The Ramsey Loft

08/24/2026

Red 8/12/26
13 Weeks Old
1 Week Quarantine
Racing Homer
Pied Ash Red Dark check
Initial PMV Vaccination Administered 8/12/26
Initial Paratyphoid Vaccination Administered 8/12/26

Arrived 8/5/26 too weak and severely emaciated to dip or vaccinate.
Placed on high fat and protein recovery diet.
She's gained 62g. since arrival!
Lice dip 1 down, 2 more to go.

08/20/2026

Cobbles 8/7/26
Arrival Day
3 Years Old
Feral
Blue Check
Returning to the Rescuer once healed

Arrived 8/7/26 with a suspected broken left wing.
There is a tooth mark on the inside of the wing, and what looks to be a claw mark in the right breast.
I suspect this was a cat bite, by the spacing.

Cobbles is thin, weak, and too shocky to safely vaccinate just yet.

I'm going to put them on the high protein and fat recovery diet and will vaccinate next week.

They have an appointment with Dr. Mayer for an x-ray on the 10th.

08/16/2026

Pants 8/4/26
5th Gotcha Day
NPA 19 8 BS 1865
Tippler
Pied grizzle Ash Red c**k
Arrived 8/4/21
PMV Booster 10/19/25
Paratyphoid Booster 4/19/26
Strict Hatch Control Required
Fee: $25
Includes his harness.

Shipping is available at the client's expense.

Retired due to the strange cere growth on the right side of his face. It seems to be cosmetic, but may alter the shape of his sinus cavity.
Pants was a house pet when he was surrendered, but has always been standoffish around people.

Among other birds, he's fearlessly confident.

Pants was so completely unfazed by hurricane Helene and the power loss that followed that he kept the rest of my flock perfectly calm with his cheery chill.

That generally happy temperament does not extend to interacting with humans.
He's very well crate trained and we are working on a bedtime routine.

Pants is very skittish and does not like to use the harness, but we are working on that. He's tolerant of show hold, and is fairly easy to harness, but much prefers to walk on his own than be carried.
His direction work is decent, but he will still occasionally try to launch.

He would do best in a loft, but may adapt to being a house bird, if he is allowed to bond to a human social hen.

08/14/2026

Teasel 7/31/26
Observation Period Ended
RH/PT/ODC/STRH x COF/RH/FB/GH
Pied Indigo T-Pattern
Sired by Nettle out of Suki 11/22/21
Bred by The Ramsey Loft
PMV Booster administered 10/19/25
Paratyphoid Booster administered 4/19/26
Returned 7/3/26, against his adopter's will, but in excellent condition.
Strict Hatch Control Required
Fee: $50
Includes his mate, both of their harnesses, and a pair of fake eggs.

Shipping is available within the continental US, at the client's expense.

Retired due to his Great Grandsire's Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia diagnosis.
Annual blood work to monitor his white blood cell count is recommended.

Unfortunately, he is a dust monster. His family will need a good air purifier!

Teasel is a very flighty, wary bird, who will only come to sit with people while Diamond is on them.
I don't have high hopes for him attaching to anyone other than her, but wherever she goes, he will follow.

He is excellently crate trained, usually returning of his own volition, after it's clean.

He doesn't like harness work, but he is at least growing more tolerant of it.

08/13/2026

Diamond 7/31/26
Observation week ended
CO-CF-RH-FB-GH x CF-RH-FB-GH
Pied Blue T-pattern
Sired by Nobu out of Leela 7/19/21
Bred by The Ramsey Loft
PMV Booster administered 10/19/25
Paratyphoid Booster administered 4/19/26
Returned 7/3/26, against her adopter's wishes, but in excellent condition.
Strict Hatch Control Required
Fee: $50
Includes her mate, both of their harnesses, and a pair of fake eggs.

Shipping is available within the continental us, at the client's expense.

Retired due to her Great Grandsire's Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia diagnosis.
May struggle to absorb calcium.
Annual blood work is recommended to monitor her white blood cell count.

Diamond is a very out going, friendly hen. She likes to come sit with me and lands on my head or shoulder pretty frequently, but doesn't like to be reached for or restrained.

She and her mate are both very well crate trained. They usually return after out time voluntarily without having to be asked.

Diamond is tolerant of show hold, and struggles very little against being harnessed.
She stands nicely on the hand, does her best to p**p away from her handler, and likes to be carried or ride my shoulder during training sessions on the harness.

07/21/2026

Ninka has learned a new way to injure other birds.

Cher didn't bleed nearly as badly, or as long as Fancy did, but blood feathers were ripped out of his middle toe the same way.

Clearly, Ninka remembered that works, and that's a real serious problem.

Birds don't have much in the way of clotting factors, and they absolutely can bleed out from an injury as small as a torn blood feather.

Even if Ninka settles down here, over whatever span of time, I can't guarantee anyone who may take him into their home that he wouldn't potentially maim the birds who already live there.

He would have options if he liked or was even comfortable enough with people to be a single house bird, but I honestly don't think he is likely to get to that point.

I'm not sure anymore what benefit there may be to waiting before making the B.E. decision..

07/19/2026

Big Changes are Coming to our Program:

I have already spoken briefly about this on the discord today, but there are a lot of things pretty much perpetually on my mind in regards to the Assistance Pigeon Project.

Up to this point, the question of how to develop a working bird has been focused in on the breeds I want to blend and how, the logistics of blending them, and the effort to balance the ethics between how many birds I need to raise in order to ensure proper genetic diversity while avoiding all unnecessary clutches...

How to set up the housing all of those birds will need.

And how to manage my time so that all of them would get enough one on one time to train and socialize properly...

And after considering all that, especially while I have been sick for a full week and spent half of another week building back up to baseline physical strength and stamina, where I had nothing to do but think...

I think I got a little ahead of myself in planning again.

And I need to slow my roll and refocus.

I had initially planned to let Serket and Titan hatch a clutch, then either pair a keeper to Cher, or let Blot and May hatch a peep, pair those offspring, and then pair Cher to my keeper.

But then I would be starting over, and making more mixed birds to see if the full planned blend was viable really didn't sit right, the longer I thought about it.

I don't think I should jump straight back into mixing breeds.

Looking at Service Dogs as the standard for service animals, no one has developed a dog breed for service work, but service tasks have been matched to different breeds by their natural strengths and focuses.

It's possible that there is a breed of pigeon that's already well suited for potential service work.

Possibly even several!

So, I think I should focus more on the training program itself, and take the time to focus on each of my planned breeds individually before I jump into thinking about how to mix them.

I don't need a huge sample size for that.

One excellent pair per breed, and two rounds of their offspring should give me a good idea of how the breed is supposed to develop and allow me plenty of one on one time with the peeps to practice developing the training program, and seeing what, if anything, needs to be changed from one breed to the next.

There are 16 breeds on the planned list, with two alternates.

So, devoting a year to each individual breed and documenting absolutely every aspect of their growth, development, and how each breed took to harness work and language training...

This individual research phase is going to take me the next 18 years before I can even begin any blending.

I'm not in a hurry to scale anything up.

A pair and two rounds of offspring per year will allow me some limited space to devote to small scale rescue work without needing an entire building for any of it.

The bird room is pretty comfortably set up for a small flock, and as the current residents move out and their smaller enclosures go into storage, space can be made for larger, long term enclosures that allow me to add crate training to the program.

Of my current birds, only May will be staying.

Once everyone other than the three house pets finds their forever homes and move out, I will be looking for a healthy feral c**k to pair her with for 2027.

Ferals have the most adaptable, rapid uptake of any pigeon, and are by far the most reactive, so her first two rounds will be the baseline I begin the year long breed documentation with.

Once hatching resumes, to collect as much data as possible, I am going to need clients who will be willing to continue working with babies who have been trained through out their development into mature birds and keep me abreast of their progress for the duration of their lives.

The full list of breeds and which year I plan to devote to them will be a later post, but I look forward to hearing from anyone interested in following our future babies through language, harness, kennel, and other aspects of household training towards eventual service work.

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07/13/2026

Cotta 7/10/26
5 Years Old
DHF/RH x VF/Lucerne/DFH
Recessive Red Pied C**k
Sired by Satin out of Chiffon 7/10/21
Bred by The Ramsey Loft
Permanent House Pet
Husband's ESA

07/02/2026

Ninka 1/10/26
New Year Update
Feral x Lucerne/ASR
Dirty, Sooty Blue Bar
Sired by Murine out of Ibis 12/4/21
Bred by The Ramsey Loft
PMV Booster administered 10/19/25
Paratyphoid Booster administered 4/19/26
Fee: $50
Includes his harness.
Shipping is available at the client's expense.

Ninka was not retired due to any known health issues.
He and Titan are both Ibis' children, and I want to avoid as much inbreeding as I can. Of the two, Titan simply has more of the temperament that I want.

Ninka is big, bold, and bossy: certain that he owns every room he walks into.

His dad, Murine, was curious, friendly, and smart enough to know when to tone down his natural reactivity, which made him extremely easy to train and work with.

His mom, Ibis, is one of the sweetest tempered, gentlest little souls alive, so I had high hopes for Ninka.

But he ended up with the worst of both worlds: extremely reactive with a mile wide stubborn streak.

There are just not enough benefits to justify breeding from him.

Ninka would be happiest in a loft, preferably with other big, heavy boys and a giant hen to bond with who isn't his half sister.