Pigeon coop

[kcbullets]

Has anyone made a pigeon coop/loft out of a 6x10 chain link dog kennel? If so, what modifications did you make?

[Mulga]

I'm not able to answer your question directly other than to suggest you search 'pigeon loft design' in your favorite search engine. Pigeons have particular requirements to happy and breed. The design of your loft will be dependent of a number of different factors that you will have to consider: climate, position, space, budget, available materials, construction skills etc

Here is a post with some example lofts members have made:
viewtopic.php?f=100&t=15397

Here is a pigeon forum that has quite a bit of information:
http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/f38/

I hope this helps

Regards

Dan

[RichK]

Watch out on the pigeons.biz site. If you even give them the hint that you are a a gun dog guy they will try to eat you alive!

Personally, I would use chain link as a primary building material. It makes it very easy for snakes and other small varmints to get into the loft.

Chain link probably wouldn't be a bad choice for using for higher up areas of the loft though.

[Mulga]

Watch out on the pigeons.biz site. If you even give them the hint that you are a a gun dog guy they will try to eat you alive!

Dead right! Even when buying pigeons (from non hunters) you have to be careful.

[DonF]

I made the mistake of saying I used my birds to train dog's. You'd have thought I just shot a good president.

I went back and read that old post on coops. Boy those guy's did a nice job on them! But pigeons are pretty easy to please. Give them a dry place to sleep and multiply, a place to eat and water and you won't be able to run them off. of course that assume's they are ready to fly. Ferals or ho,ers don't make a lot of difference. The homer's will come back from several hundred miles if trained a bit. Ferals have not had a problem with 50 mi for me. A few ever made a hundred mile trip a few times. Homer's are a lot bigger bird than ferals and they are a lot quieter. You stick your hand under a homes with baby's and it will slap the snot out of you with it's wing. Do the same thing and they leave the nest before you even get close. I have both. If your going to buy pigeons, young unflown birds are the way to go. If they eat on their own and drink on their own they are sure deals. Look at the band across the bridge of their nose, it's white, leave it. If it's still a bit pink and a few long hairs coming out the head, grab'em. You can do the same with both ferals and homer's. I think if you want to start with adult ferals they are easier to get back to home. Turn an adult homer loose and figure it's going home. I do have an adult homer that volunteered and it's had every chance to leave but doesn't. I expect someday it will. If all you can find is adult birds, use them to get your loft populated. After that if they come back or not really doesn't matter, you got the birds that will always come back. I've got about 40 out there right now. Started with three pair about two or three years ago. In that time hawks did a pretty good number on me and I've given another thirty or forty away to friends to start loft's. If I were you, I'd build as big a loft as you can within reason. Figure two sq ft per bird. My feral loft is 12'x12' and the homer loft is 8'x16' with a flight pen out the back. I made water heaters out of coffee can's and a 25w light bulb. Plastic waterer sit's on top of the can with the light on. Never had one freeze yet and we hit about a week of below zero weather this year.

[kcbullets]

I appreciate the insight folks.

[Fun dog]

Here is a picture of the pigeon loft we made out of our 10 X 10 puppy pen

[hi-tailyn]

This was my first pigeon house. I did have metal up the end and 1/3 of both sides to provide wind block and had some 2 Gal plastic buckets on their side, with lid cut in half and put on shelf for next boxes. Will try to find old pictures of set up.
Friend had a old play house and we drug it out to farm and turned it into our newer pigeon house. Pigeons are very resilient. Give them draft free area to roost and food and water and you will get lots of babies. Pigeons learned nipples quickly. That is all I use for pigeons and quail. I use self feeders for both also. They may not be tended to for several days.
Pigeons don't really need the screen floor. The screen floor did help the quail a lot. went from several disease die off to no die offs at all.
Important: I did wrap all exposed chain link area with chicken wire on the inside. Have had dogs, coyotes and varmints try to get in. I also laid 2x4 garden wire on ground under the walls of pen to keep all from trying to dig under walls.

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