Nov/December 2025

CHINESE OWLS – Page 28 – Purebred PIGEON Breed of the Issue - CHINESE OWLS What Works For Me By Jeff Butler - Union, Iowa W hat works for me? That is a tough question as you can ask 10 different people this question and get pretty much 10 different opinions no matter the topic. I’m going to narrow it down to just the pigeon hobby and the care of our beloved feathered friends. I know that many will disagree with my methods and that is fine. You do what works for you. It’s like me saying I like a brand of shoe and you saying you like another. Just opinions. But first a bit of an introduction. I am Jeff Butler and live in central Iowa. I will be 62 years old by the time you read this. I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have pigeons. I do remember my dad mak- ing a shed for pigeons and my older cousins catching them in their dairy barn. I must have been about 4-5 as I wasn’t allowed in the hay loft as it was to dangerous for “a kid”. I would help dad feed the birds and would sit for hours watching them. I must have been around 7 when I noticed something about my friends. They seemed to have babies but they never seemed to grow in numbers much. I was to short to see into the nest boxes but could hear them. I started asking questions and after a lot of excuses I finally got an answer I didn’t want to hear. All along I had been eating my friends! I was horrified! After many tears and comforting from my mother she explained that we had to eat them to save money for other things in life. I understood but it was a long time before I could bring myself to eat any. Oh, Mom would trick me at times saying I was eating “chicken” noodle soup and other dishes with shredded “chicken” in them. Things must have gotten better for my family as we didn’t eat them anymore and I became a bonafide pigeon keeper. I start- ed catching them at the local grain elevator, and local farms. Odd colors were highly prized! I had outgrown the dangers of the hay loft and soon found myself climbing the inside of grain storage buildings that I figured would be no big deal if I fell a few feet and landed in the “soft” corn WRONG! A 10 foot fall into the corn below did hurt I can verify. About this time I started to notice genetics at work. Didn’t know what it was but different colors popped up out of birds that weren’t the same! I even raised a black out a pair of whites. What the heck was going on here! Since I was pretty sure I was the only one raising pigeons I figured I had created something new yet to be discovered by science. I asked my science teacher about it and he really didn’t have any answers since it didn’t pertain to humans. I just went at it on my own. I had rabbits then to and knew when you crossed two different colors you never knew what you could get. For some reason it didn’t bother me to eat rabbits since I was old enough to hunt them. By the time I hit my early teens I had noticed a guy in a near by town that had pigeons also! I wasn’t alone after all. I wanted to go see them but had to wait till the weekend for a ride. So my trusty bike made the 10 mile ride and I came home with a pair of Birmingham rollers my first real breed stuffed in my coat pocket. I made many 10 mile trips on my bike and finally my car over the next few years trying out new breeds to see what I liked. I settled on the rollers for quite awhile and then saw my first Chinese Owl in 1987. I bought 4 pair and by now had found out that there were others interested in showing pi- geons and made my first show in 1988. Then the big one Des Moines in 1989. The rest is history as they say. Now onto the real story of this article. What Works For Me? M edications and S upplements - I have found over the years that I, like many others had over medicated and use to many “cure alls” and daily “snake oil”. Since cutting out several different things and trying others I found a few that I use that I am very happy with. Here is what I use weekly. Monday Nutri Drops 2 pumps per gallon. They no longer make it for pigeons anymore and once my supply is gone I won’t replace it with anything. I do believe in this product but sadly it’s no longer available to my knowledge. Tuesdays and Fridays Foy’s Pro Bios with Garlic 1 teaspoon per gallon. I should Jeff Butler’s Loft