Secrets of a Successful Pigeon Fancier (Part 2)

Secret 6 

Buy a hygrometer (Home Depot) with a high low setting. The hygrometer measures humidity. Place the hygrometer in the racing loft and adjust ventilation to maintain humidity below 70%.  By monitoring the humidity you will learn to keep it lower than 70% at all times.  Pigeons have a big drop in form with humidity over 70%.  My widowhood loft can be kept at 68% humidity when it is 100% humidity outside.  My hygrometer monitors temperature and high low temperature also. 

Secret 7 

Keep an injectible antibiotic on hand for any one eye colds,rattles or respiratory issues you may have.  We use LA 200 an oxytetracycline.  Inject  0.5cc at the base of the back of the neck and in two to three days all the symptoms will be completely gone.  Buy a very small bottle of LA 200.  It goes a long way.

Secret 8

Aquarium Chlorine Removers
Small amounts of chlorine and chloramine are added to tap water to kill organisms for safe human consumption. Of course, chlorine and chloramine are toxic to your friendly bacteria and may interfere with antibiotics etc.. Use aquarium chlorine removers to do away with them. Aquarium chlorine removers often remove other harmful heavy metals, amonia or otherwise prepare your tap water for pigeon use.   Purchase the one drop to the gallon dose and stop wasting money by killing or interfering with anything you give your pigeons in the drinking water.  Just fill the bucket or container, drop in chlorine remover stir and add your products immediately.

Secret 9

Most pigeon grit is comprised of ground granite.  This ground granite is very sharp, fragmented, pointed and generally abrasive.  Is this grit irritating the gizzard and insides of our pigeons?  Wild birds eat round smooth pebbles for grit.  Maybe we should all rethink grit and find a pebble based grit with no sharp edges.  I collect smooth pebbles off a salt water beach. There are places the pebbles collect at the base of large rocks.  The size ranges from slightly bigger than a grain of sand to a little bigger than a pea.  I bake the pebbles on a tray in the oven at 450 degrees for ten minutes to kill bacteria, let cool and feed to the pigeons.   These beach pebbles also contain shell fragments, trace salts and minerals.

Secret 10

Not all yellow in a pigeons throat is canker.  Fine lines of yellow could be an ornithosis or some sort of respiratory problem.  If your canker treatment does not seem to work maybe you should be treating with doxicycline.  Remember eyes, nose, ears, and throat are all inter related.

Secret 11

The most important meal after a workout is the first meal.  This applies to athletes and animals.  When your pigeons return home from a tough race they need rich feed with plenty of oil seeds in front of them free choice.  They will eat what is needed to recover.  By feeding rich feed your pigeons will recover very fast.  We usually place all the 16% European mix along with safflour, pellets, hemp, flax etc.

Secret 12

When our pigeons return home from a race they drink our special blend of water additives to assist in recovery.  In one gallon of water we place one tablespoon of glucose powder, 1/4 teaspoon of chicken vitamin electrolytes, one teaspoon of Probios Horse probiotic and 1/4 teaspoon of iodized salt.  They will bounce right back on this mix.