When to Let Young Bird Racing Pigeons Fly
In early March whilst at the White Heart in Old Ollerton, one of the pigeon club members called John, rocked up with a box. At first glance it looked like a box of wine. But when he placed it by the table he said "There you go, couple of young birds for you there". This was a bit of a dilemma, I'd still not finished the pigeon loft, I didn't have any food and I was off to London for the weekend the following morning.
Luckily, John Joe's (a feed shop) in Warsop was open Saturday morning so I managed to grab a bag of Breed and Wean first thing in the morning. Then I instructed the wife to give them 30g each and I set off to meet some mates in Camden.
Whilst I was gone, the birds, a cock and hen, had to make do in the training crate (a small wooden box that can comfortably fit 12 birds for a training toss) before I could get back and make the loft pigeon tight. Unfortunately after 2 years of covid restrictions and limited social drinking my body wasn't able to handle the beer as well as I'd hoped. So the loft was postponed a further day when I got back whilst I attempted to recover.
On Monday evening I managed to get some mesh to bird proof the eaves and attached a latch to the door. I let the two of them free into their new mansion and watched as they gladly stretched their legs and wings, and had a bit of a flap about.
After a week of having them I'm faced with another problem that pretty much all flyers have at some point. When to let them out? They've been out in the aviary every day and so they've hopefully imprinted my house and garden, and any other features close by so they can recognise their surroundings once out. But because they were a little older (only by a week or so) when I got them than they should have been, they may be too good at taking off. Fanciers call this 'strong on the wing'. It's easy for them to get up and fly away before they realise they've gone too far and then can't find their way back.
Ideally you would let them out before they can really fly, so they become acquainted with how the garden, trees, and loft appear from the outside. It would also have been handy for me to get them used to the trap (one way pigeon door) so they know how to get back in, but as I've only had them a few days they're quite wary of me. I didn't want to risk over handling them and stuffing them through bob-wires (trap) and make them even less fond of me. All of this is going to make enticing them back into the loft, once out, very difficult.
There are a few things I need to do pre-release. I need them to associate me shaking a tin of corn as a signal that it's dinner time. So I shake this every evening whilst dishing up tea and I add a bit of whistling for good measure. The idea here is that if I make sure they're hungry when they go out, they'll be more enthusiastic about coming back in when they know food is available.
The second thing I can do is limit their ability to fly too far. Some people band some of their flight feathers together but others say that if you give them a bath (a clean cat litter tray) before they go out that will also make it difficult for them to go too far.
Finally I can do this in the evening when they'll be more likely to want to come back into safety before it gets dark.
So when is the big day? I haven't decided yet. It needs to be warm enough and dry enough for me to stand out with them the whole time, so I can fend off any killer cats and or hawks. I'd also prefer light winds so if they do take flight they don't get carried too far.
I'm filming all of this for YouTube, so when I finally do let them out, it'll all be captured and uploaded, whether it works out or not. How To Train Your Pigeon YouTube
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