Young birds landing in trees

[PeteDerby]

How much are you feeding Pete now is it nice and light ?

The older ones are getting an ounce a day, the babies all they want for 15 mins then trough taken away. Once training starts I’m planning going depurative mix, right now it’s champion mix 90% plus some safflower. They trap pretty well on the whole, so my biggest concern is the landing in trees.

So do the older ones fly well then go to the tree or just go to the tree after a short fly

There’s a couple of particular culprits - both long distance birds but not sure if that’s relevant?- who’ll go fly-about nice and high and range, then land in a tree away from the loft. A few hours later they show up, fly around a bit and then land in a tree near the loft. I’ll chase them out of the tree so they fly to another one, so on and so forth until they clear off and land somewhere else out of sight. After about 4-8 hours they come back to the loft and trap.

[PeteDerby]

I saw this and thought it very good illustration.
I try not to make my pigeons do what I want. A try to let them do what I want. Subtle but infinitely important difference.

Like that Murray.

[PeteDerby]

All very interesting points, thank you. It’s a steep learning curve!

[PeteDerby]

Hi Pete. I have probably a 40 foot fur tree directly behind the loft. I also have a house beside the loft that stands a good 15 feet above the loft. My birds would have trouble coming directly down onto the loft, certainly as a batch. They do land in the top of the tree or on the roof of the house. I don’t worry about it though. Up there there is no fear of a sparrow hawk getting them as they would see them coming and take off immediately. They do mostly however come straight down when called and certainly from races, especially the widowhood cocks if coming singly, they do land straight on the trap or at very worse just pitch on the house and drop down onto the loft. They lose less time doing that than they would circling once.
Unfortunately now that yours have started going up into the tree you will have trouble stopping them so probably better to not get to worked up about it. Not everyone has an ideal flight into their lofts without obstacles.

Thanks Andy.

They’re better now save for a couple serial offenders. One little shit flys straight from the loft 500m then roots in the biggest tree. Something tells me the first decent training chuck will sort that one out!