The Ramsey Loft

Fancy Feet 5/31/26 Quarantine Ended! Unknown Mix breed cock Approximate hatch date: 11/3/25 White Grouse muffs PMV booster administered 5/31/26 Paratyphoid booster administered 5/31/26 Strict Hatch Control required. Adoption fee: $25. Includes his harness.

Surrendered 5/3/26. Severely underweight. (199g) Wings, tail, and muffs stained and infested with 2 species of lice. Capillaria eggs confirmed in fecal.

Finished wormer course 5/16/26. Confirmed worm free 5/17/26. Final dip 5/23/26. Through lice check confirmed no sign 5/24/26 PMV and Paratyphoid booster administered 5/31/26

Nobu 5/24/26 Week 1 of Observation 5 Years Old Chinese Owl X CF-RH-FB-GH Blue Bar cock Sired by Wukong out of Suki 2/23/21 Bred by The Ramsey Loft PMV Booster administered 5/17/26 Paratyphoid Booster administered 5/17/26

Fancy Feet 5/24/26 Week 3 of Quarantine Unknown Mix breed cock White Grouse muffs PMV vaccine administered 5/10/26 Paratyphoid vaccine administered 5/10/26

Surrendered 5/3/26. Severely underweight. (199g) Wings, tail, and muffs stained and infested with 2 species of lice. Capillaria eggs confirmed in fecal.

Finished wormer course 5/16/26. Confirmed worm free 5/17/26. Final dip 5/23/26. Through lice check confirmed no sign 5/24/26

Some of you may remember my hen Escher, who died before she was quite a year old to what turned out to be Peritoneal cancer.

She had hunkered in a corner, not quite loafed, like she was getting ready to lay, but couldn't.

X-rays showed no egg, and agonal seizures after a second vet's violent mishandling prompted me to rush her to our regular vet to have her put to sleep.

Her necropsy revealed that her peritoneum was thick, fleshy, pink, and highly vascular.

It appeared to have coopted blood flow from the organs it was supposed to have been supporting.

So when Taffeta went into laying mode late last tuesday, and then refused food... The similarity had me immediately worried.

This is a view of the fecal sample I took.

I have been performing fecals on pigeons for over a decade now.

I have never seen those crystals before.

I didn't get to sleep until 5am. I just couldn't.

I woke up at 7 to call my vet as soon as they opened.

But it was a surgery day, just before a hospital wide vacation.

There was not going to be space to see her.

So I called the ER that saw Cheeto on Christmas eve, as soon as they opened at noon.

They had a single walk in slot before an emergency surgery.

Those crystals in her fecal are apparently called Struvite crystals, and the vet said that doesn't occur in birds, but in a dog or cat, it would indicate kidney stones.

They were not comfortable x-raying her, for lack of safe means to intubate someone so small with such a delicate trachea.

I agreed that an injection of anesthesia was too risky, and they suggested she be treated like the usually would for egg binding: with a strong pin killer and some sub-q fluids to flush her kidneys.

She was at least comfortable on the way home.

I set her up a hospital cage in sight of her husband, and attempted an assist feed.

Sadly, when I woke up the following morning, she had passed.

I fret all day while I was cleaning over what I had done wrong, what I could have missed, anything at all I should have done differently.

Taffy was not just my favorite.

She was not just a sweet, happy, playful, gentle bird that, like her brother who chose to be my husband's ESA, lit up any room she was in by existing...

Her temperament was the culmination of everything I had been working towards.

She was the cornerstone I was going to build the Assistance Pigeon Project up from when the new facilities were finished and I could resume hatching.

Her presentation and timeline were identical to Escher's because Taffy's necropsy confirmed peritoneal cancer.

The peritoneum had coopted blood flow from her abdominal organs and grown thick, fleshy, and pink.

Tumblr's rules have changed, so I will not post necropsy photos here.

Our Patreon is free to join, and the full necropsy is documented in the necropsy channel of the veterinary category.

In Rigby's case, we've observed a lymphoma develop in a span of days.

It's very possible that a cancerous peritoneum could grow similarly rapidly.

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to take a sample for later study, but between days of sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, severe dehydration, and soul crushing heartache... I just didn't.

I need to keep sample collection jars on hand and find out what preservation fluid to use.

There is no warning for that last stage. The bird appears to be in perfect health right up to the end, and the end hits like a truck.

72 Hours from onset of symptoms and she's gone.

It presents exactly like egg binding... I wonder how many cases have been dismissed as just another egg binding death with no further investigation?

Is this condition really so rare?

It is genetic, so all birds related to Taffy have to retire.

Firma

And her husband, Cirrus, are Taffy's Nephew and Niece out of different half siblings.

Taffy and cirrus are a bonded pair and may only be adopted together.

Sterling is a cousin with only one shared ancestor: a Danzig named Ruby.

Cirrus and Sterling should not need specialized medical care, as PC only effects females, but they may still carry the genes for the disease.

I don't know what could even be done for Firma to predict, prevent, or treat Peritoneal Cancer, should she develop it.

Her family should just focus on living with her in the moment and hatch controlling like lives depend on it.

She lays like clockwork.

As with all of my bonded pairs, a pair of fake eggs will come with them, as will both of their harnesses.

I have had a lot of time to think about how I would start over from scratch if I need to.

May 5/19/26 1st Gotcha Day! Feral Sooty Blue T-pattern hen Approximate hatch day: 4/14/25 PMV Booster Administered: 11/9/25 Paratyphoid Booster Administered: 4/19/26 Brood Hen Mated to Blot

Found 5/19/25 under the Deans Bridge overpass, crashed out hungry straight from the nest.

Assets: Ideal physiological structure. Strong immune System. Keen intelligence. Picking up words and starting to understand simple sentences from the context of our interactions and from observing Cheeto. Lays like clockwork.

Nobu 5/17/26 5 Years Old Chinese Owl X CF-RH-FB-GH Blue Bar cock Sired by Wukong out of Suki 2/23/21 Bred by The Ramsey Loft PMV Booster administered 5/17/26 Paratyphoid Vaccine administered 5/17/26

Nobu is back, after the sudden passing of his wife, Hope. Her body cavity was found to be filled with large, wide spread fat deposits smothering her organs.

This is partially my fault. Their care taker gave me the dimensions of the enclosure she planned to get them were ok, and I thought they were, but my spatial reasoning ability is just trash, and it ended up not being much larger than one of my hospital cages.

While she is updating their set up to one of correct size, Bu is staying here, where he will train in harness work with the rest of the flock.

Her home and education program, with the updated enclosure, may be a better fit for Dici than Nobu, as Dici is bullied by the flock and needs to be a single bird,

Fancy Feet Unknown Mix breed White Grouse muffs

Surrendered 5/3/26. Severely underweight. (199g) Wings, tail, and muffs stained and infested with 2 species of lice. Throat swab was clean. Fecal showed definite Capillaria, likely giardia, and possible coccidia.

Fancy Feet was found by someone in the middle of a long distance relocation, too weak to fly.

Due to having pretty much only quarantine space available, I was the last resort for this bird.

Apparently, Fancy needs to be in quarantine!

This sad little mess is so severely emaciated that dip or vaccines might be a fatal shock.

Appetite is excellent, and the gut is moving things as it should, but there is a heavy parasite gutload.

I'm going to wait a week and let Fancy Feet gain a little more mass before I attempt to dip and vaccinate.

Worming may be safe sooner, and and it will be imperative to clear up the parasite load for Fancy to return to condition.

I hope for quarantine to end on the 31st, but that will depend on how fast treatment goes.

During Fancy's stay, I'll make them a harness, and assess their temperament.

Once fully vaccinated, until an ideal match is found, I will add Fancy to the harness training rotation

If you are interested in pet pigeons, please look through our Master List of resources to see whether they would actually be a good fit for you.

I've been posting pigeon information online for years now, all over the place, and only a few months ago started to gather them all into one place.

Something we are in dire need of is a list of vets who will see pet pigeons.

I don't care where in the world you are, if you know of a vet that will see pigeons, please reach out to me so that I can add them!

If you know of any small scale rescues anywhere in the world, please reach out.

Same if you or someone you know or recommend breeds pigeons for companionship, I would like to make a list for that too.

Very.

Pigeons and ringneck doves are sort of related, and they have a 95% dietary overlap, but they have drastically structural and social needs.

Pigeons need flat perches and prefer the texture of stone.

Ringnecks need branch like perches.

Pigeons are crevice nesters.

Ringnecks make a cup in the fork of a tree.

Pigeons need a lot more space and exercise than Ringneck doves, and have a *way* higher metabolism on top of their proportionally larger size.

But the most important difference is that pigeons are social and ringneck doves are absolutely not!

Ringnecks do not flock! They exclusively form a single pair bond at any given time.

Pigeons have a circle of friends that can extend to new birds.

Ringneck doves simply do not operate that way. They don't extend the friend group. They change partners.

Ringnecks are *violently* territorial!

A dove could not physically injure a pigeon, but a pigeon responding in kind to the dove's antagonism can and will kill the dove without meaning to.

A pigeon's skin is about 1/4 the thickness of a sheet of paper. It;s so thin it's transparent.

A Ringneck Dove's skin is 1/2 as thick as a pigeon's.

Which means that if a pigeon were to bite a dove they way it would another pigeon in an argument, the Dove could get its throat torn, be scalped, or have its face degloved.

May 4/14/26 1 Year Old Feral Sooty Blue T-pattern hen Approximate hatch day: 4/14/25 PMV Booster Administered: 11/9/25 Paratyphoid Booster Administered: 4/19/26 Brood Hen Mated to Blot

Found 5/19/25 under the Deans Bridge overpass, crashed out hungry straight from the nest.

Assets: Ideal physiological structure. Strong immune System. Keen intelligence. Picking up words and starting to understand simple sentences from the context of our interactions and from observing Cheeto. Lays like clockwork.

Yep!

We have read at the local book store, set up an educational booth at a reptile show, and attended tons of local events.

He did two just this past Saturday!

His job is basically to interact with people while I discuss our history with pigeons, their domestication, their social structure, and their cognition.

I'd like to get him to the point of being comfortable in a classroom, but right now, he thinks children are bombs with legs. XD

And I still need to work out a more structured curriculum based on the students' age, and biological vs historical based classes.

We plan to do homeschools, then public schools at high, then middle, then elementary, as he gets more comfortable with larger groups of younger strangers.

Ringneck doves got me into caring for pigeons.

I used to volunteer for the local wildlife rehab when I bred Ringneck Doves, and always had a pair of designated fosters because they will raise any columbid baby you put under them.

Mourning Doves and Eurasian Collared Doves were most of what came through, but I got the occasional baby pigeon that way.

My first pet pigeon was a Portuguese Tumbler baby named Pugsly.

At the National Young Bird Show, as the show pens were being broken down, many hens had left eggs, and part of clean up was just throwing them away.

I asked if I could keep some if I helped clean up, and while the showmen were skeptical of me hatching them, they didn't want them, so I got the go ahead.

Here he is in 2016, with terrible dad-face from feeding his nestlings.

He was so incredibly personable, I had never experienced anything like it, even having bred rats for ten years prior!

The first pigeons we purchased for breeding were Archangel mixes that were sold to me as purebred before I knew any better.

The first I purchased after taking the time to research different breeds at one of the shows where my doves competed were a pair of Classic Old Frills.

Glasgow

and RoseQuartz

The first I kept as a personal pet that I intended to keep for his entire lifespan was

Ankhou, who bonded so closely with me that he became my emotional support and medical alert bird of his own volition.

He's the basis for the entire Assistance Pigeon Project.

That, by the way, is detailed here, in our Master List of Resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZefNP6HN2JCYnytVz3xUhZOTJGgsCKcma-3wZSHfQYw/edit?usp=sharing

I could go on forever about him.

He was my Heart bird.

Literally taught himself to warn me about anxiety attacks so severe they trapped me in my own body, unable to process or interact with the world around me, bring me back out of them, and alert me to blood sugar spikes I had no idea I was having!

Smooth heads are more pigeon shaped.

I honestly prefer them too.

Ports have a great personality that benefits my program, but they and Birmingham Rollers are the only breeds with a pronounced forehead in the program.

For those who are not on facebook and cannot see the short, it depict a plastic racer nest with a flat, fabric pad.

The breeder shoos mom off, picks up the nestlings, takes the soiled pad, replaces it with a fresh one, and returns the nestlings.

No.

Honestly, I hate these.

Every aspect of a racer's set up is minimalist in the extreme because they raise thousands of birds and need to spend only a few seconds on each pair in order to care for them all and keep everything sanitary.

That is not better for the birds, it is just convenient for the care taker.

One of the core tenants of Animal Welfare is that they need to have every possible opportunity to safely express natural behaviors.

A deep nest box filled with straw (and places where they can forage nest bedding) allows the parents to express the natural behaviors of packing their nest and digging out a nest cup.

A nest formed this way gives the nestlings a natural texture they can grip for the first few weeks of life while their rubbery little bones harden.

Gaps in the straw drain moisture away from sensitive naked bodies and prevents them from just sitting directly on their own wet poop.

Lacking that structure can weaken and deform their toes, and they are more prone to skin infection if they are stuck on their own wet poop.

A few babies with weak feet or messed up toes is considered an acceptable loss, as long as the bulk of the flock is at least of average fitness.

When you are one person raising thousands of birds in a season with maybe a few employees or family members helping, the most important thing for the flock is to keep things as efficiently sanitizable as possible, so they are not just cruelly depriving their birds for the love of the proverbial game.

It takes time to spot clean and refresh a deep nest that one or a few people with thousands of birds just don't have.

If they tried that method with that many birds, the lofts would get dangerously unsanitary in just a few days, and they would risk mass deaths by ammonia poisoning and disease.

I have a very small number of birds for a reason.

I only want to hatch what I am certain that can spend enough time bonding with and training, and I want each and every one of those hatchlings to have the best possible support.

My cap of eight breeding pairs ensures that I will have plenty of time to carefully spot clean and refresh straw that gets soiled as the nestlings grow.

Cheeto 3/18/26 5 Years Old Feral Blue dark check cock Aprox. DOB: 3/18/21 Self Rescue Adopted from Little Indiana Loft Arrived 8/18/21 Failed therapy prospect. Permanent house pet. PMV Booster Administered 10/19/25 Paratyphoid Booster Administered 4/19/26

I am in the same boat, honestly.

But the catios I have seen look like they'd be perfect for a small number of pet pigeons.

Some modification would be necessary to make them predator proof and prevent the spread of disease from wild birds.

A solid, slanted roof to keep out wild bird poop and rodent proof hardware cloth to keep mice and snakes out, for example.

Yes, but not for the same things we do or the same length of time.

They absolutely mourn a change in location and the loss of their flock, because stability is vitally important to pigeons and their life depends on cooperation from their flock mates.

Pigeons don't migrate.

They don't leave the colony when they wean.

After Dad has taught them foraging and the etiquette unique to their flock, weanlings form a sub flock of peers that all sleep together in what amounts to a bachelor flat.

As they mature, they pair off and move into apartments next door to or across the hall from their immediate family members.

The only circumstance under which a pigeon leaves its flock is either resources running out, or the nesting ground being destroyed.

Even in those circumstances, their mate and several peers go with them.

There is no natural circumstance under which a single pigeon leaves its home and flock voluntarily.

The loss of the nesting grounds is hard too recover from, but new nesting grounds can always be found.

It's the loss of everyone they know, trust, and have come to depend on for survival that they mourn, and the life or death stress of forging new connections that extends that mourning period.

This is why birds in new homes either shut down for a while, or cling from the out set with very little in between, and why I am so cautious about who babies, retirees, and rescues go to.

No animal is ever happy about bouncing from home to home, but it may be hardest on a pigeon.

The loss or removal of a mate is mourned far more briefly.

Pigeons are prey birds. Their idea of "till death do us part" is "until one or the other of us gets eaten, or finds a better mate."

Divorces are not common, but they do happen. If the divorcee doesn't also have a new mate lined up, they can be downright pitiful about trying to get back together with the one who left them.

Deaths are barely mourned at all.

The expectation of sudden disappearance for any given individual flockmate is hard wired into them, so they are sad for a few days, but rarely take more than three to five to pick out a new mate and start a new family from the remaining birds that they already know.

Pigeons don't mourn the loss of eggs, or even really notice the loss of nestlings under a week old.

Parents will defend them with their lives, while they are alive, but if something happens, their focus is on the remaining nestling, because it will die if they pause in caring for it.

If there is no other nestling, they focus on trying for the next clutch.

The death of an older nestling may force them to flee a nest site for a while because they physically can't move the body, and decomposition makes the nest unusable.

Interestingly, exhibition breeds raised in a more protected closed loft are more likely to mourn the death of a flock mate than ferals or performance breeds, but do not notice the disappearance of individuals.

Nature is not nurturing.

Human mourning comes from a place of safety and stability that very few animals have.

We have a very long life span, no natural predators, a very close knit social structure, nearly impenetrable nest structures, abundant food, and multiple ways heal injuries and to prevent and combat disease.

Elephants have their individual size and strength, long lives, high intelligence, long memories, no predators as adults, and the support of the herd to protect their young until predators can't touch them.

Crows have their individual bite strength, dexterity, and intelligence, very few actual predators, and an information network of flock mates and extended flock mates watching their back for miles.

Pigeons are intelligent and intensely social, but they simply do not have the safety net that allows other social species to mourn a death.

Raptors, owls, corvids, gulls, rodents, snakes, dogs, cats, mustelids, even pelicans and catfish will catch and eat pigeons.

Their only defense is speed, agility, and their flockmates' watchful eyes: in other words, not getting caught in the first place.

The menagerie of pigeon predators will attack them from air, land, and water, at any given time of day or night, away from the colony or at home.

If their little heads aren't on a constant swivel, they are going to be caught and eaten.

They simply cannot spare enough of their attention to mourn the dead.