New pideons owner

[RezChamp]

CSD= CanadianShowHomer.
I can relate to your waiting. It got to the point tho' of the slow returners I would keep only the best looking ones as Un-Flown and sell at the shows and the 'ugly' ones became pigeon noodle soup or roast or dog food. Seems horrible to some people but on my world a reality of not wast ring a life.
Again I can relate to carb counting and essentially scientifically chosen custom blends of seeds, grains, grit, vitamin powders.... ...long list. If you like Homers as entertainment/relaxation/recreation you will simply love spinners, rollers, tumblers, tipplers and other performers/acrobats. On that note for your sake please just stick to one or two s/b. It is very addictive.

Very cool. Is second to last pic a giant homer? Those are neat.

I just got into pigeons this past spring. I built a small loft and started it with good racing homer stock I was able to find locally, and have been trying to start a loft with returning birds, with challenges, failures and successes.

You're not kidding about it being addictive. I started out saying "I'll just keep the food simple, feed them whatever, give them any grit, etc, and it will be auto pilot".... but here I am, adding things to their water, cleaning the loft constantly, calculating the protein and carb content in their feed, and my grit mix is like 4 different things LOL. When one goes missing during first flights, I'll stand outside waiting for hours.

I LOVE these buggers! The satisfaction and relaxation that comes from raising and flying them IMO gets very overlooked by too many people.

 

[RezChamp]

Cool pics, I see a German Beauty Homer? Are they yours?

Not my birds but out of my lines or mine out of their lines. These are from the last show I attended. I didn't show anything though.
Although I don't have right now I could go get some pix of the birds that I have but as I said I only have a few now.
I just wanted to show some of the s/b I've raised.

 

[biophiliac]

Not my birds but out of my lines or mine out of their lines. These are from the last show I attended. I didn't show anything though.
Although I don't have right now I could go get some pix of the birds that I have but as I said I only have a few now.
I just wanted to show some of the s/b I've raised.

Thanks - and congratulations on your champion hen!

 

[LamarshFish]

CSD= CanadianShowHomer.
I can relate to your waiting. It got to the point tho' of the slow returners I would keep only the best looking ones as Un-Flown and sell at the shows and the 'ugly' ones became pigeon noodle soup or roast or dog food. Seems horrible to some people but on my world a reality of not wast ring a life.
Again I can relate to carb counting and essentially scientifically chosen custom blends of seeds, grains, grit, vitamin powders.... ...long list. If you like Homers as entertainment/relaxation/recreation you will simply love spinners, rollers, tumblers, tipplers and other performers/acrobats. On that note for your sake please just stick to one or two s/b. It is very addictive.

For now I will be sticking to racing homers, at least until I get my loft stabilized and going. Down the road, if I have the room, I would certainly consider building a loft section for a handful of performance birds. I certainly like watching them. It was actually watching a friend of mine's rollers that got me interested in owning pigeons.

 

[RezChamp]

Thanks - and congratulations on your champion hen!

Thank you. Cheers

 

[RezChamp]

I need to tell you again.....
It's very addicting. I have now 8 buildings that I personally constructed from scratch.....to house pigeons. At one point I had 370 birds of 15 different s/b. In Racing Homers alone I had 17 strains, from Bandit, Vandenabeele, VerKerk(?), Black Eagle, Trenton, Mueleman, Trenton, VanLoon, Bourdeau to name a few of the pure lines. There were lines of mixed descent from different local racing lofts and of course I had to throw in some of the local feral homers, a cpl of German Beauty, a breeding pr of CdnShowHomer of amazing blueBar colors&markings, and another pair of CSH for a gorgeous intense golden yellow with metallic all over the body instead of just the neck. I even took an amazing Silver Barless hen with astounding homing instinct/ability of Bandit/Booudeau breeding and put a gimpel(red&black) Archangel into her. I was working towards a gimpel colored "good Homer" but after 3 tries gave up.
The rest of the lofts were full of Donek, Archangel, American Roller, English Tippler, Oriental Rollers, Schmetterling, Rezchev, Cdn.Show.Tip., CSH, GrmnBeauty, Nun, Capuchine, Dragoon, Kazan, Scandaroon, Owls & Swallows of many kinds..... Add to that X-breeds of all kinds because I wanted to see the outcome. I got some pretty astounding looking birds. Some bred true, some didn't, some were pretty, some not so much.
Yup....very addicting. It got to the point where I spent more time in my lofts than I did in my home.
Now with just a few, I get to travel a bit and spend time in this darn phone posting literal novels. In my defence it is raining today....and it is lunchtime.
Cheers

 

[LamarshFish]

local feral homers, a cpl of German Beauty, a breeding pr of CdnShowHomer of amazing blueBar colors&markings, and another pair of CSH for a gorgeous intense golden yellow with metallic all over the body instead of just the neck

I assume you put most of these into the proven and famous racing strains for beauty/looks, but I'm curious why you put the feral homers in? I can only imagine perhaps durability and survival skills? Just curious.

I get what you mean about the addiction. I only have one 4'x4' loft, and I am already planning on my next loft with 3 different sections in it (breeder/prisoner, male and female.... or maybe even more sections to separate YBs from olds)..... reaching in and messing around with my tiny, one-section loft presents training challenges and is just a pain in the butt. But hindsight is 20:20, I would have never known any of this when I built my loft.

 

[brettshomestead]

Wow tons of good info here, I can already tell how addictive it can be lol. I'm afraid I'll end up with atleast a few lofts in the next year or so. It doesn't help I work at a feed store and have enough scrap materials to build coops with since my family has a construction business lol.

 

[RezChamp]

I assume you put most of these into the proven and famous racing strains for beauty/looks, but I'm curious why you put the feral homers in? I can only imagine perhaps durability and survival skills? Just curious.

I get what you mean about the addiction. I only have one 4'x4' loft, and I am already planning on my next loft with 3 different sections in it (breeder/prisoner, male and female.... or maybe even more sections to separate YBs from olds)..... reaching in and messing around with my tiny, one-section loft presents training challenges and is just a pain in the butt. But hindsight is 20:20, I would have never known any of this when I built my loft.

I strongly suggest 1 big loft with sections separated by screen like stucco wire, hardware cloth, or even doweling. One of mine was 20X20 with a 36"w door at each end and 3 sections/rooms on each side. Each section had its own aviary that could be opened for free flight. My fave cool though was an antique 8x8 pump house made from handsawn Tamarak and BlackPoplar with Tamarak shake shingles. It had been renovated into a grainary so had a hatch on the roof. I put a thick piece of plexiglass on hinges and it became a loft for my Doneks. Of course since I don't know how to make Shake wh goes I just bought a roll of asphalt roofing. Oddly even though it was t insulated it has never frosted or sweated. My other coops needed R5 2" rigid foam insulation. Not so much for warmth but just so the walls wouldn't frost-up from breath and poop humidity just to melt and then ice during warm spells in winter and run down the walls to turn poop into slush when it warmed up. I've found my birds to be real tough so I finally figured it out leaving the bottom vents open didn't harm at all. Actually most of the time the windows are open too. Even though it gets real cold here like -50*C sometimes I've only ever lost very few babies and only sick or very old birds to cold.
And he's are tolly correct in assuming I introduced some toughness to my flocks with "feral" pigeons although some of them were darn good looking birds with real nice color/s, markings, eye, head, back, tails, flight feathers etc. The pure strains I got because they had qualities I liked. Distance, homing ability, general looks but remember what an older pigeon keeper from Croatia told me,"Even ugliest bird can beat prettiest one to coming home." Another "Racing Pigeon" guy said,"They don't hafta be pretty to get home. Just smart.....& tough."
I believe it's Dennis Kuhn says,"Pretty doesn't count for much at the finish line."
I like having pretty birds but, well, let's just say I know I ain't so good looking but I know I can still outwork most men half my age.
Footnote, all the feral birds where I live are actually Racing Homers gone feral so I just re-domesticated them. If they(actually their offspring)didn't come home, good for them, if they got home eventually, they either went in the sales as "unflown" or "flown" slots or the soup pot.

 

[RezChamp]

Wow tons of good info here, I can already tell how addictive it can be lol. I'm afraid I'll end up with atleast a few lofts in the next year or so. It doesn't help I work at a feed store and have enough scrap materials to build coops with since my family has a construction business lol.

Oh OOOhhh. I actually kinda feel sorry for you. What with feed and lumber and tools.
But you know what?.... It's a much healthier addiction than booze & drugs or slots or BlackJack & other ⚙⛓ we do.
Re: buildings, Square(8x8,10x10,12x12 for example) are way more efficient in material use. A steeper roof sheds water better and a metal clad roof will decrease your birds desire to "strut" up there & in the case of Homers they'll be more likely to go "in" rather than lollingag "on", thusly decreasing your flight times. In racing today even split seconds count.
Good luck young brother