Letting your pigeons go outside the loft for the first time.
A few helpful tips for those releasing your pigeons for the first time. It can be scary when letting your birds out to free fly for the first time, so here are a few tips for letting your birds outside of the loft the first time.
Tip #1: Train your birds to respond to a call
Prior to letting your birds out for the first time make sure that you are training your birds with a call each time you feed them. For example prior to feeding your birds in the loft you should always train them to associate your voice, a whistle, a rattle or some sort of call with feeding, this will help you to call your birds back when they are our loft flying. This should be started in the beginning way before they are ever let out of the loft for the first time.
Tip#2: Don’t feed or give water before letting them out.
It is a good idea to not feed your birds or give them water before letting them out of the loft, especially the very first time. By doing so this will keep your birds from flying to far away because they will want to be fed and this will also make calling them back even easier. When they hear the “feed call” they will quickly respond because of their hunger.
Tip #3: Don’t force the pigeons outside of the loft
When letting the birds out for the first time, open the trap but don’t force your birds out, it is important to let them find their own way out in a stress free environment.
Tip #4: Don’t Force the Pigeons to fly
Once your birds find their way out of the loft, don’t force them up into the air. Again this excersise of letting the birds our for the very first time should be a stress free as possible. By forcing them to fly will increase your chances of losing birds.
Tip #5: Don’t correct bad habits
Normally when we let our experienced birds out to loft fly we would want to immediatley correct any bad habits of landing on surrounding trees or buildings however during the first time out this is not the time to do that. Again let your birds take in the soroundings and get to know the area, being to quick to correct bad habits again will increase the stress level of the birds and increase the chances of birds being lost.
Tip #6: Call your birds and feed immediately after trapping
When you are ready to bring your birds back in make sure to utilize this time to reinforce your call with them and to reinforce their trust in you. For example if you use a whistle to call your birds make sure you use that to call your birds, then once they trap make sure to feed them immediately so they associate trapping with feeding. This will help in the long run with trapping quickly during races as well.
Tip #7: Scare away birds of prey without scaring your birds
Birds of prey are always a difficult thing for pigeon flyers and you will see it first hand in the video above. If when letting out your birds you do see birds of prey then try to keep them away without scaring your pigeons. Spooked pigeons will be an easy target for birds of prey. It would be a good idea to move as far away from your birds as possible to try and scare birds of prey away without spooking your birds.
So there you go, I hope you enjoyed these tips and the video and if you have any tips of your own for a successful first time loft fly then please feel free to post them in the comments section below.
Letting your pigeons go outside the loft for the first time.
