Pigeons
It finds its way home from hundreds of miles by a sense nobody has fully explained. Domesticated for thousands of years, and raced long before it was a city bird.
Photo by Jevgenijs Slihto, CC BY 2.0
Overview
The domestic pigeon is the rock dove, kept and bred by people for thousands of years, and it is one of the most underrated pets on this shelf. It averages about 360 g, and ADW records 35 years in captivity against six in the wild.
That gap is the honest summary of what keeping one well does. Pigeons in a city live short, hard lives. A loft bird with clean water, good feed and no predators is a different animal entirely.
Temperament
Calm, tame and quietly affectionate. Pigeons handled young become genuinely people oriented, sitting on a shoulder and coming when called, and they do it without the volume or the destructiveness of a parrot.
They are strongly social and are kept in groups, and they pair up and stay paired. Homing breeds navigate over long distances and return, which is the basis of the sport, and it is not a trick that can be taught to any pigeon: it is generations of selective breeding.
Care and grooming
A pigeon grain mix, grit, and a calcium and mineral source. They eat mainly seeds and grain, and they eat a great deal for their size relative to a parrot.
Clean water daily is the one thing not to let slip, both for drinking and for bathing. Pigeons bathe hard and often, and a loft with dirty water is a loft with canker and respiratory problems. Feather condition and droppings tell you most of what you need to know day to day.
Living and exercise
A loft or aviary with room to fly, perches at height, and secure wire, because everything from hawks to rats will take pigeons. Fifteen to twenty years is a reasonable expectation for a well kept bird.
If they are flown, they are flown from young and to a routine. Racing and homing birds are trained progressively from short distances, and a bird released somewhere unfamiliar without that training does not come home, it just leaves.
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