Craziest thing I have ever seen in my coop!

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So I get home from work the other day and I’m told that there is a dove in my chicken coop. I go out thinking that it is likely a mourning dove which are a dime a dozen at my house. We feed all the wild birds, a fortune in wild bird food. Anyways, I digress, so I head out there ready to chase this poor mourning dove out of my coop and find a pair of what look like ringed neck doves! How did they get in there? Why the heck are they in there? How long have they been in there? So many questions....

 

[danceswithronin]

I wonder if they belong to a local dovecote where they are allowed to fly loose and started hanging around your coop because of the free feed? Maybe they were separated from their flock or something.

I'm desperately jealous, I want an aviary of fancy doves so bad. The pale ringneck dove is beautiful.

 

[sylviethecochin]

Well, well, well. Someone was careless enough to leave their disease-spreading sky rats on your property... *rubs hands.* Sounds only fair that you should get to keep them, yes?

Agree with above. Really like the pale one.

 

[Anagram]

They were very pretty! I just kept thinking, what if they have a nest somewhere? Not likely I suppose as one of the would have been sitting on the nest but that was my thought process anyways. So I let them out. I’ve got 11 two month old chicks and an adult flock so have my hands full with fowl but they were fun for the whole 5 minutes they were in my coop.

 

[Zinjifrah]

Hey, come take all the wild ones around here! The wretched things LOVE to sit on the power pole in front of my house, 'coo-hoo'ing incessantly day and night...

 

[MickWithChicks]

Pretty birds, but I just wanted to point out that the white one looks like it has a bit of a scaley leg starting there. Give your chooks an extra dusting tonight!

I had a similar thing happen to me in December. Two (very wild) crested pigeons came for a visit.

 

[Old_Strain_Lover]

So I get home from work the other day and I’m told that there is a dove in my chicken coop. I go out thinking that it is likely a mourning dove which are a dime a dozen at my house. We feed all the wild birds, a fortune in wild bird food. Anyways, I digress, so I head out there ready to chase this poor mourning dove out of my coop and find a pair of what look like ringed neck doves! How did they get in there? Why the heck are they in there? How long have they been in there? So many questions....

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It looks like someone dumped their pet doves in there while nobody was around. It's not likely they will survive out in the wild now.

 

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It looks like someone dumped their pet doves in there while nobody was around. It's not likely they will survive out in the wild now.

That’s really too bad. If I had thought that, I would have kept them. I do have a very large walk-in aviary 4x6x6 that I have been using to brood out momma/babies together and would have been great for them to live in longer term.

I do not believe that someone put them in there, I live rural on a fairly good sized property and you can’t see that I have birds or coops from the road. Only my immediate neighbors and the postal service/UPS etc have been up my very long driveway to even tell that I have birds. It seems to me also, that if someone was going to put them in there, they would have chosen the aviary to place them, not one of my chain link enclosures.

 

[purslanegarden]

The question is how a person put those birds in there...did they "push" them in through the holes? Otherwise, you have some other holes you need to find and take care of!

 

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Yes, good point. So I only have Chickens in there and they cannot get out. A bobcat or raccoon can’t get in there,

I have these “cradles” on the corners to keep chickens in and nasties out. The doves were just small enough to slip out at the corner of the open door area. They could not quite make it through the chain links. I do have an actual aviary and nothing is getting in or out of that one.