Love and Life in the Loft: Breeding Biology of Domestic Pigeons in Haripur | InformativeBD

Saira Bibi, Muhammad Fiaz khan, Shabir Ahmed, Aqsa Rehman, and Naveed Akhtar, from the  different institute of Pakistan. wrote a Research article about, Love and Life in the Loft: Breeding Biology of Domestic Pigeons in Haripur. Entitled, Breeding biology of domestic pigeon (Columba livia Feral) from Village Chhajjian, Haripur Pakistan. This research paper published by the Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences | JBES. an open access scholarly research journal on Biodiversity. under the affiliation of the International Network For Natural Sciences| INNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary research journal publisher.

Abstract

Observations of individually marked pairs of brooders were conducted at the village where in about 10 houses were found to domesticate the feral pigeon were kept and breed. The total 170 nests were found during the study 101 of them were found to be active total number of the eggs observed in the nests were 200 eggs. 200 eggs were taken, the eggs width was found to be 202.8005±0.6, Egg length (mm) 3.9005±0.03, Egg weight (gm) 18.3±0.02. Egg length and width has no significant difference (P> 0.05). The incubation period was about 18 days and the chicks spent approximately four weeks in the nest before fledging. The highest number of fledglings observed in locality 4 where the % is 50.

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Introduction

Initially Pigeons were found wild in Mediterranean bordering countries, on cliffs and coasts of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. In North later on they were introduced and colonized, all over Europe including Central and South America (Baptista et al., 1997). In both temperate and tropical regions (Gompertz, 1957; Goodwin, 1960). They are now live mainly in urban environments and distributed worldwide (Haag-Wackernagel and Taube, 1998; Hatch, 2003). The species has a large range, with an estimated global occurrence of ten million km².

Feral Pigeon reproduces in all months of the year, even in winter (Johnston and Janiga, 1995). In spring and summer breeding activity is most intense, and in autumn and winter then it decreases markedly (Johnston and Janiga, 1995). During the period of gaining independence Survival can also be influenced by predation (Hetmański and Barkowska, 2008). food Access (Sol et al., 2000), and characteristic habitat (Sales and Janssens, 2003; Kim et al., 2008). During a season breeding strategy of the Feral Pigeon is based on having the greatest number of broods to produce many young (Hetmanski and Wolk, 2005). Laying small clutches and small eggs promoted by Several evolutionary strategies (Murakami et al., 1994), after losing one quickly beginning of another brood(Johnston and Janiga, 1995), with highly nutritious pigeon-milk feeding of their offspring (Xie et al., 2017), overlapping of clutches (Hetmanski and Wolk, 2005), and broods biparental care (Pimentel et al., 2005). Pigeon breeds oftenely throughout the year Though, during winter, only a few pairs breed (Hetmański, 2004). In many urban areas they may cause problems but in In villages people kept them as their Hobby as in my house in village since from 1998 up to now date. survival rate of the Some bird fledglings depend upon predation (Sol et al., 1998). But, we think that in Feral Pigeon it was not a significant factor because in the study area during the entire study period only irregular attacks on pigeons by cats Felis catus and Helogale parvula, eagels and also the pet dogs at night were observed but the householder than soon detected and shooted them to avoid the predation.

We also did not find any indication of going birds outside areas besides there keeping areas or present in wild condition (Ferman et al., 2010).

No scientific work is done before in Pakistan so far, on the breeding biology of domestic pigeon, so it is a first kind of paper related to Breeding Biology of domestic pigeon in Pakistan. The aim of this research is to present Breeding timing and nest characteristics including, nest architecture, Clutch size and egg characteristics including egg dimensions (breadth, diameter, weight and egg shape index). Breeding success and failures in domestic pigeons also the timing of the beginning of the breeding period and of its final conclusion in specific pairs, to define the duration of the reproduction period in the population studied.

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 Article source : Breeding biology of domestic pigeon (Columba livia Feral) from Village Chhajjian, Haripur Pakistan