# Adopting pigeons into apartment



## Ceres (Feb 3, 2011)

I'm adopting a pair of pigeons and need some advice! These birds were used in a teaching lab for vet students and are completely tame. Ideally, I'll be taking them out to my family's farm in summer and they'll have their own coop and space there, but in the meantime they'll be staying with me in my apartment. 

Now, my apartment isn't very big and while I hope I can find a spacious cage for these guys, I'm not sure I can do it by next week when I bring them home. Are there any good stop-gap measures? (ex. a large dog carry-crate, or smaller cages)

My other question is about giving them flight time. How much do I have to worry about poo-proofing the area they get for flying? I haven't had pets in this apartment before, and so things aren't set up for it at the moment. If necessary, I can take them down to the basement (it's large, airy, and has a concrete floor), but that might be a once-or-twice-a-week sort of thing. I mean, not having had pet pigeons before, what do they do for those two hours of suggested flying? 

I know that my situation isn't ideal for the pigeons, but the alternative is that they don't get adopted and have to be put down, and so I figure that they can put up with the less than ideal conditions for a couple of months until I move.


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## Tuule (Nov 30, 2010)

There are several places that sell bird wear or flightsuites so you don't have to worry so much about poop on everything. Google birdwear or go to petcos website, they have bird diapers too.  I don't know what you could do about a cage but having the bird diapers makes it so they can be out of cage longer while in your apartment.


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## GEMcC5150 (Oct 24, 2010)

A good stop gap will be a large dog crate. Many fold down when not in uses. I would look for a used one on Craigs list or some other sales list.


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## Ceres (Feb 3, 2011)

Thank you so much for that suggestion! I'd heard of diapers for chickens, but I hadn't even thought of whether they made them for pigeons. I like the idea I could actually let the birds out for reasonable periods of time without literally having to watch them every second.


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## Cyreen (Jun 6, 2010)

You need to talk to Boni at: http://www.birdwearonline.org/index.html

This is Ollie and that is PGWear...

http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/showpost.php?p=483371&postcount=20

PGWear is an integral to the continuing maintenance of my home electronics.


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## Siobhan (Dec 21, 2010)

My Maggie has a large size dog kennel/crate for a cage and she loves it. She doesn't want to come out of it! When I try to clean it, she gets very bossy about supervising the job, and she's quite happy to hang out in there even with the door wide open. You can get a crate at a farm supply store like Farm and Fleet for not a whole lot and you won't need anything else. 

As for poop, pigeons don't do that much flying. Maggie flies to get where she wants to go, but just sort of boosts herself with her wings. She doesn't just cruise around through the house. Figure out where they like to hang out and put down newspaper or plastic sheeting and it won't be a problem to clean up. Maggie has her little territory and while she's free to go wherever she wants, she has her favorite places and pretty much sticks to those.


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