What do you feed your pigeons?

[Iain Utah]

Willygog, thanks for the great link. It is very helpful! And....

 

[jak2002003]

To the OP... I forgot to mention....

it sounds like you pigeon is eating only its favourite seeds and leaving the rest. This will not be a balanced diet for it in the long term.

Give you bird a feed bowl with about one table spoon of seed mix...plus a FEW of its favourite seeds.

Put it in the cage in the morning. It will eat its favourite seeds, then not eat any more.. thinking you will give it more of what it likes.

Take the feed pot away after about 30 mins. No more food for the rest of the day.

Then in the evening before dark put the feed bowl back into the cage... do not add any other seeds to it.. just give it what it left in the morning.

It will be hungry now.. and will start to eat the other seeds. It may be stubborn and refuse this meal and act hungry thinking you will give it the yummy seeds..... don't!. Again leave the feed pot in the cage about 30 mins. Then take it out.

In the morning put it in again.. still not adding any special seeds or topping it up. By now it will be real hungry and should eat the rest of the seeds. When it finishes most of the seed mix in the pot you can give it some extra treats if you like.

At the moment your bird is only eating the yummy seeds and is not really hungry. Its like if you were not hungry and someone put a dry peace of bread in front of you.. you are not likely to eat it... but if they put a plate of delicious chocolates in front of you.(or me) we would probably eat them!!!!

I only feed my pigeon 2 times a day. They get a seed mix... they eat it all!!!! They eat the favourite seeds first, then eat the rest.

Never put too much seed in the pot, otherwise the birds will pick through it and scatter the seeds all over the floor.

Good luck.

 

[Iain Utah]

You raise an excellent point. I do not want my pigeon to eat only junk food. When I had the seed mix, I was placing a 1/2 cup or so in her bowl in the morning and evening, then tossed out whatever was left over for the wild birds. She does scatter food onto the floor, then goes and forages around the floor afterward (she lives freely in our spare bedroom). That is how I observed her eating the other seeds but only after all peas and safflower hearts were gone. However, the parrot food does not seem to have anything in it she wants to eat other than the safflower hearts. So, I am going to donate the parrot food to my friend with a bird rescue and get a small bag of assorted seeds/grains from my grocery store bulk bins. My local feed store guy is also checking to see what types of pigeon specific food he can order for me next week.

 

[Chickincredible]

What do you feed ringneck doves? I was looking into possibly getting some and I wasn't quite sure... So I look to BYC!

 

[Purple unicorn]

Pigeons love safflower seeds. They are the pigeon junk food to get good food for pigeons I would recommend checking out Palomacy's article on what foods to feed your bird.