Keeping Live Birds for training

abennett · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:18 pm Post subject: Keeping Live Birds for training

Hey Yall,
I know this has been brought up before on this forum, but I was thinking about buying some pigeons to train Mia with. I took her to a fun hunt a few months back and she did well pointing them. The owners of the hunt club had about 30 or 40 of them in a coop. They were homing pigeons. It seems like it would be a great way to keep her nose sharp and train on the off season. I found some designs for pigeon coops and they don't seem that complicated to build for somebody with a little carpentry experience. I thought that if the pigeons work out good, perhaps we could move up to quail and pheasants. Does anyone here keep birds for dog training? Question

ymepointer · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 4:33 pm Post subject: Re Live Birds

Yes I have kept quail and pigeons. With homers one thing you may want to consider is how close are your neighbors. I have a friend who built a nice little coop for his homers on his 5 acre lot but his neighobrs have complained because his homers are flighted each day and started roosting at the neighbors and messing on their property. If you can build a flight pen/coop that would solve that problem, but it is more work.

abennett · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: Re: Re Live Birds

ymepointer · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject:

I had at most 20 homers. I have a good friend who has a contained flightpen/coop setup that has around 50-60 birds I would say. That friend who had trouble with the neighbors tries to keep about 40 birds but the population swells during breeding season. One suggestion would be to go to some racing homer sites and see if they have plans for urban coops.

h20fwlkillr · Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:04 am Post subject:

Pigeons are easy to keep and pretty much trouble free. Trapping your own feral pigeons is much cheaper than true homers and work just as well. They can take a little longer to "home in" to their new place. Some will never stay when let out to fly. Their offspring however, will stay. Best thing to do is just use the wild pigeons for brooders and train with the offspring.

Quail are pretty easy to keep. Start with birds that are at least 4 weeks old. Without the proper setup, mortality is high on chicks.

Pheasants can be a pain to keep. When keeping more than a few birds, they must be de-beaked to prevent cannibalism. They also are very good escape artists. If you want to check a pen to see if it will hold any birds, just put in a pheasant. If there is a place to get out, they will find it.

Another bird that is an easy keeper is chukar. They recall well to johnny houses (much like quail ) aren't quite as prone to cannibalism, and handle more extreme weather than quail do.

DanniGirl · Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:05 am Post subject:

Pigeons are certainly easy to keep but IMO, quail are not as messy. Laughing

(I kept pigeons in the garage because the HOA won't allow them.)
And ducks are a whole different story... Rolling Eyes

abennett · Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:53 pm Post subject:

ymepointer · Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:18 pm Post subject:

Well, I shoot them over the dogs points. My populations swelled a little too but I could always sell my extras to people looking for kill birds. When I moved a couple of years ago I gave my last 6(I trained with the rest)to a friend of 10 year old son.

I agree with H20 about feral pigeons, if you pull there flight feather and let them lay they seem to want to home a little better, but when I used to trap ferals and keep them I ran into a lot of rollers and they can be a real problem with training as they "roll" in mid air and I recall them getting caught sometimes when I would use a remote release, so I quit risking my life crawling out on the bridge over the Willamette Rivers and just bought homers.

h20fwlkillr · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:09 am Post subject:

abennett · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:11 am Post subject:

DanniGirl · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject:

anne · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject:

I'm a huge believer in using feral pigeons! My focus on training is always using birds that approximate wild birds as much as possible and that means they must be very flighty and fly strong so they cannot be caught. Wild pigeons won't allow a dog to crowd them. And they do learn to home.

DanniGirl · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:19 pm Post subject:

h20fwlkillr · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject:

ZelliesParents · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:21 pm Post subject: