Training Birds

[PigeonLady]

Another reason not to keep breeders and flyers together... breeding birds who are feeding young need food more than once a day, so they can pump the babies. And they have to eat, too.
You know Utility Kings are raised primarily for food, right? Not noted for their flying or homing ability. You should probably try to separate those out.

 

[ReseisCL16]

Thank you for all the help! BYC is just amazing! The king strain is pretty diluted; the breeder I purchased them from had one king in his entire homer flock. Why, I have no idea. The only thing that I've noticed with these homer crosses is that a few are a bit chunkier than my pure homers, but he flies all of them. A few of his have flow across the Rockies numerous times when the people who purchased them let them go, so I know that these birds should have good homing instincts. Since it would be pretty hard at this point to separate my flyers and breeders, would it work to feed them once at night or in the late afternoon, but give them a good hour or so to eat so that the parents would be able to feed the babies and get some for themselves? That way they would still be hungry in the morning?... I'm not sure if it would work, but I want to try with what I have.

 

[jak2002003]

OP I have read through your posts and hope I can offer advise to help you train your birds.

1. The mix of king pigeon and homer will seriously hamper the birds performance. The mix breed birds will be too heavy to fly as well as the pure homers. They likely will also have the temperament of the kings and lack the desire to fly high in the air, or to even fly for any length of time. This is not just a physical ability thing, it seems to be in their nature not to enjoy flying, like many other fancy or show breeds.

I suggest you stop breeding from the larger birds, and only breed form the smaller, better flying ones. You can use the bigger birds to foster eggs and squabs from you best birds to increase the number of good flyers quickly.

Then you could eat the big birds (pigeon pie is delicious), or keep them as pets if you are attacked to them.

2. Keep breeding birds in their own section, flying birds in another. Use the none breeding birds to train to fly.

3. The non breeding birds need to go on reduced feed to get fit and make them hungry so are more easy to train. If they are over weight they won't be able to physically fly for long periods, and if they are not hungry they will have little desire to return to the coop when called.

I suggest feeding them once a day in the late afternoon when you call them in from flying.

4. Let the flying birds out at the same time each day. Now they are used to their home, you can safely gently chase them out of the coop. If they are reluctant to fly use a flag or something to wave about and scare them into the air.

It will take a few weeks of a good diet, flying to build muscles and fitness, but eventually they should naturally all come out of the coop and take to the air and stay flying longer and longer before they land.

Call them in when its feeding time, and as they are hungry they should all come in very quickly at once. If they hang back, or a few don't come in you know you are overfeeding them.

Always have water, grit, minerals etc available to them in the coop, but just the feed 1 time a day. Let them eat as much as they want and take away the feeder after the last birds loose interest.

Good luck.