‘They come home’
North Platte man shows racing pigeons at Broken Bow Public Library
BROKEN BOW - Leon Freeman has a racing pigeon that flew 2,482 miles in 2020. The bird was ranked 5th that year by the American Racing Pigeon Union (AU). “I’m pretty proud of that,” he said.
Freeman of North Platte has been racing pigeons since 1978. Last Thursday, accompanied by his wife Carla, he brought some of his pigeons to the Broken Bow Public Library. About a dozen people listened, asked questions and were able to see the pigeons close up.
Racing pigeons are not the same as the pigeons usually seen around parks. These birds are specially bred for speed and endurance. Freeman has about two dozen young birds in training, approximately 55 in what he calls the “old” brood or current racers and several pairs in a breeding brood.
The birds are not named. Official identification is made by lightweight bands on the legs. Letters and numbers identify individual birds as belonging to a specific club. Freeman belongs to the North Platte Pigeon Club.
As a youngster, he helped a neighbor with his racing pigeons and some years later, a friend suggested that Freeman should get into racing himself. Carla said they had been married about a year when Freeman decided to do just that.
“He convinced me that all he needed was a six foot by eight foot shed and only about 20 birds,” she said. The Freemans now have a self-proclaimed “Pigeon Palace” which measures 12 foot by 40 foot and has separate areas for young, old and breeding broods, a trapping door with scanner, and attached screened-in roosts for each brood.
As an adult, a racing pigeon will fly anywhere from 100 to 600 miles per race and might fly several races a year. Freeman’s birds have flown home from South Sioux City, Omaha, Lincoln, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Texas. Sometimes the Freemans take their own birds to the start location and other times the entire club’s birds will be transported together.
Racing pigeons are speedy. For one race, Freeman said, “We let birds loose at Fort Worth fifteen minutes after sunrise and they were home (to North Platte) on the same day.” In the first race this season the winning bird (belonging to another breeder) averaged 47 mph In the second race, one of Freeman’s bird won with an average of 49 mph.
Some birds, of course, don’t come home at all. Risks includes predators and weather. Some races this spring have been canceled due to high winds or storms. “We don’t want to put them in any danger,” Leon said. “We can lose them to hail. Once they are down, they can be taken by owls or hawks. Dove season is a risk, too.”
Freeman will race a bird until it is about six or seven years old. If it is a good racer, it then finds a place in the breeding loft. For the most part, if kept together, racing pigeons mate for life.
Eggs hatch after about 21 days of incubation. Both parents feed the young. A chick is banded at the tender age of five to six days. Training begins at about month old when the birds are eating on their own. It starts slow - about a mile and a half - and includes plenty of food and water.
“Just like kids. You feed and water them and they come home,” Freeman said. Training distances get longer and longer, stretching to 5 to 10 miles, then 40 to 50 and finally the jump to 100.
Freeman trains his birds to “trap” quickly upon returning home, that is, land and immediately enter the loft.
“I can take all 55 old birds out about 30 or 40
miles,” he said. “When they come home, they will all be in within seconds.” He knows this is fact because the computer chips in the leg bands are scanned as each bird enters the loft. He has a printout which shows, for one race, nine birds entered the loft in nine seconds.
Freeman feeds his pigeons a combination of whole corn, milo, peas, pellets and sunflower seeds. Cracked corn is not fed as it can cut the gullet. After a bird has flown a long race, it is rested and fed well to build up strength.
It’s not fully understood how the pigeons find their
way home.
“There are a lot of theories,” Carla said. “There’s one that has to do with the angle of the sun rays.” The birds, it was noted, do not fly at night, as there isn’t enough light.
No matter how it’s done, however, the important thing, Freeman said, is, “They figure it out. Most of the time, they come home.”