First homers

[CTPaul]

So I'll be picking up the my first homers tomorrow night and will be putting them into the newly built loft. The birds are young and I'm brand new to this so I could use some advice on how to be successful. The loft is sized for 1 bird per 2 Sq ft and the birds are only 5 weeks old.

My hope is to be able to train twice a week about 10 miles away from the loft. Now here is the catch, the loft will be in a friends house as I cannot have one in my yard per the deed. He's only 5 minutes away but my time is valuable as I have a 15 month old son and a week old daughter so I don't want to have to spend a ton of time there. I welcome any and all suggestions on feeding, watering and training them to home reliably. Homers aren't cheap so I'd prefer to be cautious with releasing them.

Thanks in advance.
Paul

[drw10]

you should have a settling cage on your landing board, so they can see around and learn where they are. you may have to put them out the first few times until they learn how to go in and out on there own with settling cage on landing board after few days you can take the cage off and let them out. do not chase them out always let them go out on there own. let them learn how to fly.
it is lots of fun to watch them learn how to fly, they are all over learning how to fly, it's like watching commie cozies
they'll learn after couple of weeks and start to group up and after they are flying for 1/2 hour to an hour or better you can start to train them. start short like maybe a mile couple of times then slowly go out little move
hope this help get you started
good luck there lots of fun to just watch them fly too

[donne]

New postby DonF » Thu Jun 26, 2014 8:28 pm

Aiding recall isn't necessary. I have never had to do that. Don't run young birds out. Open the bobs and let them come and go for awhile. If you have an aviary and use it to teach them to push the bob's up there's no problem. Where people get into trouble getting birds back is by pushing them out to soon and to fast. Young birds going on their own normally won't fly off at first. they go out on the landing board and look around. After that it's just a few short filght's on their own and ya got them!

What DonF said. Just be careful of varmints, and make sure you secure your varmint guard over your trap before dark. Cats can figure out a trap too.

[Duckdog]

Like mentioned above, have an area where they can see their surroundings.

I like to wait at least 3 weeks before I let birds that weren't born here fly.
I've let some fly sooner,...some make it,...some don't. We have a LOT of hawks here though, and young birds are easy pickins.

[CTPaul]

When you say fly you mean just letting them out of the loft not actually taking them down the road and releasing them correct? It sounds like Don recommends opening the loft and letting them out on tgeir own early on in the process. How early?

[CTPaul]

I'm assuming I should keep the bobs closed for at least a week or two?

[DonF]

Yep, keep the bob's closed a week or two then open the bobs and let them come and go as they please. After a few days, drop a bob. few more, drop another. Make sure all are coming back in before you drop another bob. I have a big flight pen out the back of my homer loft. Young birds learn to trap from it.

[RoostersMom]

Once they're flying reliably each day to and from the loft for about 2 weeks, I would then take them 1/4 mile in each cardinal direction and release them. Individually is how I do it, but Ezzy really is a pigeon guy on here and he probably has better advice. I do the cardinal directions twice from the short distance, then increase my distance gradually until I'm flying them over a mile away in each direction. Then I hop up to about 5 miles and then the next jump is 10 miles. If I'm flying longer distances than that, I try to split it in half and do half the distance and then do the full distance the next time. But I'm just flying them for dog training (so mostly I go in the same direction as my training area once they are good to go in any direction at 5 miles out). I train about 15 minutes away from the coop.

And just an FYI, you'll have way more pigeons than you can shake a stick at come next year. I've gone from 12 pairs to over 25 birds right now - gonna have to find homes for some soon, we're getting a little crowded.

[CTPaul]

Thanks all. I'm hoping to get these birds ready for the September training push so I appreciate the advice.

[CTPaul]

The loft is complete and the birds are inside. I found the perfect spot (I think) and I can't wait for these bad boys to be ready. Thanks for the advice so far...

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