The Forage

If you occupy yourself a little with the feeding of pigeons, you know that pigeons are not solely grain eaters. Investigations into the crop content of fielding pigeons have revealed that 93.5% of the content consists of various grains, 4.7% is forage (leave parts, buds, flower leaves, berries and sprouts) and 1.8% is animal food. In this composition I would like to further look into the 4.7% that are forage. This means that for 1kg of grain food (that is a day’s portion for approximately 30 tumbler-pigeons) 47g of forage should be accounted for. (Six florets from Brussels sprouts weigh about 47g). The 47g should be seen as an index. It is clear that the fielding pigeons do not eat the same amount of forage every day.

WHAT QUALIFIES AS FORAGE?

The display of forage is almost infinite. If you happen to have a garden of your own then forage is almost no problem. Because then you can put whole salads with the roots into the pigeonry. This way the pigeons busy themselves for a long time with the roots. What they also accept readily are: cut alfalfa, chickweed and chive. If you cut the fruits and vegetables into mouth-ready sizes, they will also take that easily. Sometimes a little time is needed to accustom the pigeons to the food. It is of advantage to reduce the amount of food during that time. That way the forage is accepted faster.

FORAGE IS NOT A SINGULAR FOOD!

In my neighborhood I knew a pigeon breeder who bought whole baskets of salad when there was a sale. Then his pigeons got only salads for days and weeks. His argument for this was “salad is cheaper than grain”. Well this is an opinion too! But the pigeon’s feces were green and muddy.

The reason why pigeons should not be fed with forage over long periods of time can be seen by giving a look at their intestines. The largest part of processing the food happens in the intestines. The pigeons, contrary to the goose which mainly feeds on forage, have a small intestine. The proportion body length to intestine length is 11:1 for the goose and 5:1 for the pigeon. The numbers are fairly clear. Now comes the important part. THE APPENDIX. Concerning the pigeons the appendix-attachments are very small and not functioning. If you compare the appendix of the pigeon to that of the goose you see that that the appendix of the goose is quite large. In the appendix there are bacteria that are responsible for the procession of cellulose and the forage sometimes has an elevated cellulose content. The intestine pass way of the pigeons is short and therefore the cellulose cannot be thoroughly processed. This means that a lot is being left unused.

To solve that problem I have designed a “VEGETABLE SOUP” for my pigeons. The recipe is very easy: 1⁄2 Liter of vegetable juice (you can buy it in every grocery store or make it yourself) is being filled into a flat plate and 1kg grain mix is added. I leave the whole standing for 24h, so that the grains have taken in all the juice. Over it all I throw a spoonful of beer yeast and the soup is ready. This way I have a guaranty that the precious ingredients of the soup are thoroughly absorbed by the pigeon’s organism.

The vegetable juice that I use contains (according to the producer) 99% vegetables: tomatoes, carrots, celery and beetroot as well as lemon juice concentrate, sea salt, spices and herbs.

FOOD FACTS: 100ml contain: protein 0.5g, carbohydrates 6g, sugar 4g, Fat 0.5g, fibers 0.6g, sodium 0.27g and salt 0.5g.

This “pigeon soup” is well received by my pigeons. At the beginning I had my reservations, as the grains were quite moist and the “soup” resembled a mash. But the pigeons had no problems with that. The feeding trays are always empty the next day. I feed this “pigeon soup” every other week during winter and every week during breeding and molt.

Walter Stettler CH Binningen www.flugtippler.ch