pigeon loft design

[WhiteLightning]

Looking for a small loft design or any sites that sell small lofts. Only looking to keep couple of pairs of homers as a hobby not for racing. Any ideas or suggestions. Backyard space is tight

[Trees Gray]

Hello and Welcome to Pigeon Talk,

Thank you for your interest in homing pigeons.

For four pigeons you can actually use a rabbit type hutch design (with a few modifications), and add an aviary.

The problem comes along when the birds begin to breed and you want babies but don't have room, then you need more space, so you should decide that NOW, before building. ....and Yes, you can use birth control in the form of dummy eggs.


Red Rose lofts has a nice design.

http://www.redroselofts.com/starter_loft.htm


I am moving your thread to the appropriate forum, check out some of the threads there for more info.

[WhiteLightning]

thank you for the welcome and thanks for the info

[warriec]

Pigeons breed quite fast and is not very difficult to breed and not fussy about the living conditions. If you loft is small the biggest problem you have is excess babies. In a buddhist country like mine its moralling wrong to dispose of fertile eggs.

[ZigZagMarquis]

Originally Posted by WhiteLightning

Looking for a small loft design or any sites that sell small lofts. Only looking to keep couple of pairs of homers as a hobby not for racing. Any ideas or suggestions. Backyard space is tight

WLightning,

Welcome aboard. I understand backyard space being tight. A question and some commentary, my appolagies if you already know this...

You say you just want a coupld of pairs as a hobby and not for racing. Do you plan to fly your birds? If the answer is "yes", then you're probably talking about flying their offspring as re-settling homers to a new loft and being able to release them and have them come back to you is difficult at best. Thus, if you're looking at flying the offspring of the pairs you start with, you need to plan a loft sized for the number of birds you'll wind up with and not the numbers you'll start with. Sizing your loft for the numbers you'll start with is not an untypical mistake folks make in the begining. Other's will rattle off different numbers, but I've heard the "rule of thumb" is figure on 16 to 17 cubic feet of loft space PER BIRD.

Of course, you can start with a couple of pair of breeders, raise young from them that will easily home to your loft and then re-sell or make gifts of your original breeders (prisoners) to someone else who's interested in keeping pigeons... i.e. work your way towards have all birds that you can release. This was kinda / sort of my thinking, but I got attached to the first birds I got and now have a loft full of 20 birds... about half of which are prisoners and the other that I can let out to fly and reasonably expect to come home because they were born here...

Good luck and again, welcome aboard.

[warriec]

Is it possible to post some pictures of where you want yr loft to be in and the size requirements and what kinds of pigeons you are going to keep in it. You will have to consider the breed when building.

[youssef401]

very good lofts thanks