NW USA

Washington State.

I gave a suggestion earlier that I thought placing pictures of your gutted pigeons on the conservationsist websites might be more useful then posting dead hawks on here and making light of it.

The cat thing ....you know ...rejoice for pigeons...have a party for a dead cat.....sarcasm is lost on you. I will tell you Blaz that you may have felt like your opinion didn't count when you were new here. I don't suffer from your lack of self.

WTF are you talking about? Nobody is talking about human life here. You are saying your bird is more important then another. I say you are going about helping pigeon fanciers the wrong way.

Rejoice? Wow that sounds exciting. What do you do when a cat gets hit by a car?

Yes I do.

How the fek do you find the time to be on here with all those birds to kill?

You shouldn't keep it all bottled up inside like this, tell how you really feel.

My friend Les (the voice of reason). You should consider yourself fortunate to live in such a wonderfully diverse nature preserve.

You'd be better served posting pics of your gutted pigeons on the conservationist sites as opposed to this. Play to their sympathies for all things living, but hey if you think this working go all out.

Freedom of speech is a great thing, thats why I'm not bashful about saying what I do. You do more to harm the sport by poking fun at someone else's passion then by simply showing them how you are being harmed.

Visiting conservation sites isn't high on my list of priorities. Pointing out that you aren't helping the cause of pigeon flyers by being flip is.

You won't find animal lovers considering them humorous. They'll consider them as self serving and callous.

Do you really think anybody will care about what happens to your pigeons if you make remarks like these for others to see? I spent what to me was a good deal of money for a kit of birds to start in this sport last fall. I've lost birds to hawks already, thats life. Breed a couple extra.

Use rubber gloves when using Equvalen/Ivermectin or you'll be worming yourself.

Hello Xigeon, I'm not in the U.K. but hope to be helpful just the same. I'm new to this and have had birds less then a year, first race is 2 weeks away. I feed premixed grain with about 9 different grains, I supplement that with barley at times. I do give a vitamin supplement called RedCell weekly, its a common poultry vitamin. Birds have grit available at all times. My birds are all yearlings trained out to 70 miles last fall. My birds are currently loft flying 20 to 30 minutes twice a day. I will give them 6-8 training tosses in the next 2 weeks starting at 20 miles and working out to 70 to prepare for their first race of 180 miles. I imagine I will be anxious for returns on race day. I will go about my normal morning with my wife and kids, chores, playing, etc...I do occasionally talk to the birds but what I say to them is unfit to print. Good Luck.

Great depth of knowledge concerning this family Spencer. Do you run a breeding/stud for sales business? Do you also race?

Buy out of summer breds for less, or purchase eggs. There is an economic downturn for some, not all. The money I spend on pigeons is discretionary spending, if things get tight for me I won't be spending on purchasing new birds.

Did you have any success with the hen?

Occasionally and quite poorly if I do say so myself.

Its obvious both systems work for people and pigeons. Any germs that may be present in a loft with deep litter will also be present in a loft that is scraped. Nobody said they scrape and spray the entire loft with clorox bleach twice a day. The birds will gain immunity just as birds in a deep litter loft will. A scraped loft will have less dust and if it does get wet somehow it can certainly be dry much quicker the a loft with 4 inches of droppings. As far as getting vitamins from fecal matter, I'd just as soon add some to their food or water.

Sounds like its working for you. Hope it continues.

Scraping the floor and perches doesn't have anything to do with disinfecting the loft using cleaning products. It just keeps the sh*t off of my and the birds feet. So I hardly think its preventing the birds from developing resistance. Waterers that aren't cleaned and or switched on a regular basis will mean a sik flock instead of a sick bird.

I have a small loft with few birds, takes about 10 minutes to scrape perches, nestboxes and floor. Daylight permitting I do it twice a day. This is as much for me and my family as the birds. I want my kids to come in the loft and see whats happening with the birds and not be knee deep in crap or I may need to call my wife to feed them. I use two sets of drinkers so they can have clean ones daily. Its much cheaper then medicine, drinkers are the primary source of spreading disease through your flock.

Shooting yourself in the foot, compromising any chance to build a natural immunity and also building resistance to a drug you may actually need in the future. If its protecting your stock from the new additions, quarintine.