Pigeon Price

🕊️ How pigeons are priced in India

The band above is what sellers asked when they posted, and pigeons run wide for a different reason than the meat animals: a common local pigeon, a show-quality fancy bird and a proven high-flyer or racer are three different worlds. A pigeon is not priced by weight — it is priced on breed, on markings, and for flying birds on what it has actually done in the air.

What moves the price

• Breed and type. A fancy ornamental breed, a performing tumbler, a racing homer and a plain utility bird are bought by completely different buyers. A named, true-to-type bird sits well above a nondescript local pigeon.
• Markings and feather quality. For fancy breeds the price is in the detail — the set of a Fantail's tail, the hood of a Jacobin, a clean crest, feathered feet, an even colour pattern. A bird that matches the breed standard closely is worth far more than a rough cross that only resembles it.
• Pedigree and performance. For racers and flyers, a bird from a proven loft with a seamless ring number and a race or flying record commands the most. Kabootar-baazi flyers are judged on how high and how long they stay up.
• Age and pairing. A settled, proven breeding pair is dearer than a single young bird, and a bird already breeding true is worth more than an unproven one.

The kinds of bird you will actually see

Among the fancy breeds you will meet the Fantail, the hooded Jacobin, the Frillback, the ballooning Pouter and the ornate Sherazi with its feathered feet and markings. The Indian performing birds are a world of their own — the Lakka that bows and spins its neck, and the Lotan that tumbles on the ground when handled. In the North, kabootar-baazi runs on high-flyers bred to climb and hold; the racing homer is bought on speed and its ability to find home over distance; and the heavy King is a utility (squab) bird. Most of what is listed is either a fancy show bird or a flyer.

Before you pay

• For a racer or performance bird, ask for the ring number and any flying or race record, and watch it fly if you possibly can — that is the whole value.
• For a fancy breed, judge the bird against the breed standard — crest, frill, feather pattern, feathered feet — and don't pay a purebred price for a cross that merely looks the part.
• Check health closely: bright clear eyes, a clean dry cere and nostrils, no laboured breathing, and look in the throat for the yellow cheesy growth of canker and at the beak and cere for pox scabs. Feel the keel and wings for old injury.
• Ask about vaccination — pigeon paramyxovirus (PMV) and pigeon pox — and never send the full amount in advance for a bird you have not seen in hand.

A pigeon's price is a price on its breed, its markings and — for a flyer — what it can do. Use the band at the top of this page as your starting point, then judge each bird on what you can see and verify, not on the listing's claim.