How To Make The NPA Important Again (Part 2)

In the long exchange of ideas that I had with another pigeon fancier regarding the NPA and how it seems to have become somewhat irrelevant to many fanciers, one of the things that I pointed out is the NPA Quarterly Bulletin. This seems like a part of the NPA that has seen better days.

Now I know that some are going to disagree with me on this but please keep an open mind. How about this: instead of publishing a quarterly bulletin, how about the NPA contracts with Purebred Pigeon (PP) magazine to do an annual NPA focused issue. Once a year, say the March/April issue, the NPA gets a whole issue devoted to updates on the club, shows, and other NPA business. Specialty clubs regularly get an entire issue devoted to them; why can't the NPA do this on a regular basis?

I can hear a few of the objections already:

1. Not every NPA member has a subscription to Purebred Pigeon nor should they be forced to get one. Fair enough. For this annual issue, the NPA has extra copies printed to be mailed to those members that don't get PP. Of course, we might want to encourage members to subscribe to PP but that wouldn't be necessary for this scheme to work.
   
2. People that are not members of the NPA will see the NPA update. So what? If they see what the NPA is doing, maybe they'll be persuaded to join. Advertising a volunteer organization is not a bad thing. The current bulletin doesn't seem to be a major selling point for the NPA anyway. Maybe an annual NPA issue might help to persuade people that they should join the NPA.
   
3. What happens if Purebred Pigeon goes out of business? I sincerely hope they don't but if they do, then the NPA can always revert back to what it's doing now.
   
4. We need more than one update per year for the NPA. I'm not so sure about that. Show results are often shared via the various specialty clubs and the NPA could "lease" the March/April issue so that there would be plenty of time to tabulate the results from the Grand National.
   
5. We'll have to share the revenues from the NPA Bulletin with Purebred Pigeon magazine. I'm not sure--does the NPA sell ads in the quarterly bulletin? Is it a really large revenue stream for the club? I mean this might be a real obstacle if the club were to decide to go this route. In fact this may be the only real obstacle that I can see to pursuing this idea.

This arrangement would give the NPA a much nicer, more professional looking "bulletin", it would save the NPA on postage costs to those members that are also subscribers to PP and it would help to keep the only magazine we have in the US devoted to show pigeons alive and well.

How To Make The NPA Important Again (Part 1)

On the Michigan Pigeon Email List, we recently (well, maybe a month or so ago) had a long, drawn-out discussion of the relevance of the NPA to today's pigeon fancier. Another fancier made some excellent points and one of the better points he made was that if a fancier feels that the NPA has become somewhat irrelevant (as I do) then that fancier should come up with ways to improve the NPA and suggest those improvements. It's a good point; far easier to point out flaws than to figure out ways to fix them. So, in that spirit, I've been considering how the NPA might be changed to make it a relevant and important organization again. I'll be posting a series of articles each addressing some strategy or tactic to make the NPA relevant again.

One of the things that Willi Riechert, one of the candidates in the 2007 election for the NPA presidency, said he would do is to reach out to youth organizations to get more youth involved with pigeons. I'm paraphrasing a bit on what he said but that seemed to be the gist of his idea. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a matter of great importance to me--getting young people involved in our hobby.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been to two county fairs here in Michigan and I've heard about a third one. The Oakland County fair is moving in a good direction as regards a pigeon exhibit. They've gotten steadily more pigeons entered over the past three years and for the past two years, they've had separate pigeon judges that actually are pigeon judges (as opposed to poultry judges simply doing double duty). The Monroe County fair is in the same place that the Oakland County fair was a few years ago; that is, a few pigeons entered and no special cooping for the pigeons and no special pigeon judge. I heard from another pigeon fancier who is also a 4-H resource leader that the Ingham County fair is also pretty much in the same shape as the Monroe County fair; that is a few pigeons judged by a poultry judge.

This seems to me to be an opportunity just waiting for the NPA. We could put together a list of pigeon fanciers willing to volunteer as judges for these various county fairs. Granted not every fair will get a pigeon judge of vast experience but even a pigeon fancier with a few years of experience knows better what he or she is looking at than does a poultry judge. The point is to give the kids that are showing the birds some helpful advice about how to improve their stock. Also, just knowing that there are other pigeon fanciers around will help to improve the morale of these kids. Talking to some of them they seem to feel that keeping pigeons is some very oddball, niche hobby that very few people pursue. If they were to see that there are other people who also like pigeons, it would be a great boost and encouragement to them.

Once we have a list of pigeon fanciers willing to act as volunteer judges, the next step would be to organize judging workshops. This would get those volunteers that are willing but possibly not knowledgeable enough the training that they need. Experienced judges could work with these new volunteers to disseminate the needed knowledge.

Of course, the NPA would also have to contact the various county fair boards to make them aware that this volunteer help is available. Some county fairs might decline the help but usually when you offer volunteer help, most organizations are glad to have it.

Finally, the NPA could sponsor a best pigeon trophy for each of these county fairs. It wouldn't cost that much and it would encourage kids that might not otherwise consider pigeons to think about raising them. Again, it'd be up to the various county fair boards but again I doubt many of them will turn down the offer of a prize that's likely to encourage more entries--especially when it's offered for free.

Of course, the NPA could put a stipulation on the trophy that no unbanded pigeon could win (to keep people from simply rounding up commons and entering them in the show) and that the prize is only awarded with a minimum number of pigeons and fanciers. But the principle is still the same.

I'd suggest that this be coordinated in each state served by the NPA on a state-by-state basis. Each state representative could coordinate the judging lists and the judging workshops as well as getting the trophies for the various county fair boards and getting the needed rule changes started with each county fair.

Taken to every county fair in the country, this could start a real resurgence of young people interested in keeping pigeons. Even if it goes nowhere (which is not unlikely) it's a step. And this is certainly something that is more in the bailiwick of the NPA than any other pigeon club; showing pigeons is what we do.

Novice Corner - Can They Find Home?

One of the more common questions posed to me by novice fanciers (or people considering getting pigeons) is usually some variation of "Can these birds find their way home?" This is the pigeon's great claim to fame; the ability to return home from some place they've never seen before even if that place is hundreds of miles away.

1. Racing homers are bred to come home from a long ways away (sometimes as much as 500 miles). However, even given that, the birds need to practice finding their way home from shorter distances. Part of this magical ability to find their way home is learning where home is. The pigeons have be able to get out of the loft to see landmarks, smell the landscape and generally learn how to recognize home from the air.
2. Fancy pigeons, that is, jacobins, fantails, trumpeters etc., were selected for their appearance and not their ability to return home from long distances. They might be able to return home but I wouldn't bank on it. Having said that though, a fancier should be able to let fancy pigeons out of the loft (provided they've been trained in how to trap back into the loft) with no worry of the bird getting lost. That's not to say that letting your pigeons out won't offend your neighbors or possibly expose them to becoming a raptor's dinner. That's just to say that you should be able to let even fancy pigeons out and they should be relatively ok, all other things being equal.
3. It's not uncommon for animals to have behaviors that are partially driven by instinct and partially learned. I recall reading an article from Scientific American regarding how baby gulls were born with an instinct for getting food from their parents but that they also improved upon that basic instinct by learning how to better get the food from their parents over time. I don't believe it would be a dangerously large leap of logic to infer that the behavior of being able to return home from long distances in pigeons is at least partially learned.

So, bottom line, yes, you can fly pretty much any pigeon but I wouldn't take anything other than a racing homer any appreciable distance from a loft and even then I'd make sure that the racing homer had a good chance to learn the lay of the land.

4-H Exploration Days

4-H Exploration Days Group
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

One of my great pleasures as a pigeon fancier is to get to share my birds with others. And the icing on the cake, so to speak, is to share them with young people. I had the privilege again this year of teaching a session at the Michigan 4-H Exploration Days in East Lansing. And I was lucky enough to get a great group of kids to work with and an excellent assistant, Janine. It's truly an extra special pleasure to be able to talk to smart kids that ask me good questions that keep me on my toes as a pigeon fancier trying to tell others about my hobby. Kudos to all the kids for making the session as much fun for me as I hope it was for all of them. I had a BLAST!

By the way, Janine took the pictures--all of which you can see here.

A Visit to the Loft of Ed Bachmann

Ed Showing Off White Jacobin
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

I have the pleasure of working with a few kids who are involved with the 4-H club at Bowers School Farm. They've been so good about helping with the pigeons I wanted to do something extra special for them as a means of thanking them. Ed Bachmann, who's a pretty nice guy and one heck of a pigeon man, was kind enough to let the kids visit his loft, see his excellent jacobins and see his amazing trophy room. Many thanks to Ed for his time and for sharing his amazing loft with these kids.

You can see the entire set of photos I took during our visit here.

National Youth Pigeon Club

It's my understanding that these folks in Florida are working to create a national junior pigeon club--sort of an NPA for juniors. It seems they've gotten a scholarship program going. Having worked with youth quite a bit over the last couple of years and knowing a few others that have done the same I've got mixed feelings about yet another attempt to get juniors going with pigeons. I applaud their efforts but at the same time I think to myself there are already excellent youth development organizations in place (4-H comes to mind). I sometimes think that pigeon fanciers are as prone to suffer from NIH syndrome as are engineers and software developers. I mean there's never a downside to enthusiasm but what's so broken about the existing youth development organizations that we need to invent yet another youth group?

Pigeon Exhibit

On Saturday May 19, 2007, I was privileged to once again help with a pigeon exhibit at the Open Barn at Bowers School Farm. Dave and Kathy Bierl were kind enough to assist me. Dave and Kathy have a long history of volunteering to teach people about pigeons and I wanted to hear how they approach teaching people about pigeons.

You can see all the pictures I took at the Open Barn here.

Pictured is Dave Bierl talking to folks at the pigeon exhibit.

Call a Spade a Shovel

Once upon a time, there was only the humble rock dove (Columba Livia). And then they met mankind and they started on a long journey together--mankind and this fascinating bird. Somewhere between that fateful day and ours, someone spotted a rock dove that didn't look like a rock dove. Maybe he (or she) spotted a brown rock dove. Maybe they spotted a rock dove doing somersaults in the air.

Both brown in pigeons and the somersaulting behavior (called rolling) are very old traits and both diverge from the "standard" rock dove. The point is that this first bird that was different from the rock dove necessitated a new name. You couldn't just call it a rock dove, now could you? How would anyone know that this was a special rock dove that turns somersaults in the air or that it was a brown bird as opposed to the blue ones that were everywhere? Hence the need for breed names was born.

From what I know, I believe most of these names were a matter of practicality. The pigeon which is now referred to as the Runt in the US, was probably called a Roman Pigeon by the people of the ancient world. Calling it the "Roman Pigeon" was very practical and sort of pithy. How the name changed from "Roman Pigeon" to "Runt" is an interesting study in etymology all by itself.

But, the more interesting question would be this: did everyone call it "Roman Pigeon"? I mean, if nothing else there's the simple question of not everyone in the ancient world speaking Latin (or more likely Greek). So would the locals simply give it the name "Roman Pigeon" in their local tongue? I don't know. There's also the fact that the name "Roman Pigeon" wouldn't tell you much about the bird other than the fact that someone thinks it originated in Rome. Calling it "Big Pigeon" would have been much more descriptive and handy. In fact the various Mondain breeds of pigeons (thought to have been created from that long lost "Roman Pigeon") all share the appellation "Mondain" which means something like "earthy and large".

This is, undoubtedly, an old problem; Carl Linne (better known as Linnaeus) invented an entire system of nomenclature to address a similar problem--the problem of differing local names in differing local languages for the same plants and animals. Perhaps we pigeon fanciers need to invent Latin names for our breeds. Of course without a central authority to assign names, it's sort of pointless anyway.

A name is just a handle on a particular set of genes regardless; the truth of the matter is that with certain birds--mongrel pigeons--there's not a name to give to the breed. And as long as people want to create new breeds and push forward into new territory there will always be new names to get confused.

New Shipping Regulations For Pigeons

Joe Powers was kind enough to forward a message from Bob Fragoman. In a nutshell, the Post Office has decided that they're only going to allow people shipping pigeons via the USPS to send them with boxes provided by a particular vendor. I think I've always used boxes from Horizon Micro-Environments (the approved vendor) anyway.

The applicable edition of the USPS Postal Bulletin has the details.

First And Second Gazebo Lofts

First And Second Gazebo Lofts
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

Another photo I've been meaning to blog for a while. Fred C. is a fellow pigeon fancier and a real nice guy. Anyway Fred decided to get some lofts built in the shape of a gazebo. As you can see for yourself, they are beautiful. Just goes to show that a loft can look good and be functional too.

(Photo is from October of 2006.)

Pigeon Egg Without Shell

Pigeon Egg Without Shell
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

I've been meaning to post this photo to my blog for a while. One of the hens laid this egg in January. You can see the dent in the membrane on the upper right side of the egg in the photo. This was an exceptionally rare thing for me (first time in several years of raising pigeons) but other fanciers told me that they've seen this happen before.

(Photo from January 2007.)

Novice Corner - What You Don't Know You Know

As I've worked with novice pigeon fanciers, it's constantly brought to my attention how much knowledge more experienced fanciers assume is obvious that is not all that obvious. For many of us our only experience with novice fanciers will be working with our children or with children that are related to us. That doesn't relieve us of the responsibility for helping other novice fanciers that may not be related to us.

Do you give your birds nest bowls? I provide nest bowls for my birds. In fact, I don't think I know an experienced pigeon fancier who does not. Think about it though; why do we all do this? I mean, pigeons will normally build a nest themselves out of straw. All we really need to provide them with is a shelf and some straw and their instincts would lead them to the rest. We're making it easier for the birds by providing them with nest bowls but there's no reason that a person who'd never kept pigeons before would have any way of knowing that giving a nest bowl is a good idea.

What about feeding your birds? I feed my pigeons pelleted feed; I know lots of folks who feed a seed diet. But to a novice there's nothing to tell them what to feed their birds let alone where to get the feed. This is one of the most common questions put to me by novices: what should I feed my pigeons? Where can I get it? I have known people who buy dove seed 1 lb. at a time and they pay $5 for that pound. That probably seems outrageously expensive to many of you. But put yourself in the place of a novice. If they don't know any better what else would make sense for them to feed their birds? By the way, I do try to make sure that the folks I've been mentoring know where to find good feed at a decent price.

Can you remember the first time you banded a pigeon? I can't. However, I'll wager that for most of us we had an adult standing by to help us through the process. Probably most of us were afraid of hurting the baby pigeon in our hand. I doubt any of us just immediately slipped the band on with one quick motion and then put the bird back into the nest.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why is he pointing all these things out?"

First of all, there are times when the constant stream of questions from novices can tire the patience of an experienced fancier. Goodness knows I've gotten to that point myself and I have to confess that I sometimes let my mouth go before my brain has time to stop it. If you get to the point where you feel like telling a novice “Buy The Pigeon, start reading, and stop bothering me!”--stop. Think about the people who taught you. Think about the fact that they put up with all of your questions. Think about how many of those questions you asked so long ago might seem dumb now if someone else asked you.

Secondly, novices should be aware that there are a lot of questions that arise in raising pigeons which have no simple, well-defined answer. There is more than one answer to the question of "What should I feed my pigeons?"; in fact depending on your point of view, there is more than one right answer too. If someone asked me this, I'd advise them to feed pellets if they can afford to and seed otherwise. The main problem with seed . . . well, that's another article for another time. The point that novice fanciers should take away from this is that sometimes if more experienced fanciers give you different answers to the same questions, they're not necessarily trying to confuse you or mislead you. Sometimes there's just more than one right answer. And sometimes if a more experienced fancier won't give you an answer it may be because you're asking a question that they don't know the answer to themselves. Patience is a good thing for both the novice and the mentor.

Third, if you can help a novice to get good birds in whichever breed they're interested in then help them. It's hard enough for an experienced fancier with a network of friends to get decent birds without spending a small fortune; imagine the situation of a novice fancier who has to trust everyone to be fair with him or her. Helping a novice to get into your breed will pay you dividends down the road either way. If nothing else there will be one more fancier in the world who likes your breed as much as you do.

The opposite is true for novices; don't expect people to give you (or even sell you) great birds to start with. Most fanciers that have excellent pigeons have worked years on developing bloodlines; it's a bit unreasonable to expect someone just to hand over their years of hard work just because you want to be immediately competitive. We did have a novice fancier a few years ago that spent a lot of money and was competitive pretty quickly. However, he was pretty well set financially and so for him money wasn't really an obstacle. I doubt any novice will regard this as wisdom but there is something to be said for making novice mistakes with birds that are not top-dollar, best-quality pigeons. If I paid $10 dollars for a pigeon and then had it die a week after I got it home because I didn't know how to settle it into a new loft, I'd be disappointed. But if I paid $300 for that pigeon--well what I'd feel would be considerably worse than disappointment.

If you can work with a fancier who has experience with the breed you want to get then great. Again, though, remember that people don't start keeping pigeons to become unpaid consultants. Be careful not to abuse the privilege of getting help from an experienced fancier.

Mostly, bear in mind that raising pigeons successfully is far from being a simple endeavor. If a novice asks you for assistance, you're doing yourself and the rest of the hobby a favor by helping him (or her). Most fanciers I know are quite willing to help a novice--it's not usually the first favor asked that bothers an experienced fancier. If you find that a novice is starting to irritate you, grit your teeth and try to remember how green you were when you started.

Novice Corner - Lofty Ambitions

I'm a novice when it comes to ornithology in general but I'm a bit more experienced in the subject of domesticated pigeons. This is an article I wrote for my club's newsletter:

One of the more common questions that I've heard asked by novice pigeon fanciers is “What sort of loft should I build?” While I don't know of a definitive answer, I'll try to outline some of the guidelines I would consider in designing a loft were I to build a new one from scratch.

1.) Study what other people have built. The best way to get good ideas for a loft is by studying what others have done before you. Find out what other people consider their good ideas and what they would do differently if they started over.

There are sometimes special considerations in building a loft depending on the breed you're keeping. With muffed breeds, you want to have perches that sit away from the wall. This keeps the birds from breaking off their muff feathers on the wall. So, if possible, find a breeder of the breed you're interested in getting and ask them to see their loft.

A little bit of time spent looking at what others have built can pay handsomely in a loft that's easier to maintain and that's healthier for your birds.2.) Spend the minimum amount that you can possibly spend. For a novice especially, you're going to learn things as you progress. Building an elaborate and expensive loft simply commits you to a configuration that you may later learn is impractical and possibly makes things more difficult than they need to be.

Don't misunderstand me; I'm not advocating building a ramshackle loft. Goodness knows pigeons have a poor reputation as it is—we don't need people building eyesores to house their pigeons. I just wouldn't invest heavily in a first loft; you'll learn (we all do) as you go what works and what doesn't. Why commit yourself before you have to?

One easy way to save expense on a loft is to modify an existing building. Many fanciers build a loft in their garage. Building in the corner of a garage gives you two of the walls you'll need for the pen.

3.) You'll probably want at least two pens. Most fanciers with whom I am acquainted usually have some unmated (sometimes called “odd”) pigeons around. Either these are young pigeons that are weaned but not mated or they may have an odd male or female that they're hanging on to because they're looking for a good mate for the bird. Unmated pigeons in the loft with mated pigeons will simply disrupt your breeders.

A second pen also gives you the luxury of splitting up your pigeons after the breeding season. Being able to separate the males from the females helps to control the population of your flock. If you're doing things right, you will eventually have a need to control the size of your flock.

4.) It's probably not possible to install too many perches. Perhaps you've heard the phrase “pecking order”. This phrase actually has a basis in science. A scientist studying the social organization of a flock of chickens found that in every flock there was one bird that could peck any other bird in the flock and the other bird would not peck back. And in every flock there is a
chicken that any of the other chickens can peck and this poor animal will not return the pecks. In between there was a very rigid hierarchy of animals which were allowed to peck back at some birds but not allowed to peck back at others.

Pigeons do not have as rigid a pecking order as is found in chickens but there is some pecking order in pigeons. And scientists have also identified a certain amount of territoriality in pigeons—especially when it comes to their nest box and their perch. Pigeons will defend the perch they're on from encroachment by other pigeons. This behavior is referred to be ornithologists as “perch right”. Therefore the more perches are available the less likelihood there will be fighting. That is if two birds are arguing over which of them is allowed to perch on a particular perch they're less likely to fight if there are plenty of other perches available.

Along the same lines, the more you can delineate the boundaries of nest boxes for your birds, the more harmonious relations will be among the pigeons. If you build a long, narrow nest box with room for three pairs of pigeons, don't be surprised if only one pair ends up roosting in the nest box no matter how many nest bowls you put in. In common areas of the loft (the floor for example) most pigeons aren't aggressive and they'll not fight much. But when it comes to nest boxes and perches, pigeons can be extremely territorial and aggressive.

Nest boxes and recommendations on them are the material of another article so I won't dwell on that subject in this article.

5.) Light and ventilation are your friends. I recently heard someone refer to sunlight as “Nature's Disinfectant.” And I suspect they're right. Sunlight dries things up. When things are dry in the loft, the likelihood of nasty bacteria and viruses propagating is greatly diminished.

Likewise good ventilation helps to keep things dry. The bacteria and viruses that will cause your pigeons to be sick can't live in a dry environment.

There are other more specialized subjects related to building a loft. For example, if you ask a racing fancier about traps you may get a very long dissertation on the relative merits of different types of traps. Hence, again, probably the best thing you can do before building a loft or a pen is to look at the lofts of experienced fanciers. Most fanciers don't mind showing their loft to another pigeon fancier every now and again.

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Motor City Pigeon Fun

The city of Detroit will soon host two of the biggest events in the pigeon fancy.

In October of 2007, we will play host to the AU annual convention. I've never been to an AU convention but from the flier it sure looks like it'd be lots of fun to attend. I don't know a lot of folks with the AU but those that I know are real decent people and I'm glad I know them.

In January of 2008, we will be hosting the NPA Grand National. The show will be held at the Gibraltar Trade Center in Mt. Clemens.

It's going to be a fun time to be a pigeon fancier in Michigan.