Here’s an article from KALW website. A Radio station at San Francisco, CA. The person interviewed is Bill Milestone and he gave a basic summary on how the pigeon racing works.
Bill also mentioned that if your pigeons are happy, the will come back home. Happy as in well fed, good shelter and a mate to come home to.
here’s an excerpt from the article;
“There is a system called widowhood. Shall we say, the males and females are paired up in their own nest boxes. They establish their territory. And then they’re separated.”
This stress can act as a strong motivator because typically, pigeons will mate for life. They’re birds of a feather that stick together, even taking shifts to warm their eggs.
While both male and female pigeons are used for racing, widowhood is used only for males. That’s because, in general, while hens would be more interested in flying home to their babies or eggs, the male birds are more interested in flying home to the hens. Thus, in widowhood, trainers will separate the male bird from his mate a few days prior to the race, and then right before the truck arrives, they reunite the lovebirds just before hauling the male to the start line. So, that bird’s got one thing on his mind.
“‘There she is, I got to get back !’” is how Milestone puts it. “So, the bird that is racing, wants to come back to his nest box, and when he arrives there, the hen is waiting for him. And that motivates him to… full performance!”
To read the whole article by clicking on the link below
http://kalw.org/post/fast-and-furious-world-pigeon-racing#stream/
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