Hi Daz, welcome to the site.
You have good advice from the members, but I would offer a couple of other thoughts. 20 pigeons is perfectly adequate, I am a small loft flyer myself. A small team can be very enjoyable.
BUT a small loft must still have the same requirements as a big fancy loft. It must be dry, it must have good ventilation without the birds living in drafts, and should be clean. Otherwise you will have health problems.
I have doubts that you will have much success turning old pigeons into racers. They have spent years just living at home, they will find it difficult to learn to fly hard over any distance. Racing is a skill they learn in the first year of their lives.
My advice would be to firstly pick maybe four pairs out of your pigeons and breed a couple of rounds of youngsters off them. Get rid of the rest.
Join your local club and ask advice about the health and feeding of your young birds. This is important. Young birds should be bursting out of the loft and flying like rockets. Then you can train and race them.
It sounds a bit mean, but if your old birds are any good you can breed a nice team of young birds off them and enjoy racing them. I fear trying to train your old pigeons will only lead to disappointment.
I wish you all the best, keep us up to date with developments.
Advice
-
- Posts: 2471
- Joined: Tue Feb 08, 2022 8:59 am
- Location: west Oxford
- Gender:
I agree George, small loft but big flyer.George and Morgan wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 12:00 pm Daz this was a very successful fancier with a very small loft