Topic: Turn those Eggs
The idea of giving the breeders eighteen hours of artificial day light is to have all of the cocks and hens mated with hardly or as little as possible of fighting between the pairing pigeons. Also, to have all the mated pigeons together at the same time so, these pigeons can lay their eggs at the same time. Boy! was I close. I paired eight Stock Pairs and four Feeder pairs at the same time and had thirteen pairs of pigeons that laid on the same day, with three pairs missing by intervals of three days apart.
I do not like to count my babies before these egg hatch, but the idea is to place these babies on the landing board and settled so I can have them in the air on their own and ranging for at least for one hour.
I always get motivated at this time, working close together with the breeders making sure they have fresh minerals and supplements in front at all times. Keeping a close eye on their droppings, (not too wet) and their general health. If you have nest fronts that have swing doors on them, you need to tie the doors in the open position. The reason for this is you do not want at any time to have trapped pigeons in other birds nest. Trapped birds can result in a de-faced birds, broken prize eggs, and or dead babies with special bands on their legs. The hardest thing for me do is to have to destroy a baby that just stepped out of their nest to look at the new world, that means I've waited too long to remove it from the nest. What I try to do is to remove the babies at an early age, just as the tail feathers start to appear through the tail cover feathers.
