How to make pigeon rearing profitable: housing, feed, breeding and disease

Pigeon rearing can be a profitable sideline for families in Bangladesh, Jagonews24 reported on 28 September 2017 in a guide by Md. Rakib Khan. The pigeon is one of the commonest domestic birds in the country: many people keep a few pairs as a hobby, and some had started rearing them commercially. According to the report, a pair of improved-breed pigeons was then selling for anywhere from Tk 2,000 to nearly Tk 1 lakh. The guide set out how pigeons breed, how they are housed and fed, which breeds were kept in the country, and which diseases a keeper has to guard against. This article keeps the report's advice, checks its figures against research on pigeons published up to that date, and adds the background a new keeper needs.

Several of the original figures could not be confirmed and have been replaced with the values that peer-reviewed studies and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) give, as explained in the sections below. Where the guide touches on vaccines and medicines, this article gives the method only; doses and schedules should come from the upazila livestock officer of the Department of Livestock Services (DLS) or a registered veterinarian.

Pigeons and doves belong to the family Columbidae in the order Columbiformes, Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh, explains. They are plump, round-bodied birds with swift, powerful flight, and in most species the male and female look alike. The family has 289 species worldwide and 30 in the Indian subcontinent; Bangladesh has 17 species, two of them migratory. The domestic pigeon, the kabutar of Bengali homes, descends from the rock pigeon, Columba livia, one of the country's resident species.

Banglapedia records that the common rock dove was domesticated some 5,000 years ago, and that the homing instinct of some domestic breeds was used to carry messages before the arrival of wireless telegraphy and even during the two World Wars. This is the old use the Jagonews24 report recalled when it noted that pigeons once carried letters. A review of pigeon nutrition published in World's Poultry Science Journal in 2003 by J. Sales and G. Janssens adds that people have used pigeons since 2500 BC for meat, as ornamental birds, for sport and as experimental animals.

Banglapedia also lists the pigeon among the poultry birds of Bangladesh, along with chickens, ducks, muscovies, geese, guinea fowl, quail, pheasants and turkeys: birds domesticated to breed and grow in captivity and to give products of economic value. That places pigeon keeping within the same livestock extension system that serves chicken and duck farmers, which matters when a keeper needs vaccines or advice.

Each breeding unit is a pair, one male and one female. Pigeons nest on rough platforms of a few sticks and normally lay two eggs, and both parents share incubation and the care of the young, Banglapedia notes. The Jagonews24 report gave about 18 days for the eggs to hatch. That fits the published ranges: FAO's 2001 review Livestock keeping in urban areas, by Hans Schiere and Rein van der Hoek, gives an incubation period of 18 to 20 days, and a 2013 study of an intensive pigeon farm in Chittagong, published in the Wayamba Journal of Animal Science by K. K. Ghosh and colleagues, recorded 18 to 21 days.

The report said young pigeons start laying again at five to six months of age. FAO puts maturity at about six months, and the Chittagong farm study found an age at maturity of six to seven months. The report also said pigeons live for 20 to 30 years; that figure could not be confirmed in the sources consulted and is left out here. The Chittagong study measured the figure that matters to a farmer instead: a productive life of six to nine years.

How many young a pair raises depends on how well it is fed and managed. The report put it at 10 to 12 pairs of squabs a year. The Chittagong study recorded 5 to 12 pairs a year, and a 2009 survey of rural pigeon farmers in Gouripur upazila of Mymensingh, published in the Bangladesh Journal of Animal Science by Mohammad Asaduzzaman and colleagues, recorded 19.53 squabs a year per pair. FAO notes that where no supplementary feed is given, pigeons brood about five times a year, and that ten pairs can produce eight squabs a month. In more intensive systems the hen lays two new eggs while the squabs of the previous clutch are still in the nest, so each pair needs two nests.

Newly hatched pigeons are not fed grain at first. Both parents feed them a secretion from the crop known as pigeon's milk or crop milk, Banglapedia explains, and FAO notes that the squabs later eat regurgitated feed. Sales and Janssens describe crop milk as a holocrine substance produced by both parents in response to the hormone prolactin and triggered by brooding.

The Jagonews24 report gave a precise composition for crop milk: 70 per cent water, 17.5 per cent protein, 10 per cent fat and 2.5 per cent minerals. The peer-reviewed literature gives ranges rather than a single value. According to Sales and Janssens, crop milk consists mainly of protein, at 11.0 to 18.8 per cent on an as-is basis, and fat, at 4.5 to 12.7 per cent, and it lacks significant levels of carbohydrates. The report's protein and fat values fall inside those ranges; its water and mineral figures could not be confirmed and are not repeated here.

Crop milk explains why squabs grow so quickly. The parents rear their squabs to mature body weight in about 28 days, Sales and Janssens write, and squabs have an extraordinarily high rate of maturing, 0.1466 to 0.1945 g per day, against 0.0450 g per day for poultry and 0.077 to 0.097 g per day for quail. This is the basis of the report's point that squabs are ready to eat or sell within four weeks. FAO likewise says squabs can be collected at about four weeks of age, just before they can fly, when they weigh about 400 g.

The report noted that pigeons can be kept either free-ranging or in cages. They settle readily in houses built of bamboo or wood, and in villages even a basket tied under the corner of a roof becomes a home for a pair. FAO describes the same simplicity elsewhere: pigeons nest in natural or artificial holes in rocks, caves, towers and buildings, dovecotes are usually built of wood or of mats fixed to a wooden frame, and they are normally placed on rooftops, so even people living in multi-storey buildings can keep pigeons.

Free-ranging birds cost little to feed, as the report said. FAO explains that pigeons do not compete with other animals for space or feed; if their owners feed them they tend to stay in the neighbourhood, but they can find feed within a radius of 15 km, and in low-input systems they need feeding only while they get used to a new home. FAO also notes that pigeon keeping is very popular in the Mediterranean region, where dovecotes are common in both rural and urban areas of the Nile delta.

Rural farmers in Bangladesh spend little on housing. In the Gouripur survey of 15 farmers in the village of Charnelukhia, the average house cost Tk 113.33, stood 3.50 m high and lasted five years, and most farmers kept their pigeons in a small-scale scavenging system with supplementary feeding. Commercial keepers invest more. The Chittagong farm studied by Ghosh and colleagues kept its birds in modified poultry cages, with a small paved exercise area of 13 by 12 feet.

The report added that good light and air keep disease down. The Banglapedia entry on Ranikhet disease gives the housing rules that apply to all poultry: clean the house often, disinfect the premises, equipment and yard, keep the farm biosecure, and keep newly bought birds apart from the healthy flock.

The report said that more than a hundred breeds of pigeon were found in the country, along with some foreign breeds; that count could not be confirmed and is left out. The breeds it named were Gola, Goli, Mayurpankhi, Fantail, Tumbler, Lotan, Lahori, King, Jacobin, Mukhi, Sirazi, Gribaj and Chandan.

Pigeons in the country are kept both as food and as ornamental birds, the Chittagong study noted. The King, one of the breeds the report named, is a meat-type breed: a 2009 study in the journal Poultry Science analysed the breast and thigh muscles of three meat-type breeds, the Europigeon, the Wroclawski and the King.

Breed matters for income. The Chittagong study found that body weight differed significantly among pigeon varieties, while it did not differ significantly between males and females. The Gouripur survey, by contrast, found that most rural farmers had no idea of the breed or variety of their pigeons, and it recommended introducing meat breeds, keeping a good flock size and ensuring balanced feed to improve income and employment.

Pigeon feed should contain the right amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals, the report said, and a pigeon usually eats 30 to 50 grams of feed a day. The Gouripur survey recorded an average of 34.50 g of feed supplied to each pigeon a day, within that range. The report's figures for daily water intake in winter and summer could not be confirmed and are left out; the general rule from the Banglapedia poultry entries holds that feed and water must be kept clean, because poultry diseases spread through contaminated food and water.

Grain is the pigeon's main food, according to the report: wheat, maize, barley, peas, grass pea, mustard, rice, paddy and pulses. Sales and Janssens confirm that adult pigeons are mainly fed mixtures of whole grains. For adult breeding pigeons they recommend a diet with 12 to 18 per cent crude protein and a metabolisable energy content of around 12 MJ per kg. The energy values they cite for pigeons, corrected for nitrogen retention, are 14.76 MJ per kg for maize, 12.36 for barley, 13.87 for sorghum and 14.01 for peas, close to the values for poultry. They also note that pigeons use fat better than carbohydrate as a source of energy.

The report added that commercial feed is mixed with bone meal, limestone or oyster-shell powder, a vitamin or amino acid premix and salt. The Chittagong farm followed a similar pattern: its grain mix contained rice, wheat, cowpea, mustard oil cake, germinating gram and lentil, and its mineral mix contained oyster shell, grit, dicalcium phosphate and salt, giving a diet of 2,993.8 kcal per kg of metabolisable energy and 15 per cent crude protein.

Pigeons suffer relatively little disease, the report said, but the common ones are Ranikhet and pox, and the birds can also carry parasites. It advised timely vaccination and biosecurity. Research from Bangladesh bears this out: the Chittagong study found that Newcastle disease, pigeon pox, coryza and parasitic infestation were the commonest diseases on the farm.

Ranikhet is the local name for Newcastle disease. Banglapedia describes it as an acute, very contagious viral disease of poultry, first identified at Newcastle in England, which also affects turkeys, quail, pigeons, guinea fowl, crows and parrots. Infected birds are the main carriers, and healthy birds catch the virus through breathing, feed and water contaminated by droppings, saliva and nasal discharge. In pigeons the disease is called paramyxovirosis and is caused by a pigeon variant of the virus, pigeon paramyxovirus type 1 (PPMV-1), according to a 2014 review in the Polish Journal of Veterinary Sciences by D. Pestka, T. Stenzel and A. Koncicki. The variant was first isolated in 1978 from meat pigeons in Iraq and spread across Europe and the world in 1981 to 1983, a spread the authors link to trade, racing and the exhibition of pigeons.

The review describes an incubation period of four to six days up to three to four weeks. The commonest signs are nervous: the head and neck twisted through 180 degrees, loss of balance, paralysis of the wings and legs and difficulty in eating. Some strains attack the kidneys first, so the first sign is watery droppings. The incidence ranges from 30 to 70 per cent, with mortality not above 10 per cent, but mortality may pass 30 per cent when bacterial or parasitic infections are also present. Because the signs resemble pigeon herpesvirus infection, salt poisoning, an overdose of the drug ronidazole and vitamin B1 deficiency, a laboratory test is needed for a correct diagnosis.

Pigeons are protected against paramyxovirosis with inactivated vaccines given by injection under the skin; the review notes that live vaccines are not used in pigeons, and that vaccination prevents the signs of disease but not infection itself, so it should go together with biosecurity. The vaccine, the age at which it is given and the dose should be agreed with the upazila livestock officer or a veterinarian.

Pigeon pox is common in Bangladesh too. A study published in 2016 in the Bangladesh Journal of Veterinary Medicine examined 502 diseased pigeons brought to the veterinary hospital at Khulna between March 2013 and February 2014. Parasitic infestation was found in 31.67 per cent, salmonellosis in 20.32 per cent, pigeon pox in 18.92 per cent and canker in 11.95 per cent. Pox was most frequent in June and July, disease as a whole was most frequent in summer, and young birds were the most susceptible to salmonellosis and pox. A 2011 study in the Bulgarian Journal of Veterinary Medicine, which used field strains from Bangladesh, found that pigeon pox virus and fowl pox virus were considerably host-specific to pigeons and chickens respectively.

For any sick bird, the safe course is to separate it from the flock and ask the upazila livestock office for diagnosis and treatment. No dose of any medicine is given in this article.

Pigeons kept close to the house can carry bacteria that matter to people. A study published in 2012 in the journal Microbes and Health tested apparently healthy pigeons at live bird markets, farms and villages in Mymensingh district and found Salmonella in 35.71 per cent of them overall: 40.48 per cent at live bird markets, 20 per cent on farms and 30 per cent in villages. Most of the bacteria were resistant to several common antibiotics, with the highest resistance, 90 per cent, to amoxicillin. The authors warned that such bacteria can pass to people through direct contact or the food chain.

The biosecurity rules that Banglapedia sets out for poultry apply here as well: clean the house often, disinfect the premises, equipment and yard, and keep newly bought birds apart from the healthy flock.

Pigeon meat is tasty and relatively high in protein, the report said. The 2009 Poultry Science study supports the protein point: the lowest protein content in breast muscle among the three breeds it analysed was 21.73 per cent, in the King. Cholesterol was lowest in the Europigeon, at 23.6 to 25.2 mg per 100 g of tissue, against 30.2 to 44.4 mg in the King and the Wroclawski. The authors concluded that, in fatty-acid composition, pigeon meat resembles other poultry meat. The report's claim that pigeon meat is a fine diet for the sick is a health claim that no health authority confirms and is left out.

The report called pigeon rearing very profitable and said it could help reduce unemployment. Earlier research in Bangladesh supports the case for its profitability. A 1993 study in the Bangladesh Journal of Animal Science by M. M. Hoque and colleagues gave 24 pairs of pigeons to 12 landless and marginal farmers at a farming systems research site and found pigeon rearing profitable for both groups, with benefit-cost ratios ranging from 4.01 for landless farmers to 4.53 for marginal farmers.

The Gouripur survey recorded the economics of rural keeping in 2009: squabs were marketed at an average age of 26.66 days and a weight of 258 g, and sold for Tk 51 each, an adult pigeon fetched Tk 113.33, and mortality was 6.67 per cent. The authors found strong demand for squab meat because of its taste, and recommended government training for farmers and loans to expand pigeon farming. The Chittagong study, which found the farm it examined was run as a hobby with satisfactory production, also noted growing local demand for pigeons both as food and as ornamental birds.

Photo: A S M Jobaer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24 (28 September 2017), Banglapedia, FAO (Livestock keeping in urban areas, 2001), World's Poultry Science Journal (2003), Polish Journal of Veterinary Sciences (2014), Wayamba Journal of Animal Science (2013), Bangladesh Journal of Animal Science (1993, 2009), Bangladesh Journal of Veterinary Medicine (2016), Bulgarian Journal of Veterinary Medicine (2011), Microbes and Health (2012), Poultry Science (2009)