columba-livia-domestica

[columba-livia-domestica]

Srebrniak

Produced by Dan Brennan

[columba-livia-domestica]

Polish Lynx

Can't seem to find a breeder for the first bird! All I know is that they were exhibited at the 2012 Leipzig show. They're such a beautiful example of the breed that I couldn't leave them out though.

[columba-livia-domestica]

Hi! I relatively recently became a pigeon parent, hand raising and feeding him (affectionately named Creature for his scraggly appearance) since right after he opened his eyes, up until now, with his neck feathers almost entirely in and his flight skills in the process of developing. However, he’s more recently become very territorial of his cage, and coos/bites my hand. However, he’ll preen my clothes, face, hands, ect, even fly onto me very often and try to play with my phone. I was just wondering what’s causing the aggression,? Just hormones, or maybe something else? Will he mellow out eventually with regular socialization?

Unfortunately, no, he will not mellow out, and there isn't much you can do about it.

All pigeons are instinctively defensive of their nest space.

Being able to feel they can defend it is literally a hard wired matter of life or death for them.

For a free flying bird, the actual nest and about their body length away from it constitutes nest space.

For a house bird with a cage, the entire cage is nest space.

Entering nest space, once the bird is weaned, is mate and current nestling-exclusive privilege.

Anything else is either a predator trying to eat him, or a rival coming to beat him up and force him out.

Because he is not old enough to mate bond, and you are not a predator, attempts to interact with him in his cage makes you a rival trying to beat him up to force him out, and the only thing stopping it, from pigeon perspective, is how hard he can bite you.

This is instinctive behavior.

It is hard wired in and they are not capable of being trained out of it.

The closet you can really get is desensitizing him to refilling his food and water by making the association between the words (some variation of "let me have your bowl" or "Food time!") and the action to taking the food and water dishes to be refilled, only touching those, and making no move to touch Creature himself in his enclosure.

Pigeons are social away from what they consider to be nest space, so that is where all social interaction should happen.

Open the door and invite him out when you want to spend time with him.

You and Creature are both unfortunate in that having hand reared him makes him an imprint.

If he is in fact a he, once he reaches sexual maturity, he will be an absolute hellion.

Imprinting sets you as the template for what species Creature is, and what he should look for in an ideal mate.

He is no longer capable of recognizing other pigeons as the same species as him.

Which means he will treat you like another pigeon and will not be capable of seeing anything but a human as a potential mate.

He will expect you to understand the behaviors that come naturally to him and think you suddenly hate him when you don't.

If you are the same species, these behaviors are instinctive to you, too.

He will not be able to understand that they are not, and miscommunications will range from frustrating to terrifying for him

If creature is a hen, that will make her an absolutely up your ass level of clingy that isn't too terrible for most human partners.

If Creature is a cock, he will be compelled to fight you for three different reasons, which will add up to being pretty much constantly harassed and bitten, absolutely none of which will actually be aggression-based.

Male pigeons work out where in the flock hierarchy they fit by challenging all of their flock mates to see who they can overpower or intimidate and who they can't.

They maintain friendship almost exclusively through maintaining what they consider to be friendly rivalry.

They ignore and avoid flockmates they don't like.

So the people he likes the most are going to be challenged to fight him most often.

Pigeon hens require the cock to prove that he can out fly her by chasing her until she wears out, and then prove that he's strong enough to keep her safe from rivals by wrestling her to the ground afterwards every time she tries to fly away, until she's too tired to keep trying.

It's only after that that he's allowed to do the sweet things like preening her and feeding her from his crop.

This translates very poorly onto a human partner.

Had he been parent raised, he would have been able to work out how to interact with you in a way that was mutually pleasant.

He is unfortunately not able to recognize the communication gap, having been wired to think you and he are the same species.

I understand that he was most likely hand reared because no fosters were available and he would have died if you had not.

This is not a moral judgement or even a judgement on your husbandry.

These are simply the facts of what life with an imprint will be like, so you won't be taken by surprise when Creature hits puberty between 16 weeks and 6 months and all of those behaviors get turned up to 11.

Ankhou was and Cheeto is an imprinted cock.

You can have a happy relationship with them.

It's just going to be hard to bridge the communication gap.

[columba-livia-domestica]

Reddit's tech help threads may heckle you for being an amateur but at least they don't try to gaslight you like Adobe help threads

[columba-livia-domestica]

Some of the Pidgeys! Clifford and Cephalotus recently joined the outside flock (bottom right pair) now that the babies are a bit bigger and the peahens have relaxed.

[columba-livia-domestica]

another pigeon update for you all!

Damascus passed away last year of an unknown intestinal parasite. In the loft, we currently have:

Xander, Classic Old Frill

Filigree, Old German Owl

Slate, Old German Owl

(from left to right, Xander, Slate, Filigree)

And we also have our lovely miss Littlebird/Babybird, who lives indoors with me!

and here's her hanging out with some of the loft birds :)

[columba-livia-domestica]

Have you ever gotten news that makes you so sick you barf

im not at liberty to share the news yet but fuck this is so bad for me. So bad. So so so so bad.

I need yalls happy positive energy and for you to send some luck

Because this is

Oh man.

Its going to be such a shitty couple of months.

[columba-livia-domestica]

Updates to our Prices and Policies

With the recent realization that the way we have been going about training does not work well with the development of baby pigeons, we have changed our training program and wait list policies.

Focusing primarily on training therapy birds has resulted in much more wary babies because they were overwhelmed when they needed to feel protected and supported.

So, we’re going to focus exclusively on developing a comfortable, trusting relationships with the peeps.

Only the peeps that feel comfortable with the most handling will move on to training as Therapy Prospects.

I have to specify Prospects because peeps don’t leave the wary Hazing Phase of social development until they are about 6 weeks old, and I won’t have a reliably solid grasp on their temperament until 8 weeks.

One week is not long enough to train any one, and training a Therapy pigeon is exclusively dependent upon that individual’s bond with and focus on their care taker.

I cannot, in good conscience, call them fully trained Therapy Birds, given that.

But I can walk the care takers of peeps that have reached the Therapy Prospect tier of temperament through bonding with and then training the baby matched to them.

Instead of alerting people on the wait list to each peep as they hatch, we will wait until their temperament is fully known to offer a baby to the person on the list whose criteria they match.

If a peep does not meet the criteria of any one on the wait list, they will be offered to the public with their temperament status listed.

Those tiers and their prices are listed below.

Rescue/retired Any bird of unknown background who should not be bred for what ever reason $20

Loft Bird Physically sound/breeding safe. Strongly prefers the company of other pigeons. Avoids humans. $30

Companion class: Vibe Sits nearby, only if you are motionless. May preen clothing. Likes to be near, but not ok on people. $40

Companion class: Curious Wants to know what you are doing. Will land on your head or shoulder, or hop up on your knee. $50

Companion class: Interactive Preens you, asks for nursies, and invites you to play. $60

Companion class: Tractable Steps up willingly and enjoys petting $70

Companion class: Velcro Highest tier companion. Begs for attention. Borders obnoxious. $80

Travel Buddy: Velcro bird that likes adventures on a harness, but needs the carrier to be covered $90

Therapy Prospect: Travel buddy that can ride in an uncovered carrier and respond to verbal cues in public. $100

[columba-livia-domestica]

you answered a question about pigeons about a month ago and never responded to the numerous corrections that were made in the notes. it just worries me that someone might be looking for info on a pigeon, search your blog, and have dangerous misinformation be the only thing that turns up that is only corrected in notes that most people probably won’t check.

gettingvetted here.

The ask that this question is referring to can be found here. Many people responded angrily, demanding to know what I would do with a feral cat, a found rabbit, a stray dog, etc. Others tried to claim that pigeons are not legally considered wildlife or game birds and that special permits are not required to treat them.

First, it should be noted that just like feral cats, the pigeons we most commonly think of are feral, so considered nusiance birds and generally put down if brought to a clinic and not owned. There is no money allocated to save feral animals at a vet clinic and usually they won't make it to us in any sort of shape to be saved anyway. A stray dog, a clearly owned/domestic rabbit, or a stray cat (different from a feral cat) would be able to be worked through the shelter system, posted on lost and found groups/pages, fundraised for, rehomed, etc in ways that a feral animal never could. And yes, legally, in Virginia (where I practice), a pigeon is considered nuisance wildlife and can be hunted as game in appropriate hunting seasons. And, as wildlife, in VA you must have a special license to treat them. I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my butt. I have worked alongside licensed wildlife rehabbers, animal control officers, and wildlife vets for much of my veterinary career.

Additionally, since legally pigeons are considered a game bird (for eating/hunting), it limits the types of medications and treatments we can use if an owned pigeon comes in. This is a dilemma common to many food producing animals that are kept as pets. For example, Frontline would work really well for lice and mites in chickens, but I can't recommend it legally because the withdrawal period for meat and eggs is infinite. And I can't prescribe enrofloxacin for calf scours in a pet calf even though it would probably work really well in some cases, because it is not labeled for diarrhea in calves and it is illegal to use fluoroquinolones in an extra label manner in cattle, even if it is a pet.

These are things that we are paid to know as veterinarians. Jurisprudence exams exist for a reason. The fact that someone is still bringing this up after a month means that that person must have a lot more time on their hands than I do.

vet-and-wild here.

I also want to add, we are a group of volunteers that do this for fun and education. We don’t have time or energy to check the notes on every single thing we post. We’re also not a scientific journal. We answer questions to the best of our abilities and all have expertise in different areas but our advice is not substitute from talking to your own vet or using peer reviewed research. If you have a specific question about something we’ve posted we’d be happy to discuss it but we get dozens of asks a day and have actual lives on top of it all. We need to know specifically what you want us to talk about; we just can’t practically check every single post for commentary. I would also argue that if someone really wants to find information on pigeons, a single Tumblr post from a vet blog should probably not be their only resource...

[columba-livia-domestica]

Yes, I would like an extra large order of baby please. Do you take safflower as payment? Oh you do? Excellent.

[columba-livia-domestica]

Stress ball.

[columba-livia-domestica]

Even if it's silly, I'd love a small popularity poll on the pigeons, through straw poll or any other option. Who do you think it's the fan favourite?

We did one of these before, but I never did tally it.

I’m down to try again, though. ^v^

If you guys could comment who is your favorite, I’ll do my best to keep a tally. 

We’ll start with the permanent house pets;

Gordon

April

Ankhou

Bird-Bird

Adult breeding flock;

Emillio

Cookie

Hagrid

Betty

Rigby

Tandy

Luxotica

Vynni

Pippin

Lilly

Ellie

Cody

Leonard

Our Keep Backs;

Cherub

Sprinks

Beetle

Dodger

Alex

MJ

Velvet

Thistle

Elliot

Indica

Farthing

Satin

Leela

Pookie

We are only including present long term residents for this poll.

[columba-livia-domestica]

Hello! I already tried contacting you on your phone number, but I don't think it got through, so I'm gonna send an ask just in case. We found a pigeon with a broken (at least it seems like it) wing at work. We called a few vets already and they all wanna euthanise it. Is that really the best decision? It looks very lively and we had a hard time catching it with three people. We don't have any animal rescues nearby that know how to handle pigeons, so we're at a loss about what to do.

I did reply to the text message, but got no reply.

It has been weeks since this was sent, at least, so this is probably too late for this specific individual...

But for reference;

Pigeons can live full, happy lives with a broken wing.

The wing can heal fully and regain function, like 

our lovely car strike victim, Bird-Bird.

Or they may not

Like another car strike, Karen.

Bird-Bird, who was blinded in the accident, is one of our house pets, and lives quite happily, roomba-ing around the living room.

Karen, despite his wing calcifying at the wrist so that he can’t fully extend it, was adopted by @tinysaurus-rex and lives in their loft.

Every effort should always be made to either find a vet, or get the bird to some one who can care for it.

When you approach a vet about seeing a pigeon, make it EXPLICITLY clear that you are NOT just dumping a wild animal on them.

Emphasize that this is a domestic animal, and you are taking responsibility for its wellbeing.

It will help to refer to it as a Homer/roller mix, rather than a street pigeon.

Getting the bird to a vet is ideal, but if there is not a vet that will take them (despite them being domestic animals, many US vets will not see a pigeon. And the vast majority of emergency vets are cat and dog exclusive), there are options for home care.

An individual who was able to evade you is likely old enough to be self feeding, so you could set one up using a cat carrier as a hospital cage at first, with calcium supplements dusting a varied seed mix.

Normally, that would be a cruelly small enclosure for a pigeon.

But utilizing a very small space to restrict the movement of a pigeon with a broken limb is WAY less stressful and carries a much lower risk of further injuring the break than attempting to bind them.

As they become more active, you can move them to a larger enclosure.

Let me reiterate that the advice above is ONLY for emergency cases where a vet is not available to you!

[columba-livia-domestica]

Hi!

Haven't made my own post in a WHILE but I figured I should show yall the new birds!

From left to right, we have Slate, Filigree, and Damascus. I'll be looking for a hen at some point as I believe both Damascus and Filigree are cocks, leaving us with 3 cocks and one hen in the loft.

I thought Xander might pick a fight with them all, but I think he's just happy to have birds around again after Kravitz's passing.

The aviary has had some additions too; we added a hanging branch perch and more nest boxes, as well I've also got some toys I'm planning to install.

[columba-livia-domestica]

incoming

[columba-livia-domestica]

Valentine got off the egg for just a minute to stretch and do happy flappies before going back to rest on it.

Zephyr finally noticed his nesting wife and preened her, filled himself up with food, and is not patrolling/parading up and down and around their nest.

This is so beautiful to watch! Let's pray for a happy couple and healthy baby, hopefully babies 😁💕 I'll know in a couple days if there will be two eggs or just one.

[columba-livia-domestica]

 Hey btw, another worldbuilding thing: You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things. They’re not inherently unrealistic, for as long as you address the realistic consequences as well.

 Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

 Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

 A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

 An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

 Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

 The doves do protect the city. By shitting fucking everywhere.