Nguyen Tan Phong, 43, from district 8, HCM City, spends all of his free time to take care of young racing pigeons. Phong and his pigeons are preparing for the upcoming tournaments.

Since 2000, Saigonese have had the hobby of developing racing birds. But at that time, pigeon competitions were informally organized. People gathered with their pigeons and had pigeons competing with each other.

In 2009, more groups of racing bird developers were set up in HCMC and professional bird racing appeared, attracting many people.

Developers call their birds ‘warriors’ and the aviaries ‘bases’. They set up bases and train their warriors for tournaments.

“The so-called ‘base’ is just an ‘aviary’. But in order to have beautiful bases, developers need to design bases of their own, suitable to their homes,” Phong said.

“Bases’ are the places where birds live and return after tiring races. They are very important and deserve big investments,” he said.

After setting up bases, racing bird developers train their warriors, which is the key to success. To Chan, head of the Sai Gon Pigeon Association, said racing birds must not be Vietnamese pigeons or ornamental pigeons. The birds are the ‘children’ and ‘grandchildren’ of foreign pigeons.

“Previously, racing birds were mostly from Thailand and China. Later, there are also birds of European varieties. The pigeons are vaccinated and cared for thoroughly to be sure that they can return to their bases after every competition,” Chan said.

It takes five to seven days to incubate eggs to have baby pigeons. Trainers will put a bracelet on a pigeon’s foot. After several months, when the pigeons grow with strong wings, developers start flying practice.

At first, pigeons practicing flying around in the air, helps make the wings stronger. Also, the flying helps birds locate their bases.

“Birds at six months old can be trained to race. You can train them to fly in different distances of 60km, 120km, 200km, or 800km,” he explained.

Overcoming challenges, competing for championship

The work of training birds requires many skills and is challenging. To train birds to fly a long distance, trainers need to carry their warriors to other localities to release them. It may happen that birds don’t return right after the first release. The birds can encounter natural enemies, or their health conditions are not good enough, and they are exhausted on the way back to their bases.

In these cases, developers have no other choice than starting everything from the beginning – incubating, feeding and training.

“Good pigeons are those who can fly stably and return to bases on schedule during the practice,” he explained. “I will choose pigeons good at speed or endurance to attend tournaments, depending on the characteristics of competitions.

“When training, birds can practice to fly 1-3 times for each distance and trainers can determine if their physical conditions are good enough to attend competitions,” he said, adding that the cost of training a warrior, from the time of training to the time it can fly 800 kilometers, is VND1 million.

When the warriors overcome difficulties during the practices, trainees bring them to competitions. The races may have different distances, depending on weather conditions and other factors.

Bird owners bring their birds to register with an organizing board. The board notes down the color of the feathers and of eyes and the weight of the birds. Also, they stick stamps on the bracelets on the bird’s leg.

After that, birds are brought to places they have set for release. The doors of the cages will be open for the warriors to ‘take off’, starting the journey to conquer the air race of thousands of kilometers.

Meanwhile, trainers return to bases and wait anxiously for the warriors to return.

“The racing depends on many factors, including weather conditions and wind. It’s difficult to predict when birds return,” he said.

“Birds may never return. It’s quite normal that birds are lost during competitions. They may be too tired on the way or killed by natural enemies, including eagles. In some cases, they are hunted by humans,” he said.

In long-distance competitions, birds may feel tired and need to land somewhere to have a rest before continuing on their way to return to bases. During the journey, the warriors with bad health conditions and those who fly in bad weather conditions (rain, typhoon) may have an accident or die on the way.

Warriors have to overcome difficulties and dangers on the way, so bird owners take pride if the birds can return.

When the birds return, bird owners scratch the stamps stuck to birds’ bracelets on their foot and send a message to the organizing board. The bird owners who first send messages will win the championship.

According to Chan, in short-distance competitions, warriors can fly at the speed of 70-80 kilometers per hour. I long-distance competitions, the speed is between 40 and 50 kilometers per hour. 

Ha Nguyen 

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