SDCERA employee Larry Foos holds one of the pigeons he raises at his home.
They come in a wide variety of breeds. Judges gauge each against specific criteria. Training keeps them standing tall and on their best behavior during competition.
We are talking, of course, about – pigeons.
“They all have personalities. They’re really interesting to look at,” says Larry Foos, who raises and shows pigeons when he’s not working as a communications officer for the County Employees Retirement Association.
Foos keeps his birds in a cluster of pens atop a slope in the yard of his Rancho San Diego home. Forget your image of pigeons as statue-staining rats-with-wings. These are pedigree show birds. In fact, one of the breeds Foos prefers sports the regal name Show Kings.
“They’re pretty,” Foos says. “They want to show themselves.”
His passion for pigeons began as a child growing up in Bakersfield, where raising the birds was a common hobby. He bought his first pair for $2, and quickly got hooked as he saw the birds progress through stages of development and lay their own eggs.
Foos joined clubs to learn more, then started writing about and taking pictures of the birds for publications within the pigeon-raising community. That experience grew into a more general interest with journalism he explored in high school, majored in at San Diego State, then took up as a career.
Along the way he dropped the pigeon hobby, but the interest never went away entirely. About 10 years ago, conditions were right to start acquiring the birds again and get back into competition.
One of Foos' pigeons in a show pen, in front of a poster detailing standards for the breed.Foos currently has about 50 birds in his home’s pigeon “lofts,” with units divided up by various functions. Pairs, which mate for life, get their own pens. Young birds that have yet to mate share a pen with others of the same sex. There are “show pens,” used to train the birds for exhibition.
One pen is for “worker pigeons,” whose jobs include taking care of the eggs and young of the Show Kings. They may be beautiful , Foos says, but, “they’re terrible parents.”
It’s quite an operation. The various tasks of feeding, cleaning and otherwise caring for the birds take Foos about an hour a day. But for Foos, it’s all part of the attraction.
“It’s therapeutic. You can come up here and relax,” he says. “You feel like you’re in another world up here.”
Foos is not in it for the money, but he does sell pigeons he’s raised. His top price: $500 for a pair. That didn’t include the cost of shipping – to a buyer in Romania.
Interacting with other pigeon enthusiasts far and near is another big draw to the hobby. Shows are social affairs, and Foos says he enters about five a year. He’s active with clubs and sometimes hosts meetings in a deck built right outside his pigeon lofts.
“It takes a certain person,” Foos says of his fellow pigeon raisers. He describes them as people who enjoy the simple things in life. “There’s no high-tech in this business.”
Foos’ expertise was called upon recently when a pigeon with an injured wing was found outside SDCERA’s offices in Mission Valley. Luckily for the bird, staff knew of Foos’ hobby and thought he might be able to help. Foos had never rehabilitated a wild pigeon but took up the challenge.
He brought the bird home and set up an “isolation ward” in the lofts. Foos equipped the pigeon with a “wing sling” and administered vitamins and medicine. After several weeks, the bird healed and was able to fly around the pens. Foos brought him back the SDCERA parking lot to release him. The bird took off and flew to a space within the structure of the I-805 bridge. Mission accomplished.
It was an instance of one more feature that attracts Foos to raising pigeons: always learning new things.
“It’s a miracle watching all this,” he says.
Foos invites anyone who is interested in pedigree pigeons to contact him at larry.foos@cox.net .
If you or another employee have an offbeat hobby you’d like to share send a note to Communications@sdcounty.ca.gov.
Foos holds a "frillback" pigeon, which he describes as a rare breed.
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