The Impact of Gender in Young Bird Pigeon Racing

Abstract

Selection of a bird for an One Loft Race (OLR) that has a higher probability of winning is desired given the cost of entry. The objective of this study was to determine if there is a difference between female (hen) and male (cock birds) racing pigeons with regard to performance in OLR. A hypothesis was generated after a pilot study in 2017 with 103 birds; Null-hypothesis: there is no difference between hen and cock birds with regard to race performance. A subsequent prospective double blind study was conducted with 124 birds divided over 14 OLRs in 2019. Our study showed that there was indeed no difference between genders in race performance over all or within any distance category.