As my dear friend Jason will say -- Good food is necessary!!! And it is... if you hope to fly your pigeons back from a 1000 kms, don't expect them to live by bread alone. Racing pigeons need a planned and balanced diet for them to return impressive performances. But above all the quality of the grain is much more important to keep your birds healthy and in peak form.
Pigeon fanciers normally have three different rations for their pigeons:
1. A breeding Ration
2. A Racing ration
3. A depurative ration (when the birds are separated and not breeding)
A good breeding ration will consist of :
4 parts Maize
5 parts Green peas
2 parts Bengal Gram
1 part Bengal gram fried
1 part Green gram
1 part Karamani
1 part Safflower
3 parts wheat
2 parts Jowar
This can be fed both morning and evening coupled with a snack treat of groundnuts in the evening.
Grit is necessary through the day (Broken brick, shell grit, charcoal, and stone grains make for a great grit combo)
Vitamnis, minerals and calcium in the water is also necessary.
A good racing mix will consist of:
Morning feed:
0.5 part Horse gram
0.5 part Linseed
3 parts Ragi
0.5 part barley
Evening feed:
5 parts maize
1 part Green peas
1 part bengal gram
0.5 part green gram
2 parts Wheat
2 parts Jowar
1 part safflower
1 part red rice
An evening snack of groundnuts may be given
Grit must be kept, even though they may not pick at it.
Vitamins minerals in the water is necessary.
Electral and glucose on return from a race also helps
Depurative ration:
Ragi, thene, a li'l bit of linseed and barley in the morning and an evening mix of wheat, jowar and bajra (Kambu) works very well...
All views presented here are entirely my own and are what have worked for me. This site will soon have interviews with pigeon greats from these parts who will share their own feeding mixes. Cheers!
Check this out to see what they feed in the US
http://www.pigeonracingpigeon.com/nutrition/race-feed-recipe-for-racing-pigeons/