Well after playing with rubber, latex and battery operated doves I am thinking about buying real doves. Is there a specific breed or anything I should know about? Male ? Female ? .. I am trying to google the topic but I just find instructional magic info..

I would love to hear from anyone who actually owns doves in their home and uses them in their routine, how they are in a home, around kids etc.. what kind of cage is good for home etc..

I am sure you are going to lots of good advice here from different members.

Mine would be:

Female doves tend to make less noise (cooing) than male doves.

The common white dove is often called a Java dove. There are others available.

If keeping the doves in your home, you may consider keeping them in a separate room and purchasing a good air filtration device to put in the room to keep dander down. There is some evidence to suggest that you can become quite ill from your birds otherwise.

You do not have to allow your birds to fly, but you should have cages large enough for them to flap their wings without hurting themselves. Often, commercial rabbit cages can be converted to house your birds by including some perches. At least 2 perches is good.

Try to avoid keeping 2 males in the same cage as they tend to peck at each other. The pecking can become severe and lead to bald and bleeding doves. Sometimes the females will also peck each other. Keeping the birds in pairs, male and female, in cages can reduce the pecking and also lead to babies being hatched should you desire.

Well, there's a start. I'm sure you'll get more to help you out.

Here is the best advice I can give you. Go to the heading Polly wants a Cracker. Start scrolling down, and every title that has the word dove in it, read, continue and you will have all your questions answered. This question has been answered 1000 times and more, on the Café in this section. Sorry, but I am not being rude, I just get tired answering the same questions over and over when they have been answered in great detail already by myself and others.

You said you Googled, you should have seen references to the Magic Café, you can also read those as well.

Welcome to the Café.

Inside, I can understand the comments wmhegbli has made and it too bothers me to keep answering the same questions, however, you sound like a beginner and may not know what to search for. For starters, take a look at the two sticky topics at the top of this forum. It's a good place to start. I could, and have gone on with a quite lengthy post about care, feeding, breeds, housing etc but most of what I say can be found in the resources listed in those sticky topics.

Here's my humble and quite recent experience:

Males make noise, but it depends what you want to do, for some effects it doesn't matter, and to be honest, mine don't make any noise when they're loaded before the manipulation routine.
If you want you're doves to fly keep them in a large cage, eiter way, they should have enough space, a rabbit cage sounds unacceptable to me. You work with them, they don't work for you. Threat them with respect.

The best type to use are the very small white ones, I don't know the exact name in English, but I'm sure you know what I mean when I say: the type they toss up at weddings. (or used to toss up at weddings)

Mine have always been together in the same cage, sometimes they mess with each other, but they have enough space to avoid each other.
Doves, when fully trained, will sit on everyone's hand, they're used to it. They make quite a mess, so you'll have to clean the room they are in very ofter, also, use white sand for the bottom of the cage, if you would use saw dust the smell will be horrible after a few days, the sand will absorb smells and fluids and their feet won't be full of poop, unlike with sawdust.

Laurens, I totally disagree that the type of dove to use is the ones they use at weddings. Those are not doves but pigeons. In any event, the two most commone variety of doves being used are java or ring neck. Females are smaller than males but a lot depends on their diet and how you feed them. You'll find more magicians using ring necks only because they are more readily available. A rabbit cage is totally acceptable. Like bird cages, they come in a variety of sizes. For a long time, I used an outdoor rabbit hutch that was plenty large enough for 8 or more birds. Placing perches at varying heights in the cage provide a chance for good excercise jumping or flying from one to another.

Females make a lot of noise as well as males. The difference is the type of noise. Both males and females coo but it is more previlant with males. Females tend to "laugh" and "bark". As for sand on the bottom of the cage, if you clean the cage every day or at least everyother day, you can simply line the bottom of the cage with paper [not newspaper]. Butcher block paper works well if it's available in your area.

I advise you to read the following threads first:
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......rum=13&0
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......um=13&20

Good advice, all!

Thank you.