There is a decent amount of confusion and misinformation on what it means to raise a pigeon for companionship. On the extreme side of this, some people go as far as to assume that raising companion pigeons equates to hand-raising: separating pigeon babies from their parents and bringing them up by a human nearly from birth. The assumption here is that the pigeon baby will get used to humans early on this way; this assumption sounds logical, yet is woefully incorrect.
Any ethical pigeon breeder will tell you that hand-raising is an incredibly bad idea that has nothing to do with raising companion pigeons, and selling pigeons that haven’t been fully weaned is a massive red flag. Still, it’s a frequent enough question to warrant a brief explanation.
<aside> 🐦 This article may also be useful to you if you’ve rescued baby pigeons and had to raise them yourself without parents or other pigeons around. After reading, you will hopefully be able to understand some peculiarities in their behavior!
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Companion pigeons are raised by their pigeon parents just like any other pigeons—not humans! Without getting too deep into the weeds, the main difference is that pigeons raised for companionship are being introduced to people much more gently than pigeons raised for other reasons, like sport. Ethical companion breeders will avoid aggressively handling their birds to ensure they never have any reason to be afraid of human hands; additionally, as the birds grow, their handler will likely also do desensitization training before sending the bird to their new home.
In other words, even though companion birds are trained—and sometimes might be bred selectively—they still have their pigeon parents and are getting used to humans by being raised around humans, not by humans.
Why is being raised by humans instead of their own parents harmful to birds? It has to do with a developmental stage called imprinting.
During the first two weeks of life (give or take), baby pigeons go through imprinting: in simple terms, they are trying to understand what species they are! Pigeons will imprint, primarily, on whoever they see the most often and whoever is providing them food, shelter, and comfort. In a normal situation, that would be their pigeon parents! However, when other pigeons are not around and a human hand-raises the babies, they will imprint on humans and consider themselves and humans to be the same species.
Before human-imprinted birds reach sexual maturity, you may not notice any peculiar behavior, especially if you don’t have any other birds around. Prepubescent birds mostly operate on instinct: they seek food, shelter, and companionship of their flock (that would be you). However, once your pigeon matures, they will start communicating more actively, both with you and with other birds that may be around. They will also want to court suitable mates. Therein lies the problem: human-imprinted pigeons never had a chance to learn how birds should communicate.
Your pigeon doesn’t know how pigeons should interact with other pigeons—how would he, if he has never seen any? But more importantly (to you), your pigeon doesn’t know how to properly interact with humans either.
A pigeon-imprinted pigeon will understand that a human is a larger, stronger, differently-behaving living being—and will adjust their own behavior accordingly. They will know that they’re a pigeon and you’re a human. They will still see you as a potential mate—pigeons don’t have to be human-imprinted to bond with humans! They will, however, apply different standards to you, because you are, well, quite different.
Conversely, a human-imprinted pigeon will see you as their equal and will expect you to behave exactly like a pigeon would. You can try your best to imitate pigeon behaviors, but in some cases, you simply will not be physically able to do what a human-imprinted pigeon will expect of you. That can make your pigeon incredibly frustrated, which can lead to anger, which can in turn lead to behaviors like incessant biting.
Male pigeons that are imprinted on humans may get very aggressive and bitey. If a male can’t woo the big strange pigeon (you!), he will try his best to prove he is big and strong and a worthy mate, but this doesn’t translate well to humans and to you will just look like endless biting and wing-slapping. This kind of behavior is not exclusive to human-imprinted pigeons, but may sometimes be excessive with them.
Male pigeons also engage in a courting behavior called driving where they chase the female and make her go into the cage and onto the nest. This behavior is also common in all pigeons, but properly socialized birds will understand that you are not physically able to get onto the nest and they should not expect it of you; human imprints, again, may not. And then, of course, if you don’t respond to biting and driving by getting onto the nest, your human-imprinted pigeon will—being the smart bird that he is—decide that you just need more biting and driving.
Female pigeons may also try to drive, especially if they typically exhibit more masculine behaviors, but on average, human-imprinted females will be less aggressive—or at least more balanced—than human-imprinted males, and some human-imprinted female pigeons may even have no noticeable issues at all. As always, this is mostly anecdotal, and a lot will depend on your bird's unique temperament, so listen to what your pigeon is telling you and have patience!
Comparison between a human-imprinted Loki and a human-social Fluffernutter by @homeofhousechickens.
Comparison between a human-imprinted Loki and a human-social Fluffernutter by @homeofhousechickens.
We’ve established that hand-raising is never desirable and does not have any advantages, ****but sometimes there is no other choice. It could happen that you’ve rescued a baby pigeon, the parents are not around to raise them, and there are no shelters or breeders nearby. In this case, it’s likely unavoidable that your pigeon will imprint on you, but there are still things you could do to make things better: