Arizona: Looking for utility pigeons

[laughingdog]

The quail ive raised on cheapest chick feed did a lot better than raising on most expensive gamebirds feed, but neither was as cost and labor effective as raising ferals homers, and especially rollers (they need lot less feed space etc then rest especially if flown daily in evening before feeding when called back to cage for).

 

[Deathspeaker]

Best fosters for my cortnix quail eggs and babies were ringneck doves, as they'll sit whenever eggs in nest and chase baby quail around trying to sit on n commit up food for.. truly nurturing but stupid birds. My I've never had anything pigeon wise sit quail eggs and chicks besides small performance/flying type Birmingham rollers.. ferals and homers too large and squashed/smothered them. Sadly anything but tiny silkies, OEGB, Dutch, etc maybe serama, other true bantam breeds of chicken, will not be great parents and accidentally kill chicks when scratching. Rosecomb bantams are neat pretty quiet less destructive beautiful breed of chicken to keep to enjoy in small space and watch raise chicks naturally.
Maybe start out with ferals homers or rollers (rollers actually raise more meat for least feed especially when free flown), and see how you and your family like then. Meat pigeons here I found were worse conversion of feed to meat than my Birmingham rollers and less meat than my white homers.

Thank you so much for the information! Ringneck doves are lovely, always wanted some for pets. Rollers are pretty easy for me to get my hands on. I'll see what I can come up with