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                                                                                        About Us  

                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                 Looking for hawks.                                                                       Just hanging out.

    I hold an advanced class amateur radio operators license, and about 10 years ago, I was reading a ham radio article on communications in WWII. The article had something in it about homing pigeons, which were used by the military to relay secret messages from France back to England. Some messages could not risk the chance of being intercepted by the enemy by sending them over radio waves, but needed to be delivered reliably and as fast as possible. Homing pigeons had a very important roll in the D-day invasion, radio silence could not be broken, or the element of surprise would of been lost.This article got me thinking about homing pigeons. But I did not  know where to even begin.
 A few years later, I moved to the country from Bryan, got some chickens, and thought about getting some goats. After doing my research on goats, they just seemed like a lot of work. I liked my chickens, and have always liked almost any animal, I did not want to take on the goats, but wanted something more than just the chickens. I also have a desire to learn new things, and I do this by reading and then trying out whatever  that new thing is. So the homing pigeon thing just kept coming up. In the tv show NYPD Blue, Bobby has a loft on top of  his apartment building in N.Y. City. We watched NYPD Blue, and it kept popping up there, then I read an article on homing pigeons in another magazine. Over the years, homing pigeons just kept coming up over and over again.
 So with some research on the internet, finding there are actually quite a few people, especially in the New England states who have homing pigeons, I started to plan my new hobby. There is a  a pretty large following of pigeons, and races all over the U.S. are  held, with large cash prizes to be won. Even Iron Mike Tyson has a loft on top of a building in Harlem, here's the link to you tube of  Mike Tyson and his pigeons. But I was not in it for the racing, just the fun of the hobby, and to have some birds to play with. As I learned more about it, I decided to get white racers, thinking there could even be a useful purpose for the hobby, and it could even possibly help pay for itself,  along with supplying  a service to our area, which is now "The Dovecote Loft" white dove release business.
So in March of 2009, I found the birds I had been looking for, so we went to S.W. Michigan, and purchased 8 young White Mortvedt racing pigeons, and started working with them. We have built a loft especially for the doves, and try to work them every day to keep them in prime flying condition. Training and caring for homing pigeons is a 24-7 responsibility. But the sight of them flying from the baskets  makes it all worth it.

Update. Nov. 2010.  We have added a new breeder loft and increased the population of the doves. We now have 25 birds total. I have retired  my original birds (only 4 left due to a falcon and flight loses) and now let them breed. They still  fly around the area of the loft, but I do not road toss them anymore. They keep me in a steady supply of birds to cover any that are lost. We are constantly learning and changing the way we do everything from training to breeding to care and feeding, to find the right combination of things to get the best  from our birds.

                                                 
                                                                   For more details, contact us and we can send you more detailed information by email or regular mail.
                                                                                                               We are located near Edgerton, Ohio                                        
                                                                                                                 Click here to contact us by email.
                                                          
 


                                                     A few hours old, these eggs are the size of ping pong balls.              Five days old, squeakers grow very
                                                                                                                                                           fast, but are not very attractive.