Fancy Pigeon Farming

Fancy Pigeon Farming

If you're one of those people who thinks that the market for pigeon farming is already saturated, here is a new opportunity: Fancy Pigeon Farming.

Pigeons are a surprisingly large percentage of the world's bird population. They are small, they reproduce rapidly, and they are quite intelligent. But they are very hard to domesticate. The only ones that can be domesticated at all are in fact a different species than the wild pigeons you see everywhere. This species was probably bred by accident in the Middle East thousands of years ago, and later spread to Asia and eventually Europe. People have been breeding fancy pigeons for over a thousand years.

In a normal market economy, these would probably be bred for food. But not in Islamic countries, where people can't eat them; or in India, where cows are sacred; or in Europe, where humane sensibilities have now made pigeon meat taboo. All of which means that fancy pigeon-breeding is still legal there.

Over the past few decades some people have bred pigeons to be exhibited, just as people breed dogs or horses or fancy chickens-- and with comparable results. These days there are several hundred varieties of fancy pigeon around the world, each of which has its own fanciers' club,

Fancy Pigeon Farming is the cultivation of fancy pigeons. Fancy pigeons have a long history and are deeply ingrained in human societies throughout the world. Fancy pigeons have been used to carry messages, as pets, for showing, and for food.

The word "pigeon" is frequently used colloquially for any bird of the family Columbidae, so "fancy pigeon" may refer to birds other than those listed in this article. Fancy pigeon breeds are generally characterized by distinct plumage and unique body shapes; these features are often exaggerated by selective breeding. Male and female fancy pigeons look similar, and young birds can be differentiated from adults only when they develop adult plumage after 6 months old.