Many animals live in our corner of wildlife. I often watch, feed and admire our pets. Previously, the city population brought wounded, exhausted rock pigeons or their chicks that had fallen from their nests to our corner of wildlife. When the birds recovered, we released them. It was so interesting to observe the behavior of the released pigeons. Often our charges did not want to leave a warm, nourishing and safe place. They tried to fly in or run back into our center building. But in the end they flew away. The poultry house was empty again and only the hen and the cockerel were walking around on the lower tier of the enclosure. Three and a half years ago everything changed. The center was presented with a pair of decorative peacock pigeons.

There are more than 800 breeds of pigeons in the world, differing in size, shape, color and flight abilities, of which about 200 breeds were bred in Russia alone. My charges belong to decorative breeds. They got their name - peacocks - from their tail, which has up to 40 feathers forming a semblance of a lace fan, like the well-known peacock. In peacock pigeons, the chest protrudes forward, the neck is long and beautifully curved; the head is small, oval in shape, without feather decorations (forelocks), the eyes are quite large. The legs are short, widely spaced, the paws are bright red. The color of the plumage varies, but the main colors are white, yellow, red and black. Of course, I wanted to breed these beauties.

Now let's go to the "marriage" of pigeons - this is a whole ritual associated with some formalities. Externally, the female and the male are almost indistinguishable. But, watching the courtship ritual, you will definitely understand who is who: by cooing, by the nature of behavior. The male, cooing, inflates his crop and makes strong sounds. The dove coos quietly and does not stick out its crop. Males placed together behave aggressively, while females behave calmly. If the dove, in response to the advances of the male, who is fussing around her with a swollen crop and a tail dragging along the ground, also begins to sweep the street with his tail and lowers his wings, consider that courtship has been accepted. And if she coos quietly and touches her boyfriend with her beak, this is tantamount to a stamp in her passport. Peacock pigeons observe the entire courtship ritual, but unlike other breeds, the tails of males and females do not sweep the ground, but remain spread out in the famous fan. The affection of pigeons who become spouses lasts for the entire twenty-year life.

The pairing of pigeons has taken place - Ryzhik and Ryzhuha are sitting next to each other, picking feathers from one another. After some time, the couple begins building a nest. Ryzhuka brings his little dove either a twig or a feather, and Ryzhukha puts this simple building material under herself and distributes it around. The result is a rather carelessly folded, loose platform - a pigeon's nest.

Our birds, who settled in the aviary, did not quarrel, they lived as one friendly flock. The hen and the dove laid eggs. The hen refused to hatch the eggs, and the dove conscientiously sat on the clutch, but the chicks either did not hatch from the eggs or died early. And one day an interesting incident happened: a chicken laid an egg right in the nest box of pigeons. The dove, named Ryzhukha, began to incubate both her own egg and the chicken’s egg, but the incubation dates did not coincide and we did not receive any offspring. I have a few questions:

• If problems are identified and the necessary conditions are created for pigeons, how many pigeons will be able to be obtained and raised? After all, most decorative pigeons need good care, adequate feeding, and the creation of certain conditions, especially during the period of breeding and feeding offspring.
• Is our pair of pigeons capable of hatching a chicken if they are given a chicken egg at the appropriate time?
• How will foster parents (pigeons) cope with a naughty baby? After all, the pigeon chick hatches from the egg completely helpless, and the chicken, barely dry, begins to move independently and peck food. The hen's job is only to warm the baby with her body when he is cold.

I knew that pigeons breed two to four times during the summer. But in the summer, our animals take a break from visitors, and I am also on vacation. It was necessary to create such conditions so that the birds would begin to breed later, under my supervision. In our region this is especially difficult, since the length of daylight hours is rapidly decreasing and by October the breeding instinct of adult birds is dulled. Our experiments and experiments were carried out from October to May, for two years. Naturally, I ran into some problems. Observing and studying the peculiarities of life and behavior of my charges made it possible to carry out work, analyze and solve the difficulties that arose. Most importantly, I had the opportunity to share my experience related to the successful breeding and preservation of peacock pigeon chicks.

To provoke our feathered couple to nest in October, we decided to artificially increase the length of daylight hours. The lighting in the room with the birds was extended until 21-00 pm. And the pigeons began laying eggs and hatching chicks in October 2008.

Pigeons are capable of breeding from 6-7 months of age to 7-8 years, but it is better to start mating6 at 10-12 months of age. After mating, 6-9 days later, the dove lays 1-2 white eggs. Our peacock pigeon laid eggs strictly 4-5 days after mating, although this period is not indicated in the literature sources I have studied. Both birds incubate them, alternately for 17-21 days. The pigeons are hatched blind, covered with sparse down, and in the first days they receive only “bird’s milk” from their parents - this is a white curdled mass from the parents’ crop, the mucous tissue of the inner walls of the crop swells and crumbles, filling the pigeon’s crop with this “milk”. In its composition it is close to cow's. After a few days, the parents add grain that has already swollen in the crop to it. When feeding, babies thrust their beaks deep into the parent's throat, rather than opening their mouths wide, as happens in most other birds. This feature makes it difficult for the remaining orphans to artificially feed pigeons. If for some reason the dove disappears and the chicks do not leave the nest, the single father, as a rule, successfully copes with raising the offspring. On the 20th day, the chicks' plumage is formed; they can peck food on their own, but the parents still continue to feed them. Around the 30-35th day, young doves leave the nest and begin an independent life.

The first year was not very successful. Of the 7 eggs laid by our pair, the pigeons hatched and fed only one chick - a snow-white color. The supposed cause of death of the offspring: the embryo froze in 3 opened eggs), 1 egg was unfertilized, 3 chicks died from underfeeding after emerging from the egg on the 3rd, 14th, 17th day. The last clutch was abandoned by the parents as a result of stress, since on May 25, 2009, the veterinary station carried out routine vaccinations against bird flu. Result, in table No. 1, the natural hatchability of chicks was 14.2%. This is a very low figure. I began to achieve different results.

Step by step, analyzing the failures, I began to change the conditions of detention, solving one problem after another.

For keeping and breeding peacock pigeons, the main condition is the absence of drafts, a dry and bright room. All these requirements are met.

The main stage of our pigeon farming business has arrived - raising and preserving pigeon eggs and chicks.

Description of the bird aviary: dimensions length - 170cm; width - 255cm; height-270cm. Inside the aviary there is a nesting box for pigeons at a height of 70cm. from the floor. Box length - 110cm; width-90cm; height-100cm. the box consists of two floors. The exit from the second floor of the box to the first is provided by a staircase, and from the first floor the birds have access to an aviary with an exit size of 50x50cm. Inside the bird aviary there are perches, drinking bowls, feeders, and bird baths.

The male showed himself to be a very caring father. When Ryzhik laid new eggs and sat on the clutch, and the previous chick had not yet flown out of the nest, Ryzhik fed it on his own. But at this stage we were met with failure. The chick, which was already able to move independently, was found dead on February 9, 2009, having fallen out of the nesting box on the floor of the aviary. He was probably trampled by chicken birds or died from the impact of a fall. In order to avoid the loss of chicks in the future, we raised the chicks to the 2nd floor of the brood box and fenced the exit with wooden slats 7 cm high; no further loss of chicks was observed.

When raising babies, our couple needs complete food. The main food for pigeons is grain. When feeding, the norm of consumed feed was necessarily observed (40 grams of consumed feed per 1 bird). Underfeeding or overfeeding birds has a negative impact on the condition of the birds; feeding should be done at the same time. The water must be constantly clean and changed daily. Our birds receive fresh food and water from approximately 9-00 to 10-00 in the morning. And then I discovered a number of shortcomings.

The birds of our aviary occupy three tiers: 1st hen with a rooster, 2nd nesting box, 3rd perches for pigeons. Food and water were always placed on the first tier. Pigeons do not feed each other during incubation - they simply replace each other periodically. It turns out that the hen and the rooster are the first to gain access to the feeders, and when the pigeons went down to feed, there was no longer enough food. This led to underfeeding of the chicks. In search of scattered food, adult birds did not incubate the clutch well, the eggs became hypothermic, and the embryos in them died.

P.A. Manteuffel wrote in his book “Stories of a Naturalist”: “Every species of bird feeds at its nests. The required distances are set by the birds themselves; each of them retains its own feeding area>>. I solved this problem very simply. I started placing gray and water feeders right next to the nest inside the nest box. Ryzhik and Ryzhukha stopped leaving the clutch and carefully hatched their offspring (appendix, photo 8).

As for proteins in the diet of our nursing parents, the following picture was observed: our gourmets did not eat well, and sometimes completely refused fish and meat and bone supplements. It was decided to add boiled, crushed chicken eggs to the food (0.25 eggs per day), by 17-00 in the evening there was not a trace of eggs left in the feeder.

When all the shortcomings were discovered and eliminated, the result was not long in coming. Almost all the chicks survived, were strong and healthy.

On March 22, 2010, the dove laid 2 eggs, but on March 25, 2010, they were removed artificially, since we managed to purchase eggs from dwarf hens and we placed them in the pigeons’ nest for the purpose of conducting an experiment. The redhead sat firmly on the chicken eggs. I began to hope that maybe the dove would be able to hatch a chicken. But, after sitting and even sitting out the entire period (24 days), the dove left the clutch. An autopsy showed that the dwarf chicken eggs were unfertilized.

Similar articles

Small swan - representative of the Red...

The role of birds in nature. The benefits...

Why you need to build bird feeders

Features and distinctive features of owls