some Questions about feral pigeons!

[Serinity]

OK, so I have two feral pigeons and I was wondering what was the difference between feral pigeons and some of the show pigeons? In other words what distinctions classify them as feral pigeons? Thank you!

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Amanda

[Serinity]

OK well it is me again. I just found out that one of them is a blue bar pie which is the wild-type but I am not sure what the other one is. I know it has red and white so I usually just call it a red pie. I don't know if that is what it really is. I also know that the red one had parents that both had the same pigment and they both had tails that were a little flipped up at the end. Will the tail flip at the end of any babies that my two pigeons have just like the red ones parents did?-thank you for any replies

[TAWhatley]

Hi Amanda,

Your birds sound quite lovely. Feral pigeons are birds raised in the "wild" as opposed to in captivity and are the descendents of the Rock Doves introduced into this country several hundred years ago. Over the years, escaped domestic bred pigeons and racing pigeons who hooked up with a feral flock have contributed their gene pool to that of the true ferals or Rock Doves.

Show pigeons as well as racing pigeons are bred for certain traits similar to how different breeds of cats and dogs are bred for certain traits. The traits may be behavioral and/or having to do with appearance. I guess a reasonable comparison of feral pigeons to show pigeons and other captive bred pigeons would be comparing a purebred Persian cat to a feral cat that had Persian in its ancestry or a purebred Labrador Retriever to a Lab mix. One has a known pedigree and the other doesn't. It is the same with ferals vs. show and specialty pigeons.

As to whether the tails of your young birds will flip up at the end is anybody's guess as we have no certain way of knowing what genes/characteristics exist for the two parent birds.

For me, it is very difficult to tell the difference between many feral pigeons and the captive bred racing/homing pigeons. Those who breed pigeons probably have no such difficulty. I'm sure you will be receiving some excellent responses from our other members shortly.

Terry Whatley


[This message has been edited by TAWhatley (edited January 11, 2003).]

[re lee]

The common pigeon or barn pigeon, is the wild type. It is seen in most cities and towns and country farms bridges ect. the common pigeon is the plain no set breed many colored undomesticated pigeon. And yes some has mixed with homing type and show type birds over the years. But agin are just common varity pigeons.From this start some 250 breeds of pigeons developed over a long period of time far removed from the wild type.