Saturday, September 17, 2011

Feeding pigeons:Food,Grit,Water



  Feeding is a key factor which determines health of every livestock,there by having an important position in a pigeon loft.Questions like "What should i feed to my pigeons?", what is the preferred pigeon diet?" have always had their own places in the minds of fanciers.There is no complete answer for such questions still we can follow some models which are proved to be almost successful.

Food: 

It consists of a mixture of available rice,oats, Australian peas, garden peas, cow peas, yellow corn, millet, barley, fl popcorn and add some pellets to it.Based on ages,we have starter,grower,finisher types of pellets.Select the suitable ones and include in the daily mixture.Try to utilize things available in home.Grains available in home plus pellets will help us a lot(do not feed any particular type of grains a lot.Always try to feed as a mixture).

Grit:

Grit is used by pigeons to digest the food.Pigeons don't have teeth.Disintegration of food is carried out in their gizzard with the help of grit.Include mixture of crushed egg shells,Red brick powder,sand,charcoal,crushed concrete parts in the grit.

Water:

Please ensure pure water is available in loft at every time.Pigeons require lots of water and their immunity systems works based on the availability of pure water.Contaminated water or unavailability of water highly affect pigeons than contaminated food.

Vitamins and minerals:

They are important for the growth and for some metabolic activities in pigeons.Try to add multivitamin in drinking water of pigeons once in a week.Also add calcium syrup once in every two weeks(for breeding pairs-once in a week).

  This Diet is not a complete one,but helps a lot to fulfill almost all needs of of a pigeon.Based on the loft condition and weather,you can go for some modifications.Do not feed contaminated food and water to pigeons which is the important point you have to keep in mind.If you have any suggestion,simply put some comments here ..


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Friday, September 16, 2011

Importance of homers in a pigeon loft


  Homer pigeons are important part of a pigeon loft when we are going for farming business.Lots of people are fans of homers which is the breed used widely for racing purpose.Here i am not going to describe about that area,but the area where we use homers in a normal pigeon loft.
 When our farm business grows,we may include breeds from other locations which are commonly called as imported breeds.Many of the imported breeds are so developed that they wont do necessary parental care to their chicks.Some even don't know what to do with their eggs!.The importance of homer pigeon comes here.
  Homer pigeons are well known for their parental care.They are very good parents.We are going to utilize this ability of homers to raise chicks of imported breeds.By replacing the eggs of homers with the eggs of imported breeds,we can ensure that all the necessary cares are provided to the eggs of high valued breeds.
  We are going to do this not only with the imported breeds,but also with the fancy breeds in our area to increase the number of chick production .Many native breeds like fantails,siras will lay eggs as a pair(by taking up to 3 days) in an interval.If we allow them to incubate those eggs,they wont go for another eggs.But if we move those eggs to a homer pigeon,they will again lay eggs.Do it only 2 times as the increased egg laying affect pigeon health.Thus we can increase the chick production from each breeding pairs.The chicks grown by homers has shown good health and performance compared to other breeds.So homers are very important part of a pigeon loft and they need only less care..
   As we are doing a fancy pigeon loft,try to get white homers in your loft as it increases beauty of the loft and we can get decent income by selling them.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Pigeon farm-Importance of specialization


   I hope you realized the idea of small scale fancy pigeon farm business(else please read my previous post small scale pigeon farm business).Now we can discuss deeply how to convert this idea to a successful business by optimizing our farm as per our market need.
Specializing in a particular field is one of the key factor in success of every business.Same thing applies to fancy pigeon farm business with a little change.
  When we start a farm,it is recommended to diversify the farm-means get four of five breeds of pigeons,so that we have a decent collection of varieties of breeding pairs and our customers will get the opportunity to know about the breeds and select their interested breeds.Based on your geographical area,the interests of customers may vary.After analysing your sale,profit,ease of maintenance for a particular period,you can decide which breed(or breeds) is more suitable to you.Specialize on it,you can manage your loft and profits very easily.
   Based on the above diagram,we can summarize the things as,

  • Market access and market study is the primary thing we need to do before specializing.From your day to day experience,you can easily estimate the market movements and the demand for breeds.
  • Knowledge about the breeds and how to raise them profitably stands second.Communication with other fanciers and pigeon stores will help to fill the gap of such knowledge.
  • Then go for optimization of your loft and specialization of your breeds.Optimize your loft based on food,maintenance,treatments etc..and select the breeds wisely.Based on your requirements,you may depend for external funding such as bank loans,but in most of cases,it is not required for our pigeon farm business as it needs only minimum initial costs.
  Based on above findings,it is recommended to have a collection of fantails(especially pure white),lahore/siras,pouters,modena,homers in a starting pigeon farm.White Indian fantails are one of the most preferred breeds by starting fanciers and i am specialized in this breed.As the farm grow,some fanciers turn to costly breeds like king,french mondain pigeons.It is based on their experience and convenience,and it may not work for everyone.In the case of high prized pigeons,we get more profit per sale,but the number of sales will be less and maintenance needed will be high.So here the case of market study helps.
                    To know about different varieties of fancy pigeons,select the link
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Friday, September 2, 2011

Fancy pigeon society in kerala

  The formation of kochi based pigeon society called kerala pigeon society is one of the successful movements in the field of fancy pigeon growing in Kerala,India.The society formed in 23rd may 2004.The society has now over 125 members in it.
  The website of the society www.keralapigeonsociety.com contains useful informations regarding the types of breeds available with each member,address of each member,useful links for pigeon related info etc.They recently formed a pigeon directory which contain lots of information about pigeon  farming in Kochi,Kerala.
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