Balanced pigeon feed

The theme food/feeding is a never-ending story among pigeon breeders. Every pigeon breeder has his special method regarding feeding.

Let's have a look at what wild pigeons have in their crop. EBER (1963) investigated the crop content of wild pigeons. Those consisted of:

Of course, those amounts can vary depending on the cultivation and output quality year by year.

Source: «Die Brieftaube von Gerhard Rösler«

The above list shows the large variety of what pigeons eat in the wild. The food eaten can be put into three categories. Category A, Grain & Seeds with 93,7%, / after that comes category B, greenery with 4.3%, / and at the end is category, food of animal origin with 1.4%.

Let's start with category A, the grain. This is the easiest one, for today we have a huge variety of feeding choices. I always take care to put together a mix of as many ingredients as possible (around 13 different ones). My basic feed (Stipsky mix from Spinne) is in my opinion the best feed for flying pigeons, I always add 10-50% barley to it.

Stipsky Mix from Spinne

In the early years barley was a valuable grain for the pigeons. In the past few years, it has often been declared as inferior. This is not true.

Barley contains: crude protein 10,5% / crude fat 2,0% / crude fibre 5,1% / starch 52,7% / sugar 2,2% / Ca. 0.08% / P. 0,38% / Na, 0,02% / methionine 0,16% lysine 0,37 % / digestibility 72% / unpeeled

I always hear the sentence from pigeon breeders, "my pigeons don't eat barley, they'd rather starve than eat the barley". Such pigeons are overfed! If the pigeons get barley regularly (10-20%), then they won't get fat. Before the mating and until the end of the molt my flying pigeons always get 20% barley. If they have young to feed, 10%. After the molt until the middle of November I add step by step to 50% and only in February I go down gradually with the barley.

As seeds of oileiferous fruits I mix line seeds into the feed. During the winter months 4%, from February to the end of October 9%. The amount of line seeds should never be more than 10%.

Category B, greenery. There are many options to feed greenery to the pigeons. Pigeon breeders with their own garden have almost unlimited possibilities to feed greenery. Unfortunately, I don't belong to those lucky ones. From March to October my pigeons get a variety of shredded vegetables (of all kinds). On one day they get small-chopped nettle stems or medick stems. Over the winter they get vegetables 2-3 times a week.

Chopped nettle

Category C, food of animal origin: In my opinion this is the most difficult feed. I have tried a lot of different things. With worms, mealworms, minced meat, bones with leftover meat bits (In a carnivore enclosure in a zoo I once observed how Turkish pigeons picked of the remaining meat bits off the bones that were lying around). They left everything untouched.

So I informed myself about cat and dog kibble. Cat kibble have around 31& of crude protein and 17,5% of crude fat. Often dog kibble has less crude protein. In my opinion the biggest problem is the size of the kibble. Dog kibble is often biger than cat kibble, the cat kibble comes in a variety of shapes. There are star shapes ones, cross shaped ones and ring-shaped ones, those are not really ideal for the pigeons. After a long search I found ball shaped ones with 1cm diameter, which after an adaptation phase they eat quite well. My pigeons get cat kibble twice a week.

Cat / dog kibble

I know of a pigeon breeder that feeds trout feed to his pigeons. You can get it in different sizes 2 / 3 / 4 / 6 mm (often in 25kg bags), they have 47% crude protein and 16% crude fat. I can imagine that this is a very good crude protein feed, if the pigeons eat it well. I myself have not had any experience with trout feed, as I only have a small number of pigeons 25kg bags would be too much. I also assume that one cannot store it for too long.

Of course, there also exists animal protein in form of dairy products, for example grated cheese. This is eaten voraciously by the pigeons. I also know of pigeon breeders that mix yoghurt in their feed. There are a few options to give the pigeons 1,4% of animal components.

In an abandoned limestone quarry, I always get lime sand, which I mix with molehill soil (this soil is always very fine and is well accepted by the pigeons). I always collect the molehill soil in different places in the forest, but then also in areas where the soil is loamy and also humus soil. It is well known that the various soils also contain various trace elements.

I assume that the above-described feed comes very near to the "natural food".

Walter Stettler CH Binningen www.flugtippler.ch

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