Pigeons poop a whole lot, and if you got one as a pet, you are probably used to cleaning your room on the regular already. Fortunately, a pet pigeon on a healthy diet will typically leave small-ish, manageable droppings that are easy to clean—as opposed to street pigeons who will eat literal garbage—but there are still situations in every household when the only acceptable number of pigeon droppings in a room is zero. In these situations, pigeon pants can come to the rescue!
Pigeon pants (or pigeon diapers, or flypers) have a diaper-like bag positioned under a pigeon’s vent that will collect all droppings and allow the pigeon to explore your living area without you being afraid for your carpets, rugs, or hard-to-clean furniture. Pigeons will always prefer being naked, but with some training they can be very comfortable with flypers and will gladly wear them if it means they get to explore more areas and rooms!
<aside> 🐦 First things first: not all pigeons will be comfortable with flypers. Typically, a pigeon that’s bonded to you will be okay with you dressing them up after some training, but if you’re not seen as a mate, they may resist and be uncomfortable with the process. You can still put a flyper on your bird—sometimes you just have to!—but your pigeon will likely be upset with you afterwards.
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Flypers are safe and, when sized correctly, will be comfortable and unobtrusive for your bird. They are also washable and very easy to clean up: you can line a flyper with half of a panty liner (paper towels work as a cheaper alternative) and just discard it once you’re done!
Flypers can only be worn for 3 hours at a time and the bird should spend at least the same amount of time without a flyper afterwards. The reason for that is that droppings will get closer and closer to the bird’s vent as the flyper fills up, eventually creating breeding grounds for infection right on the bird’s body.
Flypers come in different sizes. Some vendors offer many sizes for every breed and age, others will have fewer sizes with adjustable straps; both options can work. Checking for a proper fit is simple: you should be able to put a finger underneath, but it will feel snug. Improperly sized flyper may get your bird’s toes stuck (too big) or be extremely tight and uncomfortable (too small).
Flypers come in different colors, patterns, and styles. It may not matter much for your pigeon, but if it makes you happy, go wild and opt for a dinosaur pattern or a tuxedo flyper. Just make sure they are not uncomfortable!
Makeshift flypers can be dangerous! Occasionally, we get questions about making flypers out of socks or creating makeshift bag attachments for a pigeon’s vent. This is a terrible idea and should never be done: flypers are very carefully designed to keep the bird comfortable, healthy, and happy. A DIY flyper made out of household items will, even in the very best case, increase the likelihood of infection; in the worst case, it will severely injure your bird. You can try to sew a flyper following an existing sewing pattern if you know exactly what you’re doing, but we don’t recommend this for beginners and are not aware of any published patterns.
Wearing a flyper is not uncomfortable for your pigeon, but can still be scary and stressful! Just like you would slowly introduce a new toy or gradually train your pigeon to be comfortable with your hands, getting them used to flypers can be approached in a very similar way.
Think of introducing a flyper as a series of slow steps:
Just like with any training, take it slow and make sure that your bird is completely comfortable with each step before taking it any further! Some steps can take days, and that’s completely fine.