UkPigeonRacing

The addictive magic of chemicals.

Murray wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:06 am

Diamond Dave wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2026 12:37 pm Most years I often have a little bit of a yell9w slime
on the walls next to the perch in my yb section. We have talked about it before on here.
I know that it's down to ventilation and I have been experimenting to try to rectify it., I haven't perfected it yet - is this signs of the "wet" canker.

It's good that you know you have a problem and are working to solve it, Dave.
How do you know it's down to ventilation? Do you mean too little? Too much? Too draughty? This interests me because I built my loft with what I believed would be correct ventilation. It seems to be fairly good. But I'm always open to suggestions.
The slime you mention could very well be wet canker. But it could be one of several other things. E.coli for example.
If you wanted to try to deal with that without putting them through the added stress of antibiotics you could try apple cider vinegar in the water and natural Greek yoghurt on the feed for a week.
You might be surprised.

Hey Murray - you may remember that I posted about this a year or so ago when I built my loft - you all helped me with the ventilation then, I think it was you Murray that even posted a diagram about how the ventilation would best work in my loft. I thought that having an open (dowelled)front would be enough ventilation but there was no movement of the air inside.
After that I put vents at the back of my loft and made shutters for the open front.
My problem is I don't put the shutters up often enough and especially during hot weather.
I have had the yellow slime again with this year's youngsters but nowhere near the same amount so I knoe I need to put a few more vents in the back and use the shutters more often.
My concern is if this yellow stuff is caused by wet canker. I think I can get over the ventilation issue but don't know how to deal with a wet canker problem.

Dave, at this point you really might to be best to do two things.

1/ And probably soon, get a pigeon vet involved. it will cost you too much but you will know what you are dealing with.
2/ Close the loft up, especially at the front. What you don't want is cold air blowing in on the pigeons. If it's warm all day and all night, that's good. If it's warm all day and cold at night, that is bad.

I am sorry to harp on about it, but you've got to get this idea that you can fix things with medications out of your head.
All you are doing is deferring the problem until later. Antibiotics will cure an illness. What they do not address is why the illness happened. Unless the cause is fixed you will have the same thing over and over.
I think you are on to it, Dave.
Fix the cause, not the symptoms,

Diamond Dave wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:56 am

Harry's Loft wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2026 6:10 am

Diamond Dave wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2026 12:25 pm

When dya give the 5 day treatment H....?

I'd usually give them the 5 day treatment after training prior to the first race

I'm a big believer that stress increases canker count in pigeons

Usually I'd give a respitory treatment prior to loft flying and training so the birds airways are clear for orientation

And after pairing a 5-10 day broad spectrum treatment

Always followed by Nifuramycin for a couple of days

I actually put probiotics on the corn and in the water even if treating the birds

In the off season they are given just naturally based supplements on the corn and in the water

Great info H and all very helpful. Would I be right in thinking that you don't fly them out in winter so you give a respiratory treatment before letting them out.?
What is the respo treatment you give please mate.

I leave my pigeons in the loft over the winter yes but do start loft flying earlier than most as I don't breed any youngbirds from the race team

It would be Doxytetracycline

Again with any treatment I always like to keep them to around racing then in the off season use as little as possible

The problem is that most pigeons now are bred from heavily medicated pigeons so to be successful you have to treat the birds in my opinion anyway

All the top lofts around me treat their birds regularly

I would say I limit the amount of treatments as healthy birds really don't need the meds but it can help in a game of marginal gains