Basic Pigeon Keeping

Jack Prescott
(Internet Published) Aug 2001

In England, when the pigeon man has survived the expense of Christmas and a lot of miserable weather he enters into a New Year. His pigeons look superb and he can order his New Year pigeon rings. A lot of men like to produce young birds in January to March. But so often it is a tricky caper. Squabs hatch but too many of them die from hypothermia due to not being incubated at the age of 7 to 12 days old. In England, even May can be a treacherous month with bleak winds and frost which will kill plants and livestock. In fact it is a lottery with the weather. 

As Confucius said, "A lucky man is more rare than a white crow" (To that I say aye aye) In June we are in with a better chance. Unless there is a really desperate need to produce early young pigeons, I suggest that it is unwise to produce early youngsters. I can't think of a more miserable experience than to find young pigeons in a nest crops full of feed but chilled to death, the parents being oblivious. Often we find that one squab is much smaller than the other - The smaller one being most likely to die due to unfair distribution of crop milk or even grain later on. For this reason some men will match up their squabs at 3 days old and foster 2 large ones under one pair of breeders and foster two smaller ones under one pair. At best it gives the squabs an equal chance. 

However, this idea fails sometimes. The matched pair of large squabs will mostly do very well but the matched pair of small squabs may die from hypothermia when they are left uncovered by parents at about 7 days old. They would probably have been better if left as they were because the larger squab would have generated more heat - 2 would have kept the smaller one warm. I don't like it when one squab hatched 2 to 26 hours later than the other, especially when the late one goes into the 19th day of egg incubation. To my mind this indicated foetal weakness and a very poor start in life. However, if or when these small ones do survive they may become quite pretty even if small for life. Nevertheless, I would not breed from such as these. I never agreed with the craze for small types. Of course I wouldn't want giants either and would select against these too.

[Internet Published Aug 2001 at http://www.tipplers.com/jack/]