Worth, I have to admit that I sure got excited when I saw your thread.
Here it goes---
My mom had taken my sister and me to her home town which was in Exira, Iowa right after the war in 1946. Dad and mom did not own a car so we took the train. While at my grandparents home it was grandpa who put a squab in my hands and as a five year old boy, I fell in love with pigeons right there on the spot.
At the age of 11, my dad landed a teaching job in Ortonville, Minnesota. The first thing that I did was build a wire cage with the help of my dad. It was roughly 6 feet long by 5 feet high and 5 feet wide. We put in some wooden peach crates that were divided in the middle for nest boxes and a couple of old broom handles for the birds to perch on.
I remember riding my bike out on the highway along Big Stone Lake and at an apple orchard I found a gentleman by the name of Mr. Block, that raised white homers. I happened to find him by sheer luck. I traveled this highway because the hillsides there were loaded with wild raspberries and many clumps of wild asparagus. I just happened to look down his long driveway through his orchard and saw the pigeons. I spent a lot of time there. By the way, Worth, I made some of the money I needed to pay for my first shotgun which was a Winchester model 12, sweet 16 when I sold the berries and asparagus to our neighbors. Anyway, I bought a pair of his birds for $5.00 which in 1952 was a king's ransom. That pair raised more babies and those birds raised babies and then I was selling some to my friends who wanted to raise birds. My first customer to buy a pair was Jerry Kohler who didn't have all the money but we worked out a deal. He had $3.00 and then threw in a red eye, a daredevil and an old lazy ike. That was fun to barter. We were both happy.
There were grain elevators in town and what a treasure trove they were. I had plenty of corn and wheat for my birds. I also found out that if I asked the farmers I could pick a few ears of their corn. They were more than abliging. It was fun.
When I was in Jr. High I had trained my birds to come to my whistle. So prior to going to school, I always put some corn in my jacket pockets and then when I walked home and could see my birds sitting on the roof top of our house I would start whistling. They would fly to me and land on my head and shoulders. Often I would extend my arm and they landed there also. Then with my other hand I would reach into my pocket and give them a treat.
Prior to going to college I found enough kids that gladly accepted some free pigeons and my life took another course. It wasn't until I moved to Anchorage, AK back in 1966, when I saw a copy of a pigeon magazine. It was named the American Pigeon Journal or APJ. In there I read about a guy in Poway, CA who raised white rollers that had orange eyes. Paul Platz was his name and I sent him a check for two pairs of his rollers and once again began raising pigeons. Paul was a wonderful man and we wrote often. He was a high school teacher. It was during this span of time that I found out that you can't raise pigeons just any old place. I got a letter from the zoning commission saying that my lot was too small for a loft so that I had to get rid of my birds. Well, I tried and was upset that I couldn't keep them but went to a man in town that I had met who lived in an area where he had a loft.
When I moved to Wausau, WI, we bought 40 acres of land about 8 miles east of town where our home was built. There was plenty of room to raise birds. That is when I contacted Paul Platz again and had him send me two pair of orange eyed, white rollers plus 4 pairs of Komorner tumblers that originated in Hungary. This was a magpie marked pigeon with a beautiful crest on back of its head. I had a pair of blues, blacks, reds, yellows and he sent along a free pair of silvers. That got me started in pigeon shows. I attended shows throughout the state of Wisconsin and drove to Minnesota to attend more. Then a friend I had met in Oshkosh asked me to go along to Louisville, Kentucky to the National Young Bird Show. I was hooked. I won ribbons and trophies and normally could sell enough of my excess birds to pay for the trip and also buy more pigeon food. I then began going to Des Moines, Iowa for another very big show.
What I also enjoyed was bringing a few of my birds to school to show the kids in my class and that of course meant that I would include another classroom or two who also wanted to see the birds. At this time of my life I had quit teaching and gone into sales selling school supplies. I found lots of schools to bring my birds to for those who wanted to see and maybe handle them.
I had about 30 different varieties of pigeons that I kept in 3 large lofts that I had built. I had rollers that could not fly and if you had the kids in a classroom sit on the floor in a circle, I would place one of those rollers in the middle of the circle. Everyone had to be super quiet. Then I pointed to just one of the kids and that was the signal for him or her to clap their hands just once. This frightened the roller and it would do backward somersaults across the floor and invariably end up in the lap of some one on the opposite side. The students about went nuts. They sure had fun with that.
When Bev and I moved to Socorro, New Mexico in 1997, I had probably close to 120 birds in the back end of my truck that had nice topper. We had made 5 trips to Socorro that year and in 3 of them we began building my first loft. I had the contractor who built our home, pour a cement slab that was 10 feet wide by 40 feet long. That was the size of my first loft. It was built off the ground about 20 inches and since I used a strong type of meshed steel for the flooring I did not have to worry about Pigeon Lung Disease which was big time for those who kept lofts and did not have proper ventilation. All the droppings fell to the concrete below and periodically I hosed it out to the back side, then shoveled the droppings into my Mule and dumped them down in the arroyo in a good spot. Some of it we used to fertilize the garden with and since we had planted over 300 rose bushes around the area, this was also used for that. I can't begin to tell you how easy it was to raise roses down here.
Anyway, I finally ended up with close to 550 birds and had just shy of 50 varieties. Lord was that ever fun. I wanted to also raise racing homers and so I built a small loft of just 8'x8'x14'. Bev and I would train those birds to fly north to south and this is when we would take a basket of birds and let them go in Albuquerque some place. Then we would get on the freeway, drive the 85 miles back to our home with 70 of those miles averaging about 75mph. The birds always beat us home. That was fun. But to be honest, Worth, I would sit on the steps of my racing loft and just observe them flying around the countryside where we live. With mountains for a backdrop and the deep blue skies of New Mexico, it was quite a beautiful sight to see a flock of 30 of the birds flying.
Since I started teaching again down here, I found myself in a 4th grade classroom. I can still remember the day that I brought 5 birds with me to school so that my students could see them and handle them if they wanted to. That was a fun learning experience. Prior to letting them go outside on the playground, I would give each student a small piece of paper, one inch by four inches that they could write about anything they wanted to (within reason) but they could not write their name. We wrapped the messages around the legs of the homers and secured them with rubber bands. I told the kids this was Pigeon Mail and no stamp was required. The kids drew names out of a hat if they wanted to be one of the lucky ones who would be releasing the birds. We all went outside to the playground area to watch the release. I had told them that they would circle at least two or maybe three times then head due south to their home which was the pigeon loft that Bev and I had built.
When it was 4:00PM, I could leave school for home. The first thing I did was go into the loft and pick the 5 birds off their perches. Then take the messages off their legs. The following morning at school I would read the messages and the class would have to guess who wrote each one. An example might read like this: "I love the Dallas Cowboys, my older sister is mean and my younger sister is a brat." Another might read:"Green chile cheeseburgers are the best. The Warrior girls basketball team rules." I have to admit they had fun.
Then one day, I brought just one ash red male racing homer to school. When we had finished talking about it two kids were picked to release it. They all watched him fly and then begin his circling. On his 2nd circle I happened to catch a glimpse of this fast moving dart like object up in the heavens heading for my bird. This took only seconds and that is when one of the students looked at me and said in a very loud voice,"Mr.Hansen, did you see that? "I sure did, Carlos," I replied. "What was it?" he asked. I looked at all the kids,whose eyes were as big as saucers and then told them about what they had just witnessed. Just west of the city of Socorro there is this beautiful mountain with lots of cliffs. These are perfect nesting sites for Peregrine falcons. When he hit that racing homer it looked like an explosion of feathers and then he flew away with the bird heading north. At that time I said this, "Well kids, what you just witnessed was Mother Nature at work. Remember it goes on 24 hours a day and never stops. Let's go into the classroom and discuss it. Oh, and you can forget about the Pigeon Mail." That was a good lesson for they had seen something that not many people witness in a lifetime.
Worth, I apologize for getting a little long winded. I love pigeons just like you do.
Al
