Anyone raise pigeons for meat?

I am new to this forum. I raise pigeons for meat, Modenas and Runts. Let me tell you this: its not worth it. When there are coturnix, jumbo coturnix, pekin ducks, Tetra tints and other birds that only need 6 weeks to slaughter weight, pigeons aren't worth it. They are more expensive to feed than chickens, and they don't lay like quail and chickens. I will continue to raise pigeons for meat, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

Pancho,what you said about the pigeon milk is absolutely true, also their utters are often hidden by their bellyfeathers, so you have to make sure you buy milk breed pigeons such as the Lower Saxony Creamer (ger.: Niedersächsischer Absahner)because they don't have any feathers on their underside.They can weigh up to 18 lbs so they can be used as a meat bird too. To achieve these remarkable attributes, milk goats were crossed with ordinary pigeons, mostly because after the 30-year war (1618-1648)goats as well as other livestock were in short supply in Germany but rock pigeons were plentiful because they were raised as messenger pigeons for the war (goats were not as useful for that purpose).To me that is just another example of German ingenuity!

Wow this post was 2 years old.

I wouldn't suggest it,, but I have heard folks raise quail on the floor of a pigeon loft.
I had pigeons on one side,, chickens on the other.. worked pretty well.
Also,,, finding a good squab breed that can still fly is difficult at best.. They are out ther,, you just need to find a true pigeoneer that knows what he's doing.
These show birds of any breed,,, would be a bad choice for meat.

In Texas, we live close to a grain elevator. LOTS of feral pigeons feasting on spilled grain. They fly over our pasture and water in our pond. They make great pigeon and rice soup!

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Alice
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A fellow I use to work with raised a lot of Pigeons, for meat, racing & pets. He loved his birds. But, he somehow caught __Histoplasmosis__ from them. It affected his eyes so that he had blind spots on his retinas, I think. He had to turn his head from side to side to see things properly. He couldn't drive anymore. I think it affects your Lungs, too.

It soured him, on the whole business and he got rid of all the pigeons, cleaned up & sanitized his place, to remove all traces of the birds. So, be careful with your pigeons and cleanliness. You need to very careful in feeding wild birds, through the Winter too, with your cleanliness. Wash up thouroughly whenever you handle bird feeders.
It just something to be aware of.........

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Histoplasmosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

__________________
Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

And somebody pulled a Lazarus on it to make odd remarks about dairy pigeons.

It's too early for this nonsense.

If someone wanted to, I think that we could pull up some 2003 postings from one place or another. I think that only most of 2002 was entirely lost.

I've been involved in raising pigeons as a hobby since I was 4. Anyone who will bother to look up how old I am will know how long that's been. First years were homers and they were big enough to eat. Dabbled with Modenas for awhile and we called them chickens since they were almost as big as some small chicken breeds. We were also raising rabbits for a local butcher shop at same time. Both were cheap to feed until the drought year of 1976. Both pigeon and rabbit feed kept climbing all year and never came down. We got rid of the rabbit business next year and ate the last Modena. Kept only the homers and rollers. Now have only had rollers since since 1988.

Martin

Why do you say that???
Both the cock and the hen provide milk for their babies..
GH

Facetious post about goat/pigeon hybrids and pigeons feeding their young from udders.

Crop milk yes. Mammalian style nursing, err... no.

Did they HAVE pigeons back then?

Or was it really?:

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Bearfootfarm, it is interesting that you uploaded this picture of this prehistoric bird, because pigeons were known in Germany before the Roman conquest (they were supposedly brought to present day Germany by the ancient Assyrians) and they probably didn't look like anything like we would recognize as pigeons today.Judging by some strange very old bone fragments found in an abandoned granite quarry in Bavaria in the late 1890's they must have been not only much heavier but possibly flightless.If I knew how to upload pictures I would have shown you a picture of the famous Dodo of Mauritius, an extinct flightless bird of the pigeon family about the size of a turkey.The Assyrians were not especially known for their animal husbandry skills other than horsemanship but they must have lived from some kind of livestock in a time when there were no modern chickens, cattle, goats or pigs.Hunting would have been the only other source of meat.These ancient pigeons had many features that even predates those of modern birds such as the capability to produce milk for their young in utterlike glands on the underside of their bodies.With the advent of milk goats and sheep as well as cattle these bird breeds went slowly out of fashion because mammals could produce more milk.So over time these milk pigeons lost a lot of their milk production ability which at one time must have been sufficient to sustain entire communities of people.Today most people are completely unaware that pigeons are the only bird that feeds its young with milk.If you carefully examine a modern pigeon you will still find two little spots on the abdomen where once the "utter" was located. The history of livestock is a very fascinating area of study and there is much to be discovered for our modern times.

Manure is getting awful deep in here! All domestic breeds of pigeons are the same species and have been associated with Man for thousands of years. They are Columba livia and are not the only species which produce milk in their crops.

Rock Dove - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin

I think this is a pretty cool idea for a pigeon coop:

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UM,,, After the flood,, Noah released a dove. In the bible, The hebrew word for dove/pigeon is one and the same.
Just sayin