Does anyone on here have any experience in the ceremonial type business using white homing pigeons? I'm considering breeding a few to see how I do with wedding services. Any help or advice would be much appreciated!
White Homing Pigeon Businesses??
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Country84
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Thanks for your input warren. Im not saying it seems as if being there is a waste of time but more or less just wanted a good explanation of what all i should be doing while im with customers at their special event so i dont look as if im just there to be there. I dont have a marketing degree nor am i a corporate businessman and i probably will never be, but to have my own small business that offers a good quality and memorable service along with supplemental income would be nice, which is why im here asking questions so i dont go in blind and completely flop. So i definitely appreciate your input from your years of experience! I do make good money at my job, i work for GE, but as always higher income, higher bills lol.
First the loft needs to be built. Second finding the birds you need. AND i would get breeder birds. As then you could raise from them at the begining.. Third. come the training. AND if you are going to release from 50 75 to 100 miles away. That means you drow a circle to your release area on the map. train the 4 directions. Then you are ready to do weddings funerals and events.. You set up a web page. You get and meet with wedding planners. Meet with funeral home directers ECT. give presentation to your Release bussiness. find and BUY your baskets ect. ALLWAYS be at every release or have someone there. Set your price chart. Dress well. Remember release near dark means birds would be out over night so Might not be a good idea to except late release times for the BIRDS safety. SO basicly first year is the set up. And then your method and advertising.
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Hey Country84,
I have a white dove release business in Baltimore, MD and I like you begin with racing homers and decided to make my hobby pay for itself. I dont have a big loft so I decided to get not only birds that were white but birds I could send down the road on a race longer than 50 miles! I got intouch with a guy from the back of The Racing Pigeon Digest and he ultimatly got me in touch with Art Casale of Arrowhead lofts of San Diego, Ca for my good whites ( just a lil back history on how I got started last year ).
Last year I got some business cards from Vistaprint who is very reasonable and made my own website through Yahoo (have little experience with computers but was easy for someone like me, cost about $10 a month......made about $800. This year I tried something different. Still have the same cards and website but this time I went to just about every funeral home here in Baltimore and made this offer. Take my base charge of $150 for 4 birds, add it into your packages for whatever price point you want to use, just rememeber no matter what you charge I still want my base of $150 for those birds. The older funeral directoers where leary but the younger ones jumped all over it. Fast forward, I did 3 funerals today, 2 yesterday and 3 last saturday etc. I have one funeral home that charges the family $500 for the same 4 birds in their package and another funeral home that doesn't charge anything above the $150 because the owner feels like he makes his money on the coffin and other things and he uses it as gift to the familyand he pays me himself. I like the casket wholesaler, don't care what they charge the family as long as I get the $150 for the service.
I understand why you feel the way you do about funerals and i'm sorry the only advice I could help with is the funeral side. I have done a few weddings but they are very few and far between. By the way made about $35,000 this year! I can't believe it BIG difference from last year and its a hobby!
I hope something helps if you have any questions please feel free to ask! Everyone check out my website no matter what state your in and offer any constructive advice, or comments on how i could better the webiste! Thanks!
www.faithfulwings.com
Good luck Country!
I have a white dove release business in Baltimore, MD and I like you begin with racing homers and decided to make my hobby pay for itself. I dont have a big loft so I decided to get not only birds that were white but birds I could send down the road on a race longer than 50 miles! I got intouch with a guy from the back of The Racing Pigeon Digest and he ultimatly got me in touch with Art Casale of Arrowhead lofts of San Diego, Ca for my good whites ( just a lil back history on how I got started last year ).
Last year I got some business cards from Vistaprint who is very reasonable and made my own website through Yahoo (have little experience with computers but was easy for someone like me, cost about $10 a month......made about $800. This year I tried something different. Still have the same cards and website but this time I went to just about every funeral home here in Baltimore and made this offer. Take my base charge of $150 for 4 birds, add it into your packages for whatever price point you want to use, just rememeber no matter what you charge I still want my base of $150 for those birds. The older funeral directoers where leary but the younger ones jumped all over it. Fast forward, I did 3 funerals today, 2 yesterday and 3 last saturday etc. I have one funeral home that charges the family $500 for the same 4 birds in their package and another funeral home that doesn't charge anything above the $150 because the owner feels like he makes his money on the coffin and other things and he uses it as gift to the familyand he pays me himself. I like the casket wholesaler, don't care what they charge the family as long as I get the $150 for the service.
I understand why you feel the way you do about funerals and i'm sorry the only advice I could help with is the funeral side. I have done a few weddings but they are very few and far between. By the way made about $35,000 this year! I can't believe it BIG difference from last year and its a hobby!
I hope something helps if you have any questions please feel free to ask! Everyone check out my website no matter what state your in and offer any constructive advice, or comments on how i could better the webiste! Thanks!
www.faithfulwings.com
Good luck Country!
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That is very interesting Hawkins. Going into college next year and my father retiring I have thought about doing white dove releases, even if I only profit $500 that would pay for feed and a lot more. I would just want to be able to pay for the hobby. You have made me seriously consider this!!!
Now you're going to have Everyone going into it.
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A question to those have white homing pigeons - not those that have white racing pigeons.
I know when you're doing training tosses, you are basically forcing the bird to fly and go back home. But when you are loft flying, do white homing pigeons loft fly well/route well?
I'm going to be training my white homing pigeon young birds with my normal racing pigeons (the ones that I will be racing, they're good quality racing pigeons), so maybe they will join the flock and loft fly with them/route with them? I'm going to be doing training tosses for both at the same time (they will be trained together, in the same manner, and will fly back to the same loft).
Or is it generally hard to get the white homing pigeons to loft fly/route?
My racers might help them, but I'm just wondering if they usually do or don't.
I know when you're doing training tosses, you are basically forcing the bird to fly and go back home. But when you are loft flying, do white homing pigeons loft fly well/route well?
I'm going to be training my white homing pigeon young birds with my normal racing pigeons (the ones that I will be racing, they're good quality racing pigeons), so maybe they will join the flock and loft fly with them/route with them? I'm going to be doing training tosses for both at the same time (they will be trained together, in the same manner, and will fly back to the same loft).
Or is it generally hard to get the white homing pigeons to loft fly/route?
My racers might help them, but I'm just wondering if they usually do or don't.
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As both groups are "pigeons" they'll want to be part of the flock. What will happen is the lesser birds will get pulled beyond their ability and get lost. The "good quality racing pigeons" will slow down to compensate for the rest of the "flock" or the "white homing pigeons" will speed up to stay with the "flock". I guess your option is to see what your plan produces or fly them separately. Good luck!
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Thanks everyone for you comments! It really is great making enough money to do just this! I got fired from my job because I had to keep calling out to do events, I knew once I built up my client base I would be set and quit anyway. Now i'm living a dream, my birds have become so tame because i'm always home and in the lofts doing something.
I agree with raftree, it depends on the quality of the birds you have. If they were just bred to be white you going to lose them if you train them with your racers. The guy I met in the digest sold me a kit of those 12 born just to be white youngsters and I put them in with my young bird team and lost them all before the season. I got some quality white breeders some birds out of them and scored 18th club vs 230 birds 2011 YB's. So it depends on what your trying to do with the birds. If you want to race them then test them along with the rest of your birds and breed from the best cock and hen and the end of the season. Nothing is more satisfying than scoring with some of those "disney whites" in a race!
If anyone is interested in this business feel free to hit me up and I will give you my contact info so we can swap idea's. I got alot of my idea's from calling out of state white dove companies I found by google. Being out of state I wasn't a competitor so alot of the folks shared alot of useful tips. Infact one of them suggested I wholesale my services to funeral directors and thats the reason my business jumped the way it did.
Good luck!
I agree with raftree, it depends on the quality of the birds you have. If they were just bred to be white you going to lose them if you train them with your racers. The guy I met in the digest sold me a kit of those 12 born just to be white youngsters and I put them in with my young bird team and lost them all before the season. I got some quality white breeders some birds out of them and scored 18th club vs 230 birds 2011 YB's. So it depends on what your trying to do with the birds. If you want to race them then test them along with the rest of your birds and breed from the best cock and hen and the end of the season. Nothing is more satisfying than scoring with some of those "disney whites" in a race!
If anyone is interested in this business feel free to hit me up and I will give you my contact info so we can swap idea's. I got alot of my idea's from calling out of state white dove companies I found by google. Being out of state I wasn't a competitor so alot of the folks shared alot of useful tips. Infact one of them suggested I wholesale my services to funeral directors and thats the reason my business jumped the way it did.
Good luck!
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I am going to train both the whites and my racers the same. I'm not looking to jump right into the dove release business right now. I want to develop a line of whites that can fly competitively. So if that takes me a few years, I'm fine with that. In a couple of years, when I have a group of white racers that can extremely well from at least 300 miles, only then will I start my release business.
Until then I might do a few releases here and there. Right now my whites consist of:
15 breeding pairs and 3 hens. Some of these breeders were bred for dove releases while some have much better homing intelligence. They have all been tested to at least 50 miles I think since they have flown over the Georgia Strait here in British Columbia to Vancouver Island. So if they can fly across the Pacific Ocean, they shouldn't be too bad of a quality of homers.
However, as I said, I'm giving this project of mine 3-4 years to develop. I'm going to bring in better blood to mix in with them. From across Canada and the US mainly. I will be doing a lot of importing/exporting of birds across the border once the therapy programs start up so I'll have a few opportunities to bring birds across the border.
I'm going for more of a quality mission rather than a quantity mission. In my opinion that is a better way to go as some of you have mentioned. I'd rather be doing releases when I know the birds can make it back from 250+ mile plus consistently. Every release will just be a training toss for them if you get what I mean! (Not a struggle to get home)
Until then I might do a few releases here and there. Right now my whites consist of:
15 breeding pairs and 3 hens. Some of these breeders were bred for dove releases while some have much better homing intelligence. They have all been tested to at least 50 miles I think since they have flown over the Georgia Strait here in British Columbia to Vancouver Island. So if they can fly across the Pacific Ocean, they shouldn't be too bad of a quality of homers.
However, as I said, I'm giving this project of mine 3-4 years to develop. I'm going to bring in better blood to mix in with them. From across Canada and the US mainly. I will be doing a lot of importing/exporting of birds across the border once the therapy programs start up so I'll have a few opportunities to bring birds across the border.
I'm going for more of a quality mission rather than a quantity mission. In my opinion that is a better way to go as some of you have mentioned. I'd rather be doing releases when I know the birds can make it back from 250+ mile plus consistently. Every release will just be a training toss for them if you get what I mean! (Not a struggle to get home)
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as far as the routing of white homers.. mine did not do this untill they were a year old or so...after allot of loft flying and road trips too.
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I just did a head count, this is what I have right now:
15 pairs of white homers
14 pairs of racing pigeons
4 extra racing cocks
3 extra white homer hens
My current set up has 17 individual breeding pens. These will be given to both the white homers and racers. The white homers get 8 pens, the racers get 9 pens. The remaining 12 pairs will be in an open loft situation. However, I will pair them up 1 by 1 in an individual breeding pen before releasing into the open loft with nest boxes.
So housing the breeders is not a problem. As far as the young birds go, instead of breeding 3 rounds, I might breed 2 rounds from every pair and 3 rounds from a select few. I have a 10 X 8 young bird section to fly the birds from. I have estimated roughly 120 young birds for next year. I'm going to be doing some serious training so I might lose a lot of young birds. Plus BC weather in the spring time can be harsh on the birds so we lose quite a few birds during training/races. We have a bad BOP problem too. So I think I could successfully house any young birds I get. Train/test them properly and keep only the best ybs and breeders to breed from the next year.
I am going to cut down from 14/15 pairs of both the white homers and the racers to 12 of each for 2014. This might help a lot too!
15 pairs of white homers
14 pairs of racing pigeons
4 extra racing cocks
3 extra white homer hens
My current set up has 17 individual breeding pens. These will be given to both the white homers and racers. The white homers get 8 pens, the racers get 9 pens. The remaining 12 pairs will be in an open loft situation. However, I will pair them up 1 by 1 in an individual breeding pen before releasing into the open loft with nest boxes.
So housing the breeders is not a problem. As far as the young birds go, instead of breeding 3 rounds, I might breed 2 rounds from every pair and 3 rounds from a select few. I have a 10 X 8 young bird section to fly the birds from. I have estimated roughly 120 young birds for next year. I'm going to be doing some serious training so I might lose a lot of young birds. Plus BC weather in the spring time can be harsh on the birds so we lose quite a few birds during training/races. We have a bad BOP problem too. So I think I could successfully house any young birds I get. Train/test them properly and keep only the best ybs and breeders to breed from the next year.
I am going to cut down from 14/15 pairs of both the white homers and the racers to 12 of each for 2014. This might help a lot too!
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I'll be interested in what you settle on. On another site you posted that you have 10 pairs of racers and a few whites so that must have grown. Not sure what anyone would do with 120 YB's. Your 10x8 YB loft loft should only house about 40 plus or minus. Good luck with all your plans.
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I am very interested in buying white homing pigeons. I would love to have a business where I can make some money and also work with animals. Pleaase send advise!
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The Truth About “Dove Releases” |
www.pigeonrescue.org
Releasing Doves at Ceremonies: Why You Shouldn’t Do It |
www.pigeonrescue.org
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