigeons made around your car is called routing. While routing, pigeons determine where they are on the earth's magnetic field, look for visual cues and listen for and detemine their orientation to low frequency sounds they know from home.

Some years back a scientist blindfolded 100 homing pigeons and released them 100 miles from their loft. They all made it back, though they had trouble landing. He tried it again and all the same pigeons were lost, likely due to increased solar activity that temporarily changed the earth's magnetic field.

Keith

Thats a pile to digest in itself. Thanks a bunch. Im gonna get some at some point.
I do have a peregrine around, and some kestrels, along with the redtails, but no chickens lost to a B.O.P. yet. The chickens are fenced in with a large run and high fence, but pigeons would be a different story. I had no idea you could fly them at certain times. Never wouldve id have known about their diet and "performance." Very interesting
stuff. How big of a roost box would say, 12 rollers need?...just for an idea.

Rollers are typically housed diffently depending on whether you are flying them or breeding them. Kit boxes for flying rollers are typically 4' high, 4' wide and 30" deep and will hold 25 to 30 rollers. For breeding rollers 2 square feet per pair is plenty. All additional levels, shelves and perches in a loft add to the total square feet. You can fly them out of your chicken coop too. It's typically better to fly adults separately from young birds because of the difference in their abilities.

Red tails and kestrels are of little threat to your rollers. Peregrines are bad. If you can get the kestrels to nest near your coop, they will protect your rollers from the Peregrines, while their young are in the nest and first learning to fly and hunt. Kestrel nest boxes are easy to make. My friend James had kestrels that lived in one barn and a red tail in a weathering pen, right next to two lofts I had pigeons in to train dogs with. I never had a single issue with a bird of prey there.

Keith

Keith, could you describe for me, what the Rolling you are talking about. I assume thats where rollers get their name. I have never heard of them before.

Lee, Birmingham rollers do a series of backflips in the air, while dropping in height, that's called rolling.

Not my birds.



Tumblers, another type of pigeon, do mostly single flips in the air, while going forward.

A few other breeds, such as doneks, spin sideways, while going forward.

Parlor tumblers do one to a few backwards flips on the ground.

Parlor rollers do lots of backwards flips on the ground. To certify they have to roll 70 feet or more down a 10' aisle way in competition. I bought out the 4 time world champion last summer. He had birds that rolled over 1100 feet. The best I can get out of them in my rougher ground is a little over 600 feet in a not very straight line.

Here's a video of some mediocre parlor rollers. Not my birds.



I export more parlor rollers than any other breed of pigeon.

Keith

Thanks Keith, boy, I get dizzy watchin them! How do they get their wits back after doing such antics?! some of those are very pretty marked birds! Never been around any tame pigeons.

Lee, they get very dizzy. Sometimes Birmingham rollers will roll into the ground. Parlor rollers will sit with their head lulling around after they stop rolling.

There are lots of expressed colors in pigeons, made from a few color genes, lots of modifiers and some patterning genes. I have over 60 apparent different colors in homing pigeons.

I have around 40 apparent colors in coturnix quail.

Keith

I have a neighbor that races his birds some. He seldom gets beat. However he sent some birds up north to a loft this year and they all got hit by paragons.
I have seen him turn down some huge money for his birds. I am talking tens of thousands for a bird. His wife gets rather upset with him from time to time. LOL

Furstroker, I had both "rollers" and "tumblers" when I was kid. They are a hoot to watch. Most folks think they are sick or they are getting hit by something.

That was many years ago but if memory serves me, they are short beaked birds and have lot of trouble feeding their young. I used to keep feral pigeons and swap eggs to raise the young birds I wanted.

Twitter followers are going the way of the carrier pigeon....

Carrier pigeons are still fairly common. You're thinking of passenger pigeons.

Keith

Birmingham rollers are very prolific breeders and have long beaks. They are great parents.

There are a few types of tumblers and a lot of other breeds of pigeons, whose beaks are to short to feed their young. People use other breeds of pigeons, called pumpers, to feed those short beaked pigeons' babies. Pumpers get their name because they make a pumping motion when filling the babies' crops. Homing pigeons, Birmingham rollers, New York Flying Flights and feral pigeons are commonly used as pumpers. The eggs or just hatched babies are put in place of the pumper's eggs. They can't tell the difference.

Keith