Pigeons come home to roost in France

Headnote

Pigeon farming in France is characterised by a mix of the traditional and the modern, as Philip Clarke discovers

Eat a pigeon in a British pub and the chances are it has been sourced locally and you'll end up with a piece of shot on your plate.

Eat a pigeon in a French restaurant and it is more likely to have been produced in one of the country's 400 pigeon farms, located in the north-west of the country.

Pigeon farming in France is a very traditional, pastoral activity. It is recorded that one of the first pieces of legislation following the French Revolution in tiie 1790s was to ban the keeping of pigeons, which was seen as a preserve of the elite.

More recently, pigeon production has re-emerged, initially as a "bolton" activity to general farming, but increasingly as a specialist enterprise for commercial operators. About half die farms supplied by breeding company Grimaud Frères have no orner activity.

"Producing pigeons for meat is closer to rabbit farming than any other form of poultry production," says Jean-Luc Boyer, who runs Grimaud Frères' breeding operation.

The company has a high-biosecurity selection centre near Roussay in the Maine-et-Loire department, with 5,000 pairs of grandparent stock (GP) and 600 pairs of great grandparent stock (GGP).

Selected GP birds are then transferred to one of five multiplication units, to produce parent birds for sale to commercial farms.

THE PRODUCTION CYCLE

The pigeon production systems on both breeding and commercial farms are almost identical, Mr Boyer explains.

The birds are kept in cages - typically 20 or 30 couples in each group. Each couple has two nest boxes and the first fertile eggs are laid when the birds reach sexual maturity at about seven months.

...