I got Angie when he was already a bit over 2 months old from a breeder, he's a bit over 3 years old now. He's a purebred roller breed and his parents were showbirds. Temperament wise he's an absolutely perfect bird, he's extremely docile for a pigeon and is very friendly even despite the fact that he wasn't really handled as a baby by the breeder. But despite that he is also very easy to handle and doesn't get stressed by being handled.
As you can see he's Very eager to do some training, before deciding he's done with it and going to eat from a feeder afterwards, but I like to give my birds an option to say when they want to stop training. After bringing Angie home it took him roughly a week before he would eat from my hand for the first time and a month before he would eat from my hand confidently enough to be willing to start clicker training. Eventually he would start coming to me on his own even without any food involved.
Many people are made to believe the lie that only very young pigeons who are still squeakers can be tame and trainable, but that's absolutely not true and it even directly harms the pigeons because they shouldn't be separated from their parents before reaching at least 2 months of age. Pigeons less than 2 months old tend to not handle the stress of being separated from their parents well at all and tend to shut down and refuse to eat even If they could already eat seeds on their own. Pigeons that young will easily starve themselves to death, but also being force fed at the fledgling age can make them be afraid of people/hands. Being handfed and/or separated from their parents at less than 2 months old does Not make them tamer or friendlier, in fact most of those birds end up being not very sociable and end up with a ton of behavioral issues like extreme aggression or skittishness.
I thought I would share Angie to show others that fully grown pigeons (and doves too!) are very much trainable and that they can be friendly towards people too. It just depends on the bird's genetic temperament.
