A week ago, V.P. Vishnu Raam, a seasoned pigeon fancier from Sriperumbudur, shared photos of fledgling pigeons from his loft with his friends connecting with them over a multi-media messaging platform.
He wanted to hear what they thought of these birds.
They were gushing with praise, and with this pigeon racing season having been rudely truncated due to the COVID-19 crisis, wished Raam the very best for the next, in 2021.
Raam kept silent for a few moments, and then informed these friends that he had decided to give the fledgling free to them, and encouraged them to pursue their new hobby of pigeon fancying, better.
Due to situations arising out of the lockdown, which include businesses in the doldrums leading to some pigeon fanciers struggling to maintain a large loft of pigeons, and unavailability of feed for pigeons, especially supplements, in Chennai and its outskirts, many pigeon fanciers are giving away some of their birds to new entrants to the hobby, who may not be having quality racing homing pigeons.
“Maintaining big lofts will be a challenge in the coming days due to the financial strain. Sharing some quality birds with new comers will ease the burden faced by longtime pigeon fanciers and also help the sport to grow further,” says 40-year-old Raam, an entrepreneur who has been keeping pigeons for a decade.
He has more than 100 racing homing pigeons.
At present, Chennai has 14 pigeon racing clubs with each club having around 50 members. Each member, on an average, has 50 to 100 racing pigeons. Forty percent of the racing pigeon fanciers, have more than 200 racing birds each. In a loft of 200 pigeons there could be 80 young pigeons.
Many seasoned pigeon fanciers with huge lofts keep one-fifth of their young pigeons, thereby preserving certain bloodlines, and offer the rest to new fanciers, usually for free, to avoid the strain and challenge of providing for a huge loft during these times, when access to essentials is a challenge.
The pigeon racing stretches from January and May every year.
New feeding programme
Further, in the lockdown period, pigeon fanciers have to alter their their feeding programme, and in some cases, this means feeding pigeons only once a day, mostly in the evening, as against the usual routine of twice-a-day feeding.
Vegetables have replaced traditional multi-vitamin supplements. Raw eggs also come as an alternative nutrient as they are mixed with ragi and offered to racing pigeons.
“Due to lockdown restrictions, transportation of pigeon grains from a few shops that sell these grains in Seven Wells remains a challenge. So, many fanciers ration the limited grains they have,” says S. Arun Kumar, another fancier.
Noted filmmaker C. Vetrimaaran is a pigeon fancier, with a passel of pigeons, numbering well over 300, at his loft. On an average, he buys around 80 kilograms of mixture grain, which include corn, wheat, bajra, green gram, roasted Bengal gram, soyabeen and oil seeds like Saffola, sunflower, linseed and green peas, for a fortnight. “So far so good. All pigeons are safe. And I am managing to source what they need, so that they are fed as well as they used to be before the lockdown,” says Vetrimaaran.
