Unroasted Peanuts: A Secret Weapon?

By Steven Van Breemen


The famous German biologist & pigeon fancier Dr. Arno Meyer of Hamburg, Germany, allowed me to take some interesting notes from his pigeon diary:

July 24:
"Today we are basketing for the last race of the old pigeons, 700 km. At around
2 o'clock I give the final feed to the 14 pigeons that are going to participate (six widowers and eight widowhood hens). They are given nothing else but peanuts and they can eat as much as they want. At night their crops are full of food and water."

July 26:
"The day is hot, 28 degrees C. The pigeons were released at 06.15 hours. Departure is poor and the race remains open for a long time, from 16.48 to
20.30 o'clock. By 20.30 hours I clocked 12 birds. Non of them returned home exhausted and they don't appear to be very thirsty either, despite the heat. Ten pigeons are prize winners and it is really too bad that the first pigeon was not six minutes earlier in arriving home. The following morning the last two pigeons returned as well."

No, you did not read it wrong, these pigeons were given as many peanuts as they wanted. Dr. Meyer deduced from a logical train of thought that it would be advantageous to feed peanuts to pigeons before basketing them. What exactly are peanuts?? Peanuts belong to the group of nuts with the highest oil content. Their appeal to fanciers is their extremely high fat content of 47%, combined with their protein content of 30% The analysis in the following table explains it more clearly.
Percentages of carbohydrates, fat, protein and nutritional values are expressed in calories:





Nutritional: Value






































The advantages of feeding plenty of peanuts on the day of basketing are as follows:

1. In most pigeon transporters the feed is not given in trays, but thrown inside the boxes. There is always the danger of cross contamination when birds eat feed picked up from among the droppings, giving crop, stomach or intestine problems. The "peanut pigeons" don't run this risk.

2. The "peanut pigeons" have less need for water than the birds that have been fed ordinary grain rations, because the grain has to stay a long time in the crop, while soaking up water, until it is soft enough for the muscles of the gizzard to be able to grind up this grain, and the process takes quite a bit of energy. But drinking is a problem in the pigeon transporters, especially in the baskets of the cock birds. Those birds that have conquered a spot in front of the water tray will defend that spot vigorously, which makes it harder for the thirsty cock birds to reach the water.

But peanuts do not need soaking, which means they need little water and leave the crop relatively fast. Because they are so soft, it takes little energy to digest the peanuts. Another advantage is that peanuts are much faster digested than other grains. On Saturday morning, at the start of the race, the intestines of peanut eating pigeons are a lot less filled than the intestines of pigeons who were fed slow digesting grains on Friday. It is also questionable if these other birds were able to drink enough in the tranporter. For that reason the peanut eating pigeons have a better weight.

3. The pigeons who ate nothing else but grain, have only glycogen to burn on their trip home, and maybe a little of fat, for example, from the corn. If the supply runs short before they get home, these pigeons will have to use their body reserves as energy supply, which has the added disadvantage that this causes the release of nitrogen, an extra burden on the system. The "peanut pigeon", beside the glycogen stored in the muscles and the liver, has so much extra, energy rich fat (9.3 cal/gr), it would last him more than one racing day. When glycogen and fat are changed into energy no harmful gasses are released, only carbon dioxide CO2 which is exhaled, and water, and this is very important for the body functions. Even when the race takes 15 hours, the pigeons, richly supplied with peanuts, do not have to suffer from the disadvantages of burning up their own body proteins, in the process of losing weight.

4. Fanciers who have experience with feeding peanuts to their pigeons have to agree with me that such pigeons are less thirsty, and even on hot days have a less straggled look when arriving home. My advice to all those who have remained skeptical while reading this article is to try the following experiment: divide your team of pigeons into two groups. Feed peanuts to the one group and normal rations to the other. I am sure that after you have analyzed the results, you have become a believer.

In conclusion Dr. Meyer, in his position as a biologist, would like to make the following remarks: people whose jobs involve heavy labor, have a preference for food high in fat content, but they do not gain weight from it. People who live and work in a cold climate, like the Eskimos, are able to withstand the cold much better by burning off a lot of fat inside their bodies. The large sized, migrating birds, like geese, store up large amounts of body fats during the summer months, and the combustion of these high energy fat reserves allows them every autumn to compete successfully the long trip south to warmer climates. Is it a coincidence that these birds seem to prefer the seeds high in fats, and go wild when they are offered peanuts or hemp??

Too bad our pigeons are not able to communicate with us, because if they could, they would have told us without question that, as high quality racing birds, they very much prefer the energy rich fats for combustion, to protect their muscles, keep their proper weight, and thus stay in form. The time has come for every fancier to keep his eyes open, to dare to compare, and then draw the proper conclusions.


" Amazing V Loft " © 2008