Very experienced with other fowl, very new to pigeons, would love to hear what you think I should know.

The "Comprehensive Beginners Guide" and "Reading Material" links in the sidebar do not appear to work, at least for me.

We have an operational homestead with chickens, guinea fowl, turkeys, rabbits, peafowl, quail, button quail, emu, sheep, and goats. Others too, but that's the livestock mostly.

Recently at a livestock auction, we picked up a pair of fantails for basically nothing, nobody bid on them. They appear to be a bonded pair.

Then, the next day we went to a livestock swap, and a fella really wanted some of our bunnies but didn't have any cash, so we swapped him a few more pairs of fantails.

This was last week.

Fast forward to this weekend, and someone reached out to us needing to rehome some pigeons ASAP. Homers + a couple Modena, ten total. We took them because...hey, cool birds.

Now I need to figure out permanent loft for them. The Fantails don't REALLY fly, but that can kind of fly for maybe 10 feet. Are they OK to share a loft with the homers? Any reason to NOT do this? The lady we got the last batch from told me that the Modena were gentle birds but had a bad habit of accidentally trampling squeakers so we should separate them when anyone is setting.

On the food front, our local feed store has 50lb sacks of pigeon feed but there appear to be several large pieces in there that none of them will eat, they almost look like small round peanuts? It also does NOT say that it's "complete". Should I switch them to checkers or something? All I can find on this front is conflicting advice. They do have really good grit separately. We won't ever show or race these birds but we want them to have enriched, long, happy, healthy lives.

Thanks in advance for anything you have to tell me!