Pigeon racers arrive in Blackpool ahead of homing show

We talk to pigeon racing enthusiasts and bird lovers as preparation is underway for the annual Pigeon show.

Transcript

00:00 So is this your pigeon then? Yeah, yeah. And does he have a name? No. He doesn't? No. So

00:15 what do you do in here with him then? And how old is he? This here's young'un. And how

00:25 many pigeons have you got in here? 37 to show. Thirsk is my club show. I go there every fortnight.

00:35 So this is your real passion is it? Oh yeah, yeah. And do you raise the pigeons? No, no,

00:39 they're just kept to show. They don't get out of the loft, they're just in the aviaries.

00:45 So what do you love about pigeons? Breeding the chaff again. And have you bred any? We're

00:56 just here for the bit of cricket and meet a lot of friends and stuff. We'll just go

01:03 tomorrow and look at the birds and meet friends, a few beers at night, some nice food. So it's

01:09 just about the atmosphere. Atmosphere, aye. What attracted you to come today? Well the

01:15 pigeons. And do you have pigeons of your own? Yeah, I race them myself. And how many do

01:21 you have? 140, 150, too many. And you race them all? Yeah.

01:26 We only keep them as pets. So we sort of like, yeah, we rescue wild ones and we keep

01:46 racing pigeons, but we don't release them or anything. We just keep them purely as pets.

01:52 So how many do you have? We've only got 15 of them at the moment. And what kind of pets

01:58 do they make? They're just relaxing birds really. I think they're misunderstood, people

02:05 think they're pests and stuff, but they're just really nice animals. We're looking at

02:09 getting things like medication and things because it's hard to get a hold of and you've

02:13 usually got to order it from abroad and we know there's going to be some Belgium and

02:16 Dutch companies there, so we'll be looking to keep some stocks up, accessories and possibly

02:23 bid on a couple of pigeons, you know, for stock as well.

02:26 I know it, I was going to go straight into it.

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