Help! New pigeons not eating/drinking

[rolohman]

Hi folks,
For our initial foray into pigeon keeping, I picked up two from a farm swap yesterday. The owner said they were six weeks old. They are now in the enclosure we built for them, which is about three feet high with roosts on the walls. There is an aviary but we are keeping them out of that for now.

The problem is that they are staying up on the roosts and not ever going down to feed or drink. Probably going on 24 hours now. I figured at this age they knew how to eat and drink but perhaps I was wrong? Any hints? My next effort was going to be to catch them with a towel and dip their beaks in the water

 

[rolohman]

Update (and feeling a bit silly): I think they are okay. They'd spent the whole first night outside their "coop" area hiding near the top of the aviary, and I'd shooed them into the coop and closed the door at the time that I'd written the post. At that point they were still hiding near the top and hadn't eaten or had any water since at least when I got them yesterday morning.

After posting, I went in there and put in a temporary box with some food samples and a smaller cup of water, so that they didn't have to go ALL THE WAY DOWN to the floor. The camera I stuck in there this morning captured them coming down and pecking at the variety of food I'd left, and having some water.

Whew!

They had a mixture of wild bird seed in one spot, some moist bread bits in another, and some chopped up soft lima beans. All seem to be nibbled on.

Note -there is plastic roofing above them, not open sky.

 

[Qwerty3159]

Nice looking birds, glad to hear they’re eating now!

Pigeons have a remarkable will to survive, the hill typically continue to eat and drink even with horrific injuries or bad sicknesses, yours are probably just eating and drinking when you’re not around. Peanuts are a great tool to help tame nervous pigeons.