“Doping with drugs” in pigeon sports becoming trend in sub-continent
It’s been long time, when human started taking interest in pigeons and training them for competitions. These competitions also disclose the story of “doping with drugs” in pigeons sports. History tells that human have been breeding pigeons for food, messaging, or for amusement from ancient times. As time passes pigeon become more an amusement tool for human being. Now they are bred for sporting purpose. All around the world people train them in different formats of pigeon sports. The rules and format of competition or sports depends on the pigeon’s breed. There are number of different formats like pigeon racing, flying competitions of different type of flying pigeons like high flyers, Tipplers, low flyers, roller pigeons and many other local styles of competitions. All of these formats can be seen all around the world.
As other sports, there are many bad people involve in pigeon sports too. Even in world famous sports like football and cricket lots of gambling, fixing has been reported on numerous occasions. Even doping with drugs is another huge issue in all kinds of sports whether its sports where only human compete or even where human competes with their pet animals Such as horse and dog races. To avoid such kind of gambling and drug abuse, human have developed different kinds of technologies to test involvement of drugs or asteroids to enhance performance of an athlete. These are great initiatives taken by some of good sportsmen. Who always want to compete with inherent strength rather using of drugs. But it is quite surprising that in some areas doping with drugs in pigeon sports considered as a tool of enhancing performance. It seems ironic; facts that I am going to discuss in this article will give you a shock that what these people is doing with a small and amazing creature of GOD.
I have been researching on the aspects of pigeon sports in different format. This issue has already been raised by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) an organization based in USA and working to expose different types of animal abuses happens around the world. In April 2012 PETA released 15 months of undercover investigation on racing pigeon sports. Where they exposed many dirty facts of racing pigeon sports, in this investigation they exposed that 25000 racing pigeons entered in the race from several countries and the race was consist of 900 miles. After the release there were only 20 % pigeons could made to their homes. Similar thing happened in British international pigeon race where 5500 birds were transported to France from England. Only 622 birds could make it to home rest 4,878 birds could not reach home due to numerous reason. Many of them hit the ground, wires or any obstacle after releasing. Such collision often resulted into broken wings, neck or legs and other critical injuries. Some also lost their senses due to doping with dangerous drugs.
After the release of this investigation, many racing pigeon fanciers oppose the usage of drugs in pigeon racing. While BBC also reported about 6 racing pigeons found doped with drugs in a dope test conducted on winner team of racing pigeons. In contrast an article published on PIPA (pigeon paradise) website that the test result came positive due to technical error and it is near to impossible to dope test of a pigeon. He argues that with the available testing mechanism and the nature of testing samples it is impossible to determine correct results. He says that dope test always taken by blood sample whereas it cannot happen in case of pigeon. The only way to test pigeon is by its dropping. Due to the time constrains of 36 hrs, it is nearly impossible to proof that a racing pigeon have amount of excessive drug particles in the body. He further says the value of machine test also differs due to above reasons and it cannot be compared with kind of test conducted on racing horses and dogs.
Last year when I was witnessing a local pigeon flying competition in Karachi, there were 5 teams participating in the contest. Competition held in October 2016, every fancier was competing with a team of 8 pigeons. Pigeon released at 7 am in the morning and match continued till 7 pm in evening. The end result was only team of one fancier could land at home at 4 p.m. Rest of four teams were waiting for the pigeons till night but those pigeons could not land in the dark. Next day few pigeons could make it to their home in eye opening condition. They were not able to walk, they were out of their normal weight and some of them lost their eye sight. Sometimes back in another competition I saw a pigeon who started flying at 7am in the morning and it was flying quite well till 2pm. The day was extremely hot and temperature rose to 44 Degree Celsius at that time. Suddenly pigeon started flying backward and could not control his balance and fell down on the ground and died on spot. It’s been also seen that sometimes pigeon lose their one wing due to deficiency of energy after extensive flight. Sometimes pigeon could not land at his loft after forced flight by its owner and result as collision with some obstacle, wire, ground etc. These are few examples of accidental death and injuries of pigeons during competitions.
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| Result of Doping on High Flying Pigeon |
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| Bad condition of pigeon after landing after long hours of flight |
Now I would also like to share kinds of drugs that is been used in pigeon sports and again it should be taken in notice that none of these fanciers consider it as abuse. These drugs are considered as formula or game to increase pigeon’s flight. In old times, when people were not aware of use of these medicines, they used to use herbal stimulants, like poppy, poppy seeds, clove, black pepper, saffron, camphor, musk and many more. These stimulants worked according to pigeon’s strength and could never take them to unconscious level until they are administered in proper way. Greedy pigeon fanciers or gamblers who never value a pigeon, they found these illegal ways to earn more money and to get fame. They developed different formulas with the help of different drugs such as Motival (Nortriptilina, Flufenazina), Modrin (Anti-Psychotic/Anti-Depressant) Formulation ( Nortiptylina, fluzenazina), Avil (pheniramine maleate) Deltacortril (Prednisolon). This combination of anti-depression and anti-allergic tablets mixed with herbal stimulants and other multivitamins. They use in a form of self made tablet before flying in the morning. Even some fanciers include pain killers in this combination. This combination is considered to be the best with great results but the reality is it is killer for pigeons. As mentioned above results of these drugs are highly dangerous. Keeping in consideration of above techniques a pigeon fancier of Pakistan made a world record by flying his low flying female for more than 27 hrs and people witnessed her flight at fancier’s loft but can we considered that female as champion when we know how pigeon fanciers are doping with drugs in pigeon sports??
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| Pakistani Low flying Female that flew more than 27 hrs |
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| Final result showing over 27 hrs flight of Pakistani low flying female |
Story does not end here, in both kind of pigeon sports like pigeon racing and other flying competitions in sub continents killing of pigeons is involved. In both type of pigeon sports, it has been seen that fancier kills their birds if they do not fly as per their desires. PETA reported this in their undercover research that before starting pigeon sports fanciers learn how to kill pigeons. How sad it is that a pigeon fancier who keeps pigeon with love and what he does if that pigeon could not perform due to many reasons. Video report shows that fanciers break their pigeon’s neck and some kill by culling the pigeons.
Pigeons are great companions and can be kept without competing and they can proof you the best pets. It is great to keep them to research and for learning of their different, patterns, breeds and structures. They can be bred for competitions too but their must some rules and boundaries. Human greed for earning more money and getting fame is taking this amazing bird to the dark side and people will soon start hating pigeon sports. It is time for clubs and organizations to develop a perfect mechanism to take out ethical way-out for pigeons sports.
If you have experienced such cruelty around you. Please report by commenting below or join our facebook group to report the bad side of pigeon sports. Our joint efforts can make this amazing sports better for next generations.
Thanks for appreciation.
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