Will it come back?

[mochicken]

I have had my pigeons in their new loft since last night, my son opened the door and a feather footed capuchine mix flew out, it has been circling the house occasionally since it escaped, will it come back tonight to where I can catch it?

 

[Print Tippler]

sorry but there's no definite answer to that, it might or it might not. If it there for just one night, the chance is low.

 

[mochicken]

I am still seeing it, it flies back and lands on my house, in the trees, around in my yard, but I cant get anywhere near it to net it

 

[Print Tippler]

well i would wait till it was dark to even try. Then i would have someone hold a flashlight and point it right at the pigeon then net it.

 

[mochicken]

Great news, I saw it snooping around outside the coop so I went out and put the other pigeons in a small cage inside the coop and left the coop door open, the lil silly thing was back home in 10 minutes, I just wish I would have thought of that earlier lol

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

If you ever want to let them fly. you'll need to have a way for them to get back in whenever they want.

You can make a simple "drop trap" with just 4 boards which will let them in , but they can't use it to fly out:

It's just wide and tall enough for them to walk through.

Mount it up high, and they can enter from the left and drop through the opening at the other end into the coop.

They can't fly back out because they can't land due to it being too narrow, since they need a space wide enough to have their wings extended when they land

I put mine above the door

 

[rittert3]

Ok I used to keep about 6-8 mutts around so I think I might put in my 2 cents and give my flying experience. I was always advised not to let them out the first 4 weeks, this tells them that that is their home. Second, lol, just open the door and let them out. On my first bunch I took this nice blue bar rooler cock out at the 4 week mark, carried him about 25' from my pens, threw him up in the air, and never saw him again. Now I didn't have trap doors on my pens but the doors were only 6"x6" and they ussually went back in to roost so I would just go out after dark and shut the pens.

If one happened to try roosting outside they ARE fairly easy to catch when they're roosting as long as it's within reach.

 

[TN_BIRD]

Glad to hear you got them back.

Losing birds is part of it (if you fly). There are some tricks to improve your odds, though.