EJ’s Pigeon & Dove Rescue & Rehab

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EJ’s Pigeon & Dove Rescue & Rehab Due to being over run with permanent birds, doing this entirely on my own from home, unfortunally I can no longer take birds.. Thank you for understanding 🙏🏼🐦
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the birds in my care take up all my time & funds, so I am now closed.

08/07/2025

Here are some of my baby woodies 🐦 💜 (I have 12 wilding up for release).

All of them have come to me injured, poorly or a few days old.
If a baby woodie is found too soon out of the nest, I always advise to put them in as close as possible to the nest in a dense tree so parents can look after, it’s always last and worse case scanario (and illegal) to take a baby woodie away from parents if it’s not needed. (As long as they are old enough to perch).

So each and every one of these babies have had a tricky start, however after a couple of weeks of tube feeding, meds, probiotics etc as soon as they are self feeding they go in to my aviary.

I do not mix ferals with woodies, as ferals are aggressive and a completely different ‘type’ of pigeon, so their characters and needs are completely different. (I do have 2 ferals in with the woodies, but would never put the woodies in my feral aviary for example).

It’s absolutely paramount that baby woodies are brought up around other woodies & adults to wild up in an aviary, so they can learn their ways. I keep mine in for at least 3-4 months, depending on age.
I can be a long process raising and releasing woodies, they need a lot of time and patience.

My first couple I got will be released within the next 4 weeks, I’d have had them 12 weeks by then, which sometimes can be a bit soon, however I am confident they’ll be wilded up enough by then.

Woodies are my favourite 💜 but they are not the easiest bird to rehabilitate and release.
My little guys are doing amazing and very happy with their development 🙏🏼

‼️For sale for £8 (badger) 🦡or £6 (fox) 🦊 per print.‼️- they don’t come with a frame but are printed on photo paper.They...
07/07/2025

‼️For sale for £8 (badger) 🦡or £6 (fox) 🦊 per print.‼️
- they don’t come with a frame but are printed on photo paper.

They are on the auction too, but if anyone wants to outright buy a print, that I have painted, then you can. I have many available 😁

I will be finishing the auction this Friday 🐦 There are lots of lovely goodies to be had 💜
07/07/2025

I will be finishing the auction this Friday 🐦

There are lots of lovely goodies to be had 💜

Update: the poorly feral passed over night on a heat pad 💔 can’t save them all unfortunately .I’ve had a few new intakes...
06/07/2025

Update: the poorly feral passed over night on a heat pad 💔 can’t save them all unfortunately .

I’ve had a few new intakes this week.

Yesterday we had a juvenile woodie who came in, he’s had a bad head impact which has resulted in a very swollen head, damaged eye, concussion & loss of vision in one eye - hopefully this will heal but not looking likely.

He is in appropriate medication and supportive feeds as he cannot eat by himself just yet.

This little one was local to me & being the only rehabber in the area I will of course do what I can for these little birds.

The little feral is from my garden flock, been trying to catch her all day. She’s extremely weak, emaciated and covered in lice & mites. And just judging by her poo a gut infection too.
She will also be on appropriate meds depending what’s going on with her.
(She is on a heat pad but wasn’t on it in thr picture).

Pigeons can and do get so many illnesses, I have a concoction of meds and supplements & probiotics after treatment, so each bird gets a fighting chance, depending what’s is wrong with them. 🙏🏼

Being the only rehabber in a 20 mile radius, is very very difficult, time wise and financially, as each bird that comes in needs parasite treatment, antibiotics , anti-inflammatories and usually cocci / canker treatment/ yeast infection treatment… a lot have intravenous injections to hydrate them!

I try and only take pigeons and doves, but will also take any other species that I am confident to take, but only shorty term for meds until they go elsewhere.

Rehabbing is exhausting 😅 (and this is me trying to be closed!!)

05/07/2025

✨🐦Happy Saturday🐦 ✨

04/07/2025

BABY DOVE IS RELEASED 🙏🏼

If anyone remembers a day old dove that came to me a few weeks ago, who was raised by a broody pair of pigeons, followed by myself teaching her to self feed, then aviary life…. She’s now finally been released 💜

Video in comments of her in my garden today walking around and a photo of when she first came to me 🙏🏼xx

Hi everyone 🙏🏼It’s that time where I have to reach out for help buying some food for the birdies 🥲A breakdown of what we...
04/07/2025

Hi everyone 🙏🏼

It’s that time where I have to reach out for help buying some food for the birdies 🥲

A breakdown of what we go through per week:
•20kg of wheat / very cheap wild bird seed PER DAY for my wild flock (wish I could give them fancy stuff but financially can’t).
•20kg of pigeon food per 2-3 days
•20kg of posh wild bird seed for woodies every 4-5 days
•5kg of peanuts a week
•5kg sunflower hearts a week
•5kg of suet per week
•5kg of grit per week

Pics below show my ‘dining room once upon a time’ but now it’s ‘pigeon food storage area’ - which is empty apart from fat balls & suet.
- the pigeons don’t eat fat balls , but it was donated and a lot of my garden birds eat them 💜

I have just received 1 bag from my wish list (thank you to whoever has ordered me a bag) 💜

The tubs are what I have currently got left.
A full tub lasts 2-3 days - so we have around 1.5 days left of food.

I have just gone on Amazon to do a bulk buy and noticed the delivery dates for the ‘pigeon’ food are from August - January 🙄🙄🙄 which is ridiculous.
So I have reached out to a local company to discuss bulk buying from them, if they can offer me a decent price for 45ish bags of food a month… so that’s what I am going to do going forward.

However, if anyone would like to buy some woodie food or some wild bird food, to help out the link is below 💜

OR I can pick up / you can drop off / meet me if you can find a decent priced bag of any wild bird seed or pigeon food 🙏🏼

Link below:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/36XZSPQPG64ZZ?ref_=wl_share

🐦💜 AUCTION FOR THE ANIMALS 💜🐦 Hey everyone, I think this is one of the biggest auctions to date… 🤩 lots of amazing goodi...
03/07/2025

🐦💜 AUCTION FOR THE ANIMALS 💜🐦

Hey everyone, I think this is one of the biggest auctions to date… 🤩 lots of amazing goodies to be had.

Thank you to everyone who has donated some items, very much appreciated 🙏🏼

Happy bidding ###

‼️update , he passed at 10pm‼️So sad but nothing I could have done 😢Went out for 10 min, came home and someone was waiti...
01/07/2025

‼️update , he passed at 10pm‼️
So sad but nothing I could have done 😢

Went out for 10 min, came home and someone was waiting on my drive, unannounced and no message with this baby.
(PLEASE don’t do this. I cannot emphasise enough how this can impact me as a rehabber, I now have to feed a nestling every 20 minutes, for 14-16 hours per day, which is time I don’t really have).

I’m obviously just a pigeon rehabber, but if random baby birds turn up, I will of course do my best to keep them alive until I can move them on to someone else to raise & wild up.
ALL birds require a wilding up aviary with the same sort of species, for example if this baby survived I couldn’t just put them with my pigeons to wild up. So they need a species specific rescue, with an appropriate aviary.

Unfortunately the finder has had this baby since Saturday and has been syringing water and crushed mealworms.
Although their intentions were pure, this is not what you should do with a baby bird like this.

Babies firstly do not drink water - they get all of their moisture from the food they eat from parents.
Secondly, they need a baby bird specific diet for their species, which can meet all of their requirements to develop.
Thirdly, they need an incubator, to make sure they are very warm at all times, as they are bald.. they HAVE to have an external heat to keep them alive.
And lastly ALL birds have a hole in their tongue, which leads directly to their lungs. This hole is their airway. A drop of fluid or water in this hole will drown them. They will aspirate.
If they don’t die (which will normally happen), they will get aspiration pneumonia which will then be a course of antibiotics to try and fight of the infection.

If you find a baby bird, please DO NOT attempt to feed or give water. This is so important. Just keep warm and find a rescue asap.

This baby is not in a good way & probably wont make it. But I will do my best with the means I have. 🙏🏼

01/07/2025

‼️Let’s talk about worms in pigeons 🪱 ‼️

Don’t watch the video if you are squeamish 😳

A good 90% of the pigeons i get in to rehab have worms. It’s extremely common…

Pigeons come in to rehab for a reason. They aren’t ’well’, ‘healthy’ ‘fit’ birds, they are birds who are either grounded, poorly, or injured.

A pigeon that has been attacked by a cat, or predated on… will usually be an unhealthy bird - from my experience and will have parasites, canker, infections, cocci etc.
A healthy pigeon wouldn’t ‘usually’ be catchable.

I predominantly take wood pigeons and hand on heart so far this year I don’t recall having a woodie in without some sort of parasite (mites.c lice, canker, cocci or worms) and nearly all have had tape worm.

Tapeworm in my experience is the most common worm… they can be very long, quite a few inches long and are made up of segments.
The worm expels the segments, which are alive… and once expelled will then be consumed by birds.
Lots of insects carry the segment of tapeworm and in turn wood pigeon’s especially , will eat the insect and they will become infected with them.

When pigeons come to me, I worm all over them on arrival. However normal bird / pigeon wormer (such as harkers spot on, or other spot ons or tablets) do NOT contain the ingredient that will kill tape worm - which is prazinquentel.
Prazinquentel is the ONLY thing that will kill tape worms. So it’s important to find a mix wormer that has it, or buy it separately.

So I buy a tape worm spot on treatment for kittens, which goes through their blood stream and kills tape worm.

I have had pigeons with infestations of tape worms in my aviary’s, multiple times, as they’ll eat ants, beetles, slugs … which are all a host to carry the tapeworm segment, so all aviary birds are wormed 4x per year.

They then also need a second dose, as they wormer will kill the alive worms, but not the eggs.
It’s why ALL of my birds are quarantined, until I know they are 100% clear of worms, parasites and infections.

The video I am sharing is a good example…

The video is a racing pigeon who came to me around 2 weeks ago. He had his first dose of spot on treatment and tape worm treatment….
However this video was his poo a few days ago.
Absolutely riddled in tapeworm still.
So it shows how important it is to follow up with the second dose of wormer.
Having said that, I think this poor racer is that infested I think it’s going to take more than 2 doses 😳 his poo is SOOOO sloppy and disgusting, which is a great indicator he’s got an overload of parasites.

All those little dots on the puppy pad, the little white and brown tiny dots… and the alive moving things are all the SEGMENTS of the worm itself.
He has hundreds and hundreds.

Tapeworm kills pigeons / birds and can be hard to treat from my experience.

They are the bane of my life 🤦🏼‍♀️😅

Enjoy the horrible (in my eyes interesting 😏) video! 😂

Oh how I’d love a partner to bring me flowers after work…. Nope I get a flat-fly infested baby woodie 😅Only rehabbers wi...
26/06/2025

Oh how I’d love a partner to bring me flowers after work…. Nope I get a flat-fly infested baby woodie 😅

Only rehabbers will know the nightmare of flat flies (*inserts screaming here*).

For those who don’t know what they are - they are also known as a bird/pigeon louse.
They are blood sucking parasites who also pack a nasty bite.
Flat flies run sidewards when not on a host (a pigeon) and will fly on to the nearest living thing when disturbed (a human) and bury in to your hair / go under your clothes, they make a bee line for you.
They are extremely hard to kill - they are like cockroaches of the parasite world.
(Photo in comments)

Anyway this little baby was found grounded under a conifer, a little too young to be out the nest, my partner I gave him a once over before bringing him home and noticed he had cuts on him - likely catted, was very skinny and had an empty crop. So needed help 🙏🏼

‼️Trigger warning - eye removal ‼️On Tuesday one of my permanent woodies who I have had for 2.5 years had to have his ey...
26/06/2025

‼️Trigger warning - eye removal ‼️

On Tuesday one of my permanent woodies who I have had for 2.5 years had to have his eye removed 😮‍💨

He came to me as a teeny tiny, who had has his upper eyelid pecked off by a magpie and had damage to his beak (he now has a cross beak)
Not realising 2.5 years down the line the trouble it would have caused him.

Little ones eye was no bother and has been fine for the whole 2 years, until around 6 months ago where he had gradually turned blind.
This was due to him not having an upper eyelid which meant his eye wasn’t being fully moistened by blinking, he had a couple of eye infections - again due to the eye not self cleaning, which again wasn’t an issue as long as I kept an eye on him. (He was checked over by vet when I first noticed his eye starting to go blind and at that point there was no need to intervene).

6 months down the line he turned fully blind in that eye and 2 weeks ago pierced his eye in the aviary some how - likely from the conifer branches in there when flying.

His eye basically ruptured, the eye ball went incredibly swollen and started to ooze.. I phoned my vet when it happened and it was advised to put him on antibiotics/ pain relief and book him in as soon as they had space.

He needed his eye removing, which came with risks - firstly the anaesthesia, which is extremely risky for birds.. also the worry of the eye not being able to drain if the tear ducts had been affected (luckily they hadnt) and lastly whether there was enough tissue surrounding his eye to stitch it together. Which again luckily there was.

So here he is today, an eye less.. but probably feeling much much better after his ordeal of puncturing his eye 😖😞 but the positive - he won’t have reoccurring eye infections any more and no risk of injury to his eye again.

I’ve had a lot of generous donations over my last plea for help, £320 to my PayPal 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 how amazing is that!?💜 And just over £100 donated straight to my bank, which means because of you incredible people I was able to pay £420 from donations towards his operation 💜💜💜

Thank you, thank you, thank you. ###

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