UkPigeonRacing

I got a phone call from an old fancier who lives near me. He is not in good health and has had to get rid of the birds. He said he had some feed there he needed to get rid of. I went round to his place, he is not good. On oxygen.
He had two big bags of beans, a bag of peas, a bag of vetch and a couple of bags of barley. And a few part bags of this and that. I told him the barley was no use to me, mine won't eat it.
I asked him how much much he wanted for the rest. He wouldn't take anything, just wanted it gone. So I arrived home with over 100 kg of feed! I have never fed beans, and don't know how they will go on them. I will feed them to the stock pigeons mainly, I think. Might mix a very few in the feed for the young birds. Same with the vetch. I just mixed a couple of bins of my light mixture, but I might put a few hands full of the vetch through it, just to use it up.

Sounds good Murray. The beans are a bit like the barley in as much as it would be last to get eaten. I used to hopper feed beans as they would only eat what they require. Whenever handled they never had more than the odd bean in the crop.

True.
I called them in for their dinner, zoom crash
Guess what was left?

I suppose I was trying to respect my old mate by using the grain he gave me,
But my pigeons don't know what a bean is. And they know what they want. Vetch is a high protein grain. They do not want it.
When pigeons ate beans, or went hungry, beans were the best pigeon food.
Not anymore.
Feeding a diet with about 20% protein, when they need a diet with about 12%, is a way to keep getting beaten.

Sorry to hear about the poor mans health, very sad that he has got so bad the birds have had to go. Hopefully his health will at least stabilise a bit without the birds
Sounds like you had a right result there mate as Andy said the beans may take some time for the birds to get used to, it's like all feed some will like them and others won't. Beans were always a main ingredient in the feed years ago and boy were they big beans, I remember our Dad used to keep them until they were nearly black before using them. Many distance fliers still feed a lot of beans over here. The guys I know that do have it both in their mixes and ad lib in a hopper, the birds won't over feed on it but once used to it will regularly take it. In conversations I've had with Des Coulter in the past he always reckoned that all his best distance birds were the ones that regularly visited the bean hopper. I ran out of the Beans that he gave me over the winter and I've been trying to get hold of some ever since and funnily enough some one down the club last night had a call from another fancier who is trying to off load a tonne of them as he had to order a lot more than he wanted wo me and another guy are going to buy a few bags off him

Smith You left the best behind ,all of that other stuff are lead sinkers , feed it to your stock birds to raised your babies ,of coarse your birds won’t eat Bailey ,if you don’t feed it. Or have them over feed ,asked your self why they won’t eat it ,went the best flyers in the world ,don’t have any trouble ,

There are two schools of thought about barley.
Those who think it is the secret to success, and those who don't. I am one of the second category.
I was left looking a bit like a deer in the headlights when I was gifted a large amount of high protein grains.
I am pretty much a convert to low protein, high carbohydrate feed for racing pigeons, High fat, not so much.
So here's me with 60 kilograms of beans, and 50 kg of vetch
I am always up for a change, you don't improve if you don't try. So I went 5% beans and 5% vetch.

That did not work. Guess what I was taking out?
So it's 1% beans and vetch.

It will take long time. A very long time, but I will use that feed.

They will eat the beans once they get used to them Murray. It’s like maize. My youngsters aren’t eating it at present. I only fed them a light feed this morning as I wanted to let them out for the first time this afternoon and wanted them a bit hungry. By this evening all the maize that was left in the trough this morning was gone. I bet if I do the same tomorrow after that the maize will be being eaten first.