Can fantail pigeons home like homers?

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chicken farmer

chicken farmer

Songster
10 Years
Feb 7, 2012
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Southern,Ohio
I know fantails don't have much of the homing ability or as much stamina as homers but I was wondering if anyone had released fantails and if they came back and how far?
 
All birds and animals have a homing instinct to some degree. I once had a Birmingham roller return from it's new home more than 150 miles away. This from a breed that is known for overflies and getting lost. Due to physical limitations I doubt that fantails even with strong homing instinct would be able to make it home from any distance. Their slow wing speed makes them very vulnerable to hawk attack.
 
chicken farmer said:
I know fantails don't have much of the homing ability or as much stamina as homers but I was wondering if anyone had released fantails and if they came back and how far?
Click to expand...

Fantails are used as drop birds mainly to assure homing pigeons the coast is clear when returning to the loft to foster a quick arrival and trap. Most fantails would have a hard time finding the loft when it was in plain view from any short distance.
I have witnessed a few Indian fantails that would fly with homers around the loft after repeated outings and development. Fantails flight is laboured and they can not keep up to even a poor homing pigeon as a rule.
It would be the exception for a fantail to find it's home if it were brought out of sight of the loft in my opinion. Even if one did have good homing ability which I think is possible it would be easy prey to almost any hawk simply because of it's aerodynamic design.
It would take days for a fantail to cover the same distance a good homer could do in hours.
I am sure someone can account of a fantail returning home from a long journey simply because they are the same DNA as a homing pigeon and mutations happen. The longer the distance the more days it took the bird to arrive.

Trust me those stories are rare.
For me personally a fantail is a bird that eats the same amount of feed as a good homer and is only something to make me wish I had same.

This is about the best you can hope a fantail to do (back yard toss in view of the loft) after weeks of repeated training. Anything farther than this the risk of loss goes up exponentially.


 
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Fantail crosse with homers occur a lot and combine traits for better results, though like hocum said and many do, just keep fantails and homers both. Lol
 
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