Gun Dog Forum

I am looking to get started with homing pigeons for dog training. I want about 40 pigeons to start with and I am looking for some plans to an inexpensive loft to build. Any suggestions or ideas I would appreciate. Can you buy already trained homing pigeons if so how do you train them to get acustomed to your loft? I would also like to keep about 20 barn pigeons at all times to shoot for the dogs occasionally.

Search this site and you should find dozens of threads about this. I am no expert, but I will try to answer you basic questions. Every resource that I can find says 2 square feet per pigeon. So your homer loft would need to be about 80 square feet. Based upon my own experience keeping pigeons and building lofts I would tell you that ventilation is the key, I don't think you can have too much. Your feral pigeon loft would need to be about 40 square feet unless your keeping them short term and then you could get by with smaller. You will not have consistent, or good, results getting adult homers that have already flown to home to your loft. You will need to get young unflown homers, or breeding pairs and let their offspring fly but not the breeding pairs.

labman626 wrote:I am looking to get started with homing pigeons for dog training. I want about 40 pigeons to start with and I am looking for some plans to an inexpensive loft to build. Any suggestions or ideas I would appreciate. Can you buy already trained homing pigeons if so how do you train them to get acustomed to your loft? I would also like to keep about 20 barn pigeons at all times to shoot for the dogs occasionally.

Why 40? Seems like a lot. I have 12 dogs and 30 is plenty for me. I train no more than 4 dogs per day and 12 is enough.

Honestly, I can't see why you would want to start with so many, unless you use large numbers of birds every time you train. If you have 2 dogs and use 3/dog every day you should keep about 10 just to have backups incase of hawk/wire/etc. Pigeons are prolific little bass turds. Purchasing birds who have previously homed is a poor choice for a person who is new to pigeons. It's difficult, and not always successful to get these birds to stay with you. I would invest in a dozen young birds. These would be best if they are just weaned, but ought to be born this year. You can train them to home within a month depending on the training location. Generally by next spring, they'll be supplying enough young birds where you won't need barn pigeons to shoot

Imo, barn/feral pigeons home just as well for us as our racers. We use a mixture of them to train with, but don't generally shoot pigeons for the dogs.

Use the search feature here and you'll strike gold! Good luck.

kwikirish when you say hawk wire ect what do you mean by wire?

big_fish wrote:kwikirish when you say hawk wire ect what do you mean by wire?

Power lines. The birds (especially the young cocky ones) get going at that high rate of speed and next thing they know, they have hit a wire. Sometimes they live to fly home, other times....
We've had one make it back with a severe injury, likely wire. It was amazing to see how determined and tough these birds can be. He was too injured and was suffering, John had to put it down, very disappointing incident.

KwikIrish wrote:

big_fish wrote:kwikirish when you say hawk wire ect what do you mean by wire?

Power lines. The birds (especially the young cocky ones) get going at that high rate of speed and next thing they know, they have hit a wire. Sometimes they live to fly home, other times....
We've had one make it back with a severe injury, likely wire. It was amazing to see how determined and tough these birds can be. He was too injured and was suffering, John had to put it down, very disappointing incident.

The pigeon hit a wire, broke one leg, and literally tore off the other leg. I found him on the landing board, right in front of the door, right in front of the bobs, trying to get in the loft. He obviously couldn't but the drive and resiliancy (sp) to get in the loft was amazing.
I hated to have to put that bird down. He was an awesome bird shipped in from a buddy who does quite well in PA.

I had A one legged cock birds for several years that produced some nice youngsters for me.

Ezzy