Some News on My Iranin High Flyers.

Hey sufiness, good to hear that your birds are now flying for an hour.

With high fliers you have to toss them, most high fliers wont just fly by themselves unless they get scared off the roof, so just carry the birds outside and toss them, soon they will all climb to the skies.

You also say that they tumble, are these high fliers, or tumblers? I have no experience with Iranian highfliers or tumblers, but if you have an idea of how long they are supposed to fly, you can change your training methods a little to achieve that result.

Here is what I do with pakistani high fliers:
Let them sit in the aviary for about a week or two. Then settle them to the loft in a cage for a day or two making sure they come inside when I call them. Then I remove the cage, and they now venture out exploring the loft roof, soon they will start flapping their wings and might take off. Usually they just fly a round or two and land back on the roof. Once they are settled, I start tossing them, they will now climb higher and fly longer for each time they are outside. I fly them every day for about a week, now they are usually flying between 1-3 hours. Once they reach that mark, I fly them on alternative days, that usually make each bird increase its time with about an hour or two. The more you fly the young birds, the more they will fly, and when flying on alternative day they get some rest, and will fly longer on their next training.

As for droppers, I never tried. I know that tippler fanciers train their birds to drop when they signal them, but I dont. I let them fly as long as they want, and since my birds are solo fliers, some might fly an hour, while others might do 10 hours, its all up to them, and how much they wanna fly on a given day.

I wish I could train them like that But I just dont have the heart to keep them hungry in order to train them to respond to the droppers. Also in our competitions, we are not allowed to use droppers.

Many people also say that its better to keep the young birds hungry when you are settling them, I on the other side think thats wrong. A hungry youngster will only think about food, and wont observe as much. Also my young birds are eager to fly, and in case one of them does take off too early, I atleast expect them to return, while a hungry youngster might as well join the ferals. Of course it might depend on the location etc, as where I keep my pigeons there is a feral flock of around 200 birds only a block away where many people feed them breads and all.

Anyhow the reason for me talking about this is that each fancier should try to find out what works for him. A lot of the things I learned from others worked perfectly well for them, but they didnt work for me. Then there are methods I use, which dont work for others. I shared with sufiness what works for me, now its up to him to try it out, and change things so they fit him and his birds

LittleJohn, I am sure it works, but as I said there are methods which work for others which dont work for me, and vice versa. I do not need to train my birds, as I do not need the droppers, so no I am not having any difficulties with my birds at all.

Here is how I do things though... Instead of keeping my birds hungry, I create a routine. I feed the birds around the same time every day, lets say 5 pm. After a few days with this the birds will automatically start coming inside by this time. I have a 12 feet X 6 feet aviary infront of my loft, and the entrance to the loft is placed on top of this aviary. Almost all my birds will land on the aviary after training, and most of them will walk straight inside after landing, those who dont will come inside when I call them.

Lovebirds, its pretty much the same with my high fliers as your homers. A high flier which has been out and flying for 8-10 hours wont sit on the roof top and chill, he will do his best to land and run "home" as quick as possible. Last year I had problems with a few birds who would land on the roof top, and just hang out for hours. This year all my birds go inside as soon as they land.

Another thing which I noticed with high fliers is that if you keep the birds outside more, they will fly longer. They are smart birds and learn that even if they do land earlier they would just need to sit and wait for me to open the door so they can go inside, so rather than just sitting and laming around on the aviary, they continue flying.
As for homers, I know a guy who dont loft fly his birds, he just takes them out and toss them, and when these birds come home, they dont even look around, they trap instantly. Thats what works for him!

I dont think its about keeping birds hungry, except maybe when trying to settle them as on a full crop may venture too far away, but what i would say after reading a bit about diets and energy is that not over feeding them thus ruining their condition but feeding them to keep them in peak health and condition. Plus they are birdsof habit they get used to a paticular regime of being fed and let out at certain times.

I read somewhere giving them a little wheat 30 - 60 mins before fling them will improve their performance by 2 hours.

Another interesting point I read was on long distance flights pigeons use energy consisting of fat generally from their breast muscles.

Also that barley takes longer to digest than wheat. barley stas in the crop longer. However we have to also understand the pigeon digestive system which is not just the Crop, that is just basically a store of food.

I feed my pigeons a light breakfast in the morning and give them the rest of the feed in the evening. Approximately an ounce per bird, when you weight the ounce of food out and see it in your hand its actually quite a lot. I generally fly them in the evening after i arrive home from work.