Site Menu
Home
Why raise
Pigeons?
Pigeon
History
The
Poop on Pigeons
How
and Why on Pigeons
Pigeon
Links
Pigeons For
Sale
About
Me
View My Guestbook
Sign My Guestbook
|
Why raise pigeons??..........
Great question!
I have been asked this question hundreds of times if not more.
Pigeons, the keeping and breeding of them, is quite honestly the oldest
hobby in the world.
The Egyptians kept them for food and for fertilizer but also as a
curiosity as well. Bred relatively easily in captivity, pigeons have a
very unique genetic make-up.
Their main colors are blue, a slate-blue color with black highlights
called
bar and checkering. Ash Red, an ashy gray base color with a "red brick"
brown coloring for it's bars and checkering and Brown, a buff-ish light
brown hue having the same checkering and bar patterns.
Now take this 3 basic color scheme, take away the bars for barrless,
and darker checkering for self colored pigeons and add modifiers to
change that all together a hundred times or more and you have the
pigeon genetic hobby.
Now take a robust muscular pigeon, train it, take it more than a
hundred miles away and let it go with a huge group of other pigeons and
now you have a race home. The "breed" is called racing homers. LOTS of
money can be won and it is a sport that dates back literally hundreds
of years.
Take a pigeon looking like a Racing Homer, decreased size and refined
looks with a mutation that causes it to "flip backward while flying and
you have a tumbler. Take that tumbler and refine its athletic abilities
and it's flip becomes a spin and it is now a Roller. Both bred for
sport, both athletes a little different than the Racing Homer but both
enjoyable to watch and breed.
Now well take the roller, make it fatter, taller, longer, add crest,
muffs, frill on it's chest or twist its feathers and we have a few
hundred different show pigeons and add a couple hundred colors to paint
them with and you have an incredible hobby with as many choices of
breeds, colors and reasons for raising pigeons as one could ask for.
Pigeons teach young and old, male or female, rich or poor the
intricacies of animal husbandry, responsibility, dedication and the
lessons that come along with caring for any animal dependent on us as
humans to care for them.
Question.
Would a child be best in front of a television, mindlessly watching
what the media says is good and true or playing some violent video
game? Or would he or she be better off learning about life. That goes
for some adults as well.
I have been told "tell me why someone should raise pigeons?", Well, I
ask, "tell me why someone wouldn't want to raise pigeons?".
Pigeons and the keeping and breeding of them is not for everyone, but
it is something that has given me great joy in my personal life. I have
truly been blessed by some of the lessons I have noticed about life in
these little creatures.
Take a closer look. You might just like what you see.
|
