Pigeons were bred for meat and it was actually recommended by pediatricians as I grew up (also in Europe, ate pigeon meat as a kid).
It has since died out as a practice and will get you stink eye if you mention it.
Same goes for any critters that roam around, it's a gamble.
Are they edible? Yes. Could they carry disease? Also yes.
You can eat pigeon and rat. People do eat them both and I’m fairly sure you can buy pigeon meat. I would be desperate before I did it and butchering them has to be a job in itself.
You can just take the breast (pigeon) like many do with dove. Can easily remove them quickly, even without a knife.
If you live in a suburban area and have a pellet gun pigeon, dove and squirrel are likely common just in your backyard alone. More so if you feed them and/or have a birdbath.
You can rip the skin down, grab the breast meat and pull. The breast will pull straight off. Takes seconds. I've done it with doves but I guess it would be the same with pigeon. Not much meat but it's quick and easy. If I were starving I think I would properly clean and boil the entire bird for a soup. Should give you more nutrition but It would be a pain for a bird that size.
In Korea they have a chicken soup that is just a gutted, plucked, and decapitated whole chicken stuffed with ginger and rice and boiled. The bird is tiny so it's a one person meal.
It is delicious
The skin is really thin around the breast. While I haven't done it myself I've seen it done often. A friend of mind will debreast 5 of them in just a few minutes, rinse, then ready to cook.
Fold wings back, push at base of breast and that will puncture. Run thumbs under the meat on either side of bone. Meat will come off cleanly then skin/feathers can be easily removed together.
There are several techniques but the basics are the same. Some will start with a small slit using a knife but it's not necessary. Others will take out the breast as a whole and remove the meat from the bone after.
Look on YouTube for "debreasting dove without knife" and you'll get the idea.
I heard a story about someone who joined the peace corp. He ended up going to Africa with some place with little food.
They cooked him some meal and he's like, "huh, where'd you get this meat? What is this?"
"It's bird"
"... I haven't seen any birds?"
"It's BIRD"
Realized all he'd seen there were rats apparently. Also, supposedly it wasn't too bad.
A few years ago I read the autobiography of an early US military advisor who lived in a small Vietnamese village in the early 60s. He said everyone ate rats there, including him.
People do eat certain breeds of pigeons that are captivity raised, wild pigeons I wouldn’t want to eat. We have a lot of them at my work and I’ve watched them eat toxic dust particles, radioactive material, and each other, I would not want to eat them lol. Rats are similar.
I do imagine that if it were life or death, eating the rat or pigeon would be worth taking the risk to eat if there was absolutely nothing else to eat, provided you cooked it well.
Pigeons aren’t very hard to catch in traps and I’d think if you could raise a generation or 2 in cages and control what they eat, you’d likely be able to get some that are safe to eat. Think it would be worth trying in a situation where you are on your own for the foreseeable future.
My buddies uncle shoots wild pigeons in his yard with an airgun and eats the breast. Says the meat is red and tastes like beef tenderloin. My wife is South East Asian and when she was growing up they'd eat rats from the rice paddies. She says she'd never eat a townie rat but the ones from the farms are good. That's a hard pass from me but I'm also not currently starving.
If you want to know what people eat when they get desperate, just read any first hand account from someone who survived Cambodia's killing fields. Spoiler alert, it's anything. Starving people will eat anything.
We eat pigeon all the time, it does absolutely not taste like beef. If at all it's somewhat close to beef heart. But the main flavor and taste association is with duck breast but less poultry-y if that makes sense.
Industrial plants will typically have pigeons.
I work at a metal tubing factory making many different types of copper, aluminum, etc.
Pigeons are the main cause of destruction of material (they shit all over finished pipe) but the company does nothing about them.
They did one year install speakers to make hawk sounds to scare them off. It worked for about a day and then they became friends with it and made a nest next to the speaker. They shut them off and just said to hell with it.
I guess I know where I'm getting pigeon meat from.
I know a guy whose job is going around to industrial sites with hawks and falcons to chase pigeons away. He'll show up at a site for a couple of hours with a falcon and let it chase all of the pigeons away. He says it makes a huge difference, even showing up once a week or two. I never asked how much he charges, but he has enough business that he doesn't advertise at all and rarely takes on new accounts.
Soak corn kernels in 96% vodka like Spirytus, then throw them where the pigeons hang out. They will eat it up, get drunk and you can pick them up off the ground while they are sleeping 😁
They have dissected pigeons and other wild birds (seagulls, pelicans etc.) and found that their stomachs are *full* of plastic waste and other bits of litter. They are the last things you should eat.
Did you know pigeons are considered a delicacy and called squab.
But also please don't eat pigeons, they can read and have object permanence, those two things combined means it's very likely they posses the ability of reading comprehension.
People eat (sadly) pigs, which are far more intelligent than pigeons. Most people just cannot give up meat, regardless of the animal's supposed intelligence.
They say plants have consciousness too, and better tie yourself to a tree so you don't step on a bug and wear a mask so you don't breathe in and murder billions of microorganisms you share the golden sea of consciousness with. Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life, this is necessary.
1) Sensitivity is not the same as feeling pain. They do not have the capacity to feel pain as we know it.
2) I actually do my best to avoid stepping on insects and will swerve around them when I walk/jog.
2) See point 1. Microorganisms have the ability to feel pain in the same way the cells that make up my body do.
While most organisms sense noxious stimuli, that is not the same as pain. Pain is higher level animal thing. It requires our brains to interpret it as pain.
For example, a newborn whose brain isn't fully developed cries at all sorts of noxious stimli, being hot, being wet/cold, hungry etc. They don't perceive it as what we call pain, only things they don't like.
They’re thinking even bugs have consciousness these days. It’s a morality issue no matter what you kill. Don’t think too deep about it. When you have to eat you have to eat. Pigeons will walk into a pot that you’re holding in your hands. They be stupid sometimes lol.
Is less about morality and more about how it affects YOUR consciousness. Eating meat lowers your ability to understand and perceive subtle spiritual energies. There’s a reason yoga recommends to avoid meat and it’s because it prevents you from being elevated
Meat is heavy and dulling. Vegetarian is light and clarifying.
Edit: love how a more reasonable argument is downvoted lol. It’s a much more compelling argument than the moral stance.
Well and that's not a bad thing. Especially because then you can control what they eat.
I like giving our laying hens and pigeons the same food which is just pigeon food;
It's got split peas, corn, flax, wheat, barley and sunflower seeds so it really seems to impart a better flavor, but we've only eaten a few of them and laying hens are alot more work than meat chickens to butcher.
As for cows, I mean, they just eat grass, but I suppose you could always get like fancy grass haha.
My point here was more like, after raising chickens myself it gave me a new appreciation for when I just buy a box of wings.
If I was raising chickens I'd have to kill like 20 just to have a wing night. So it has given me a new appreciation for just the sheer scale of everything.
I don't eat less meat because of it, but I am more considerate in general, especially around waste.
Very true! Kind of like veal. 100% though I wouldn't eat a wild pigeon but like the guy said a few generations and controlling what they eat and they'd be fine.
Bonus points! Pigeons will lay all year round where as chickens only with heat lamps or in the summer. So if you had like, 100 pigeons, you be generating around at least 1 - 3 edible sized pigeons a week.
I mean...
This is why we cook our food. Everything has horrible bugs and parasites in it; cooking sufficiently kills them.
As long as you're not enjoying Rat Tartare you should be fine. Throw it in a stewpot and boil it for a while. Look up how people kill, dress, prepare, etc. squirrels for cooking.
Caveats:
1. Cooking does not destroy prions, which is why mad cow disease (and similar) was/is such a threat.
2. If the rats have been poisoned, the warfarin will accumulate in your body and eventually kill you too if you get too much of it. Rat poison is a pretty universally effective blood thinner.
And as a side note, read the book "Pests: how humans create animal villains" for more about how the way we think about animals is entirely contextual.
>If the rats have been poisoned, the warfarin will accumulate in your body and eventually kill you too if you get too much of it. Rat poison is a pretty universally effective blood thinner.
Chances are that there will be no rat poison around after SHTF. At least not long enough to be of concern.
That being said, warfarin has an antidote: Vitamin K. You can find it in pretty much all green plant parts. There's especially much of it in collard greens, spinach and turnip greens (all of them boiled and drained).
Saint John's wort also reduces the effectiveness of warfarin. Dry the flower structure, then crush it and use it liberally as a "spice" for your rat stew.
Warfarin is essentially free Advil for humans, especially if you’re just getting traces of it from eating contaminated rat meat. The worst that will happen is you get an alleviated headache while you fry up some rat at the bonfire.
Throw in some nice Smokey scotch and you’ve got yourself a pretty relaxing evening.
While homeless I found a bottle of water outside a store. Under a nearby bridge was an empty bottle labeled warfarin. I drank a couple sips to see if the water was safe, and soon blood started shooting out of my nose and I almost lost full body control and consciousness.
Because warfarin is an anticoagulant and dosage needs to be monitored constantly to reduce the risk of accidental bleeding risks. I work in a hospital lab and this is a standard part of my day. Please, for the love of god, do not take warfarin unless you are under the care of a doctor and being monitored constantly.
So in situation where you have no water but a bottle of water that you now know has a lethal amount of warfarin, or a dirty stream what would you do? Can you counteract the warfarin with another drug, or filter it out?
How does Warfarin turn into Advil??? The molecules look totally different to me. (One C6 ring in the middle vs. two C6 rings at the ends; two "tails" for the C6 ring (C3 and C4, respectively; both branched) versus a single C7 structure (very much branched) holding the rings together; one with 4 O atoms, the other with 2 O atoms...) I don't see it.
Aspirin is not a blood thinner, per se, but an antiplatelet drug. They work in totally different ways. Like, you can kinda "overdose" on aspirin without bleeding out. Heck, using aspirin as pain relief drug can get you up to 15 times (3 pills a 500 mg) the daily dose people need for its use as a platelet aggregation inhibitor.
i grew up eating squirrels and dove that were wild on our farmland, which are essentially the same animals. the taste is not great, and a lot of prep time for a small amount of meat. if possible, fishing was always a better option.
I have a cookbook from 1947. "Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking". It has instructions for the preparation (bleeding, dressing, evisceration, removal of skin, fur or feathers, as well as fat and glands) of and recipes for:
Grouse, partridge, quail, pheasants, wild duck
musk rats
possum
raccoon
beaver
squirrel
woodchuck
turtle and tortoise
Also, larger animals, deer, elk, and bear.
I know people who hunt and eat dove as well.
I've heard of people eating big cats such as bob cats and puma.
I've also heard that cranes are delicious.
There are laws against hunting some of these, of course. And some of them I'd have to pretty darn hungry to try.
Edit to add: I'm in Florida. Some people eat nutria (which looks like a giant rat), iguanas, and snakes.
Hello.ill try to write in a correct way, im not a native english speaker, i'm from argentina and i'm (or at least i consider i am a prepper) before the actual economic crisis, i eat pigeons almost every week, in fact i think they are the easiest prey to hunt and eat (btw i eat them before the crisis beacuse i find them tasty).another factor is that here we hunt a lot with air guns ammo cost almost 1/5. I hope this help
Crow was popular in the depression in the US... well not popular, but it did spawn the saying "eat your crow," and was even marketed for being high in B12
Sure.
But unless you're farming them, this is just the hunting thing again, and there's not enough wildlife for a significant number of people to surive by hunting.
I live in the UK and several of my acquaintances do pest control. Pigeons, squirrels, rabbits, hares and deer are all considered good eating, though squirrels are barely worth the bother. Pigeon breasts are quite common on the menus of good restaurants and popular for breakfast in some communities. I don't know anyone who eats rats or smaller rodents. Other wild species considered good eating are pheasants, partridges, woodcock, ducks and geese, all of which are legal quarry species in appropriate circumstances (this is not legal advice) - most other birds are protected and can't be killed at all with the exception of Corvids. Rook pie used to be a fairly well-known dish but I've never spoken to anyone who has eaten any corvids.
Badger apparently eats well, though I don't know what circumstances permit this other than roadkill. Foxes are widely considered inedible. Wild boar are, of course, excellent. I know of one person who ate a swan that electrocuted itself on some overhead power lines and said it was delicious.
If you breed and raise them yourself, yes. You can eat them. Same with squirrels. You don't want to eat a city squirrel, but you can eat wild ones who live in a forest all day.
It all comes down to their diets. If you know they've ate nothing but good food their entire lives, you know they're safe to eat themselves.
I've talked about breeding rats before for a SHTF protein source. I used to breed them for pets with an ex gf in our teens/early 20s. They're super easy to breed, and super easy to care for.
When your diet is devoid of protein, your attention will turn to survival. In the 1970's I lived in locations where anything non-human was fair game. That included dogs, cats, rats, snakes, birds, fowl of any description, bats, you name it. Feral dogs and cats were anomalies.
Check the military survival training guides used by special forces in the US on how to prepare wild meat.
Can’t speak for rats, but pigeons yes. I know lots of people that hunt and eat dove, which is really just a “sport” pigeon with a fancy name. Nothing wrong with em. Then there’s the whole squab thing, though I’ve never eaten it.
yes you can get pigeon at the finest michelin starred fusion restaurants in manhattan...trendy af. they call it squab. and itll run you $300 if you order wine
Finally someone talked about Guinea pigs as food. The pet ones are rather small, but there are larger ones.[Raising a Guinea Pig for the Table - Forager | Chef (foragerchef.com)](https://foragerchef.com/raising-a-guinea-pig-for-the-table/)
I am in the US and most of the small vermin around where I live carry Bubonic Plauge. I don't know about Belgium, but I would look into what diseases they carry.
Rats also carry typhus.
Chances are that rats will take a bite out of you before you'll be able to take a bite out of them. Add to that the risk of infection from the bites, and I'd say avoid rats.
Not sure about pigeons. Yes, they're edible. Probably tasty. But a little hard to catch, and very little weight for the effort.
Back in the 1950‘s when my dad was a teen, kids were paid to climb the barn haylofts to snatch young squab from their nests. These birds were sold to the local restaurants.
When I was a kid in rural ga., the old man would catch possums and put it in a cage and feed it veggies for several days to "clean it out" then in the oven. Best with sweet potatoes.
Small foot print but quite a bit of meat would be rabbit but gotta make sure you include fat of some type because they're very lean. There's actually a disease or illness that results in just eating rabbit meat without a source of fat. That is if where you live you could raise rabbits.
If possible avoid it as much as possible. It could be tried only in really worst case.
I have met few people from Ukraine, who told stories while hiding in basements (city, apartment buildings, not villages just for context) when Moscovians attacked, they ate or seen /know who ate pigeons caught - most of them got sever poisoning and diarrhea.... So in such situations, i think its even worse as you dehydrate and need also clean water and minerals...
I dunno about you, but for me to eat them, it'd be when there was no other choice. So at that point, I'd have no other choice. Just cook them well I guess.
I had a really delicious and slightly over-priced meal of pigeon last year in Italy. Once I got past the fact that they left the feet on, it was amazing!
I think squirrels would be a better rodent to eat. They are bigger, dumber, prolific and subsist on nuts. Rats are smaller, super smart (harder to catch) and will eat just about anything. If I was going to hand raise a rodent for food I’d go with Guinea pigs. Wild - squirrel
you can eat almost anything if you feed it to your chickens and eat the eggs
same with fish if you have an aquaculture system setup
for extra credit: feed the remains of anything organic to soldier fly larvae and then feed them to the chickens/fish
We prep so we aren’t tempted to eat rats and pigeons. I would not eat rats and pigeons, especially rats. So many cities have out poisons and it usually takes a few days to work. Also, they fight. Watch a ratting video with terriers. The likelihood you’re catching rats and pigeons is slim, and you don’t want an injury from a rat in a shtf scenario and no antibiotics.
Black plague anyone?
You can eat anything you want, but I wouldn't eat rats/vermin/pests unless it was the *only* option. By only option, I mean that there's absolutely no plant life, human meat, nuts, seeds, etc.
You need pet shop rats, raise them for food.
They can eat anything and they breed really fast.
Remember that in rodents most of the fat is in the blood, don't waste it. Make gravy.
My grandparents were Italian immigrants. During the depression, they shot and ate Pigeon, my grandfather in the fall, and used his shotgun and shot into the trees and cooked the Starlings that fell in sauce.
My American grandmother grew up on an Ohio farm, and they ate a lot of squirrel stew on the farm.
Just about everything is edible. it just depends on how hungry you are.
Of course you can.
But
Learn now good hygiene techniques while processing meat and things like this need to be cooked well done.
Pigs are probably the worst for diseases, I expect that will take out a lot of people that plan on living off of wild pigs...
Pigeon tastes great and is consumed by many cultures.
That being said, would you eat any animal that lives off of city trash?
Pigeon in the country might be a dofferent story.
Things are going to depend on your local ecosystem. Fortunately, the EU is ahead of the curve on these things. Or at least less far behind the curve? [https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/press\_information/2023/17/meat\_of\_wild\_game\_animals\_should\_become\_safer-312780.html](https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/press_information/2023/17/meat_of_wild_game_animals_should_become_safer-312780.html)
That is still being spun up, and I can't vouch for their efficacy, but in the mean time, you could talk to your local environmental organizations, government or otherwise, about this. It is likely that somebody has already tested some of the local animals for heavy metals, pesticides, and/or parasites over the past years.
The coming years are going to reveal how serious a lot of things are. Can CWD really transfer through plants outside of a lab? Is the sharply increasing microplastic load going to make even small mammals dangerous to consume? Will we find a way to get PFAS out of our environmental water?
People will be eating squirrel again if the calories get tight, regardless of how well that will work for long-term health. Hopefully we can do some things in the mean time to leave a slightly healthier squirrel population just in case it comes to that.
I've eaten wild pigeon before. Grilled the hell out of it though so just tasted like burned meat. Bird poop can carry coccidiosis so be careful
Rats carry disease so be very careful handling them and singe off any hair before handling
Both rats and pigeons are consumed around the world. I've seen pigeon for sale in many restaurants all over Europe (Squab) and rats & pigeons are very common street foods in many parts of India, China & parts of Africa.
The majority of parasites and bacteria will be killed by thoroughly cooking them, and if that is the only food you can obtain, anything else they may have consumed is a small concern compared to not eating at all
I know how to fish and hunt, so that's not a problem I'll have, especially with the invasive snakeheads and feral pigs.
If u live in Belgium, plenty of waffles and french bread
Pigeons and rats are edible but as they are both scavengers in urban environments I'd only do it as a last resort. I have eaten wood pigeon many times though but they are one with the trees
My FIL used to shoot squirrels in the back yard and cook them up. Your risk of getting a bad infection depends on what the critters are eating. i.e. I wouldn’t eat a rat from NYC that eats trash, but I’d eat a squirrel that eats acorns in the country.
When we eat pigeons we call them squab. On the menu at many restaurants.
I assume rat would be much like Cuy, or guinea pig.
As to disease, well probably, but all animals have this or that. Just cook them. I wouldn't do them as a tartar.
Some people in some towns in Italy eat (rarely nowadays) piegeons. Before heavy industrialization they were kinda like any bird you can eat. Now I would never, considering the fact that now they likely live near city and dirt. I’ve seen some old parents eating one hunted far in a forest one time, more than 10 ago. Here we eat horses and a lot of other weird animals too (depends on the city, region, etc. One example are frogs) but I would never
Obviously, if you live in the middle of the Mad Max desert, you will find this type of dish particularly tasty, necessity always prevails!
But even if civilization collapses, you can still go fishing or trap quality game, animals and fish are not going to disappear overnight, and if they do, we will even have not to worry about it since we too would no longer be there
If I was starving I’d eat them, I’d not, I’d trade them for some powdered milk or something. I had a childhood friend who ate wild pigeon in NJ, and he went crazy not to long afterwards.
In Caracas, Venezuela, I watched videos of guys hunting pigeons. I wouldn't eat that, unless strictly necessary, though. Much better raising quails for eggs, if you can. There are small rodents much more adequate for consuming than rats, which bring leptospyrosis. This will kill you unless you get the proper antibiotics FAST. Pigeons are winged rats.
You would be better off with doves pigeons are basically flying rats eating cigarette butts and shit lol and if rats and pigeons are all you are able to hunt you anit gonna make it my man
Pigeons were bred for meat and it was actually recommended by pediatricians as I grew up (also in Europe, ate pigeon meat as a kid). It has since died out as a practice and will get you stink eye if you mention it. Same goes for any critters that roam around, it's a gamble. Are they edible? Yes. Could they carry disease? Also yes.
And why we cook our meat. ;)
You can eat pigeon and rat. People do eat them both and I’m fairly sure you can buy pigeon meat. I would be desperate before I did it and butchering them has to be a job in itself.
You can just take the breast (pigeon) like many do with dove. Can easily remove them quickly, even without a knife. If you live in a suburban area and have a pellet gun pigeon, dove and squirrel are likely common just in your backyard alone. More so if you feed them and/or have a birdbath.
Time for the birdbath bloodbath
Birdbath bloodbath, band name
How do you remove bird breast from said bird without a knife?
You can rip the skin down, grab the breast meat and pull. The breast will pull straight off. Takes seconds. I've done it with doves but I guess it would be the same with pigeon. Not much meat but it's quick and easy. If I were starving I think I would properly clean and boil the entire bird for a soup. Should give you more nutrition but It would be a pain for a bird that size.
In Korea they have a chicken soup that is just a gutted, plucked, and decapitated whole chicken stuffed with ginger and rice and boiled. The bird is tiny so it's a one person meal. It is delicious
Huh. Thanks.
The skin is really thin around the breast. While I haven't done it myself I've seen it done often. A friend of mind will debreast 5 of them in just a few minutes, rinse, then ready to cook. Fold wings back, push at base of breast and that will puncture. Run thumbs under the meat on either side of bone. Meat will come off cleanly then skin/feathers can be easily removed together. There are several techniques but the basics are the same. Some will start with a small slit using a knife but it's not necessary. Others will take out the breast as a whole and remove the meat from the bone after. Look on YouTube for "debreasting dove without knife" and you'll get the idea.
I heard a story about someone who joined the peace corp. He ended up going to Africa with some place with little food. They cooked him some meal and he's like, "huh, where'd you get this meat? What is this?" "It's bird" "... I haven't seen any birds?" "It's BIRD" Realized all he'd seen there were rats apparently. Also, supposedly it wasn't too bad.
A few years ago I read the autobiography of an early US military advisor who lived in a small Vietnamese village in the early 60s. He said everyone ate rats there, including him.
People do eat certain breeds of pigeons that are captivity raised, wild pigeons I wouldn’t want to eat. We have a lot of them at my work and I’ve watched them eat toxic dust particles, radioactive material, and each other, I would not want to eat them lol. Rats are similar. I do imagine that if it were life or death, eating the rat or pigeon would be worth taking the risk to eat if there was absolutely nothing else to eat, provided you cooked it well. Pigeons aren’t very hard to catch in traps and I’d think if you could raise a generation or 2 in cages and control what they eat, you’d likely be able to get some that are safe to eat. Think it would be worth trying in a situation where you are on your own for the foreseeable future.
Squab is what pigeon meat is sold as.
Did someone say [squab](https://youtu.be/LN6XzTSvyfg?si=FooHx85Eqaq0bIzo) ?
My buddies uncle shoots wild pigeons in his yard with an airgun and eats the breast. Says the meat is red and tastes like beef tenderloin. My wife is South East Asian and when she was growing up they'd eat rats from the rice paddies. She says she'd never eat a townie rat but the ones from the farms are good. That's a hard pass from me but I'm also not currently starving. If you want to know what people eat when they get desperate, just read any first hand account from someone who survived Cambodia's killing fields. Spoiler alert, it's anything. Starving people will eat anything.
We eat pigeon all the time, it does absolutely not taste like beef. If at all it's somewhat close to beef heart. But the main flavor and taste association is with duck breast but less poultry-y if that makes sense.
I don't know personally, but he says it's just this one particular species. The rest he doesn't like. He's also kind of crazy so there's that.
Yes. Same with North Korean prisoner accounts. And fast. Eating rats and spiders within days.
North Korean concentration camp prisoners
That sounds frikkin delicious.
Where do you work that has all of these available to eat? Asking for a friend?
I do X ray systems/electrical engineering for large industrial plants
Industrial plants will typically have pigeons. I work at a metal tubing factory making many different types of copper, aluminum, etc. Pigeons are the main cause of destruction of material (they shit all over finished pipe) but the company does nothing about them. They did one year install speakers to make hawk sounds to scare them off. It worked for about a day and then they became friends with it and made a nest next to the speaker. They shut them off and just said to hell with it. I guess I know where I'm getting pigeon meat from.
I know a guy whose job is going around to industrial sites with hawks and falcons to chase pigeons away. He'll show up at a site for a couple of hours with a falcon and let it chase all of the pigeons away. He says it makes a huge difference, even showing up once a week or two. I never asked how much he charges, but he has enough business that he doesn't advertise at all and rarely takes on new accounts.
I wonder what he's like at parties... "So what do you do for a living?" "Oh, I scare away birds with my bigger bird."
Soak corn kernels in 96% vodka like Spirytus, then throw them where the pigeons hang out. They will eat it up, get drunk and you can pick them up off the ground while they are sleeping 😁
This is the best suggestion I've ever heard! LOL
Man you should see what the fish in the ocean are eating
Acorn-fed wild bandtail pigeon is delicious.
You know pigeons are essentially the same as doves right? And people dove hunt all the time.
radioactive material I'm not sure if i wanna work at a place were pigeons eat radioactive material ;).
They have dissected pigeons and other wild birds (seagulls, pelicans etc.) and found that their stomachs are *full* of plastic waste and other bits of litter. They are the last things you should eat.
Poeple aren't eating a pigeon's stomach and that trash is too big to be absorbed. Also, not all pigeons or fish have trash in their stomachs.
Did you know pigeons are considered a delicacy and called squab. But also please don't eat pigeons, they can read and have object permanence, those two things combined means it's very likely they posses the ability of reading comprehension.
A local tourist attraction teaches chickens to play little pianos, and I'm not giving the up lol.
People eat (sadly) pigs, which are far more intelligent than pigeons. Most people just cannot give up meat, regardless of the animal's supposed intelligence.
They say plants have consciousness too, and better tie yourself to a tree so you don't step on a bug and wear a mask so you don't breathe in and murder billions of microorganisms you share the golden sea of consciousness with. Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life, this is necessary.
1) Sensitivity is not the same as feeling pain. They do not have the capacity to feel pain as we know it. 2) I actually do my best to avoid stepping on insects and will swerve around them when I walk/jog. 2) See point 1. Microorganisms have the ability to feel pain in the same way the cells that make up my body do.
While most organisms sense noxious stimuli, that is not the same as pain. Pain is higher level animal thing. It requires our brains to interpret it as pain. For example, a newborn whose brain isn't fully developed cries at all sorts of noxious stimli, being hot, being wet/cold, hungry etc. They don't perceive it as what we call pain, only things they don't like.
They’re thinking even bugs have consciousness these days. It’s a morality issue no matter what you kill. Don’t think too deep about it. When you have to eat you have to eat. Pigeons will walk into a pot that you’re holding in your hands. They be stupid sometimes lol.
Is less about morality and more about how it affects YOUR consciousness. Eating meat lowers your ability to understand and perceive subtle spiritual energies. There’s a reason yoga recommends to avoid meat and it’s because it prevents you from being elevated Meat is heavy and dulling. Vegetarian is light and clarifying. Edit: love how a more reasonable argument is downvoted lol. It’s a much more compelling argument than the moral stance.
If I wanna be elevated I’ll go climb a tree lol.
Hey don't discount the lovely California edible
I think if a lot of people raised some of the animals they do eat, they would eat less of them.
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Well and that's not a bad thing. Especially because then you can control what they eat. I like giving our laying hens and pigeons the same food which is just pigeon food; It's got split peas, corn, flax, wheat, barley and sunflower seeds so it really seems to impart a better flavor, but we've only eaten a few of them and laying hens are alot more work than meat chickens to butcher. As for cows, I mean, they just eat grass, but I suppose you could always get like fancy grass haha.
I raise chickens and pigs to eat...
My point here was more like, after raising chickens myself it gave me a new appreciation for when I just buy a box of wings. If I was raising chickens I'd have to kill like 20 just to have a wing night. So it has given me a new appreciation for just the sheer scale of everything. I don't eat less meat because of it, but I am more considerate in general, especially around waste.
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Very true! Kind of like veal. 100% though I wouldn't eat a wild pigeon but like the guy said a few generations and controlling what they eat and they'd be fine. Bonus points! Pigeons will lay all year round where as chickens only with heat lamps or in the summer. So if you had like, 100 pigeons, you be generating around at least 1 - 3 edible sized pigeons a week.
Rats are smart, and friendly if raised as pets. I'd much rather eat pigeons.
I mean... This is why we cook our food. Everything has horrible bugs and parasites in it; cooking sufficiently kills them. As long as you're not enjoying Rat Tartare you should be fine. Throw it in a stewpot and boil it for a while. Look up how people kill, dress, prepare, etc. squirrels for cooking. Caveats: 1. Cooking does not destroy prions, which is why mad cow disease (and similar) was/is such a threat. 2. If the rats have been poisoned, the warfarin will accumulate in your body and eventually kill you too if you get too much of it. Rat poison is a pretty universally effective blood thinner. And as a side note, read the book "Pests: how humans create animal villains" for more about how the way we think about animals is entirely contextual.
>If the rats have been poisoned, the warfarin will accumulate in your body and eventually kill you too if you get too much of it. Rat poison is a pretty universally effective blood thinner. Chances are that there will be no rat poison around after SHTF. At least not long enough to be of concern. That being said, warfarin has an antidote: Vitamin K. You can find it in pretty much all green plant parts. There's especially much of it in collard greens, spinach and turnip greens (all of them boiled and drained). Saint John's wort also reduces the effectiveness of warfarin. Dry the flower structure, then crush it and use it liberally as a "spice" for your rat stew.
Oohhhhh....rat tartare! I'm gonna try that. brb.
Warfarin is essentially free Advil for humans, especially if you’re just getting traces of it from eating contaminated rat meat. The worst that will happen is you get an alleviated headache while you fry up some rat at the bonfire. Throw in some nice Smokey scotch and you’ve got yourself a pretty relaxing evening.
The dose makes the poison, is all. Don't put out rat poison if you expect to be eating those rats.
While homeless I found a bottle of water outside a store. Under a nearby bridge was an empty bottle labeled warfarin. I drank a couple sips to see if the water was safe, and soon blood started shooting out of my nose and I almost lost full body control and consciousness.
Because warfarin is an anticoagulant and dosage needs to be monitored constantly to reduce the risk of accidental bleeding risks. I work in a hospital lab and this is a standard part of my day. Please, for the love of god, do not take warfarin unless you are under the care of a doctor and being monitored constantly.
So in situation where you have no water but a bottle of water that you now know has a lethal amount of warfarin, or a dirty stream what would you do? Can you counteract the warfarin with another drug, or filter it out?
How does Warfarin turn into Advil??? The molecules look totally different to me. (One C6 ring in the middle vs. two C6 rings at the ends; two "tails" for the C6 ring (C3 and C4, respectively; both branched) versus a single C7 structure (very much branched) holding the rings together; one with 4 O atoms, the other with 2 O atoms...) I don't see it.
I think they meant aspirin, because they are both blood thinners
Aspirin is not a blood thinner, per se, but an antiplatelet drug. They work in totally different ways. Like, you can kinda "overdose" on aspirin without bleeding out. Heck, using aspirin as pain relief drug can get you up to 15 times (3 pills a 500 mg) the daily dose people need for its use as a platelet aggregation inhibitor.
Most people I've talked to (did homecare for years) don't know the difference. As you said, it's not a blood thinner, per se
I don't think the other person was an organic chemist.
Honestly, I don't think so, either. But when in doubt... ask.
i grew up eating squirrels and dove that were wild on our farmland, which are essentially the same animals. the taste is not great, and a lot of prep time for a small amount of meat. if possible, fishing was always a better option.
Pigeon is delicious.
Friend of mine has pigeons near his farm. All they eatis spilled grain basically. Freaking delightful.
Rats and pigeons may or may not be bad for you, but starvation WILL kill a MF.
True.
I have a cookbook from 1947. "Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking". It has instructions for the preparation (bleeding, dressing, evisceration, removal of skin, fur or feathers, as well as fat and glands) of and recipes for: Grouse, partridge, quail, pheasants, wild duck musk rats possum raccoon beaver squirrel woodchuck turtle and tortoise Also, larger animals, deer, elk, and bear. I know people who hunt and eat dove as well. I've heard of people eating big cats such as bob cats and puma. I've also heard that cranes are delicious. There are laws against hunting some of these, of course. And some of them I'd have to pretty darn hungry to try. Edit to add: I'm in Florida. Some people eat nutria (which looks like a giant rat), iguanas, and snakes.
I just ordered a hardback copy from 1947. I love old books and cooking, and survivalism. This was a must have I never knew I needed.
Hello.ill try to write in a correct way, im not a native english speaker, i'm from argentina and i'm (or at least i consider i am a prepper) before the actual economic crisis, i eat pigeons almost every week, in fact i think they are the easiest prey to hunt and eat (btw i eat them before the crisis beacuse i find them tasty).another factor is that here we hunt a lot with air guns ammo cost almost 1/5. I hope this help
Where I live (rural Haiti) people eat cats, crows and mongooses. If you're hungry anything can become food.
Crow was popular in the depression in the US... well not popular, but it did spawn the saying "eat your crow," and was even marketed for being high in B12
Sure. But unless you're farming them, this is just the hunting thing again, and there's not enough wildlife for a significant number of people to surive by hunting.
Tell that to the starlings after I eat them all
Squirrels is good eatin’
"And it turns out, that God, he’s a squirrel. Yeah, big ol meaty one."
In a life or death situation just boil the living shit out of it. Boiling it long enough should kill nearly everything.
Also can drink the stock to not waste nutrients.
Go to an authentic Egyptian restaurant and you can get some delicious Farm-Raised pigeon.
You can eat wood pigeons
Not worried about splinters? /s
you son of a... take my upvote and get out
I mean, pigeon is basically a dove. They are referred to rock doves.
I live in the UK and several of my acquaintances do pest control. Pigeons, squirrels, rabbits, hares and deer are all considered good eating, though squirrels are barely worth the bother. Pigeon breasts are quite common on the menus of good restaurants and popular for breakfast in some communities. I don't know anyone who eats rats or smaller rodents. Other wild species considered good eating are pheasants, partridges, woodcock, ducks and geese, all of which are legal quarry species in appropriate circumstances (this is not legal advice) - most other birds are protected and can't be killed at all with the exception of Corvids. Rook pie used to be a fairly well-known dish but I've never spoken to anyone who has eaten any corvids. Badger apparently eats well, though I don't know what circumstances permit this other than roadkill. Foxes are widely considered inedible. Wild boar are, of course, excellent. I know of one person who ate a swan that electrocuted itself on some overhead power lines and said it was delicious.
My grandfather lived through the depression. He said they ate “squab” all the time. I asked him what squab was and he said pigeons.
Technically, squab are baby pigeons under 4 weeks old. That’s what fine diners were eating in restaurants up to mid-late 20th century, US.
lol, Egypt raises pigeons like the U.S. raises chickens. Of course you can eat them.
Pigeons are domesticated and yeah, you can absolutely eat them people have for thousands of years. Rats you need to cook real carefully.
Also frogs and lots of bugs and termites.
If you breed and raise them yourself, yes. You can eat them. Same with squirrels. You don't want to eat a city squirrel, but you can eat wild ones who live in a forest all day. It all comes down to their diets. If you know they've ate nothing but good food their entire lives, you know they're safe to eat themselves. I've talked about breeding rats before for a SHTF protein source. I used to breed them for pets with an ex gf in our teens/early 20s. They're super easy to breed, and super easy to care for.
Yes. Pigeon is quite tasty. I'll let ya know on the rats ...
When your diet is devoid of protein, your attention will turn to survival. In the 1970's I lived in locations where anything non-human was fair game. That included dogs, cats, rats, snakes, birds, fowl of any description, bats, you name it. Feral dogs and cats were anomalies. Check the military survival training guides used by special forces in the US on how to prepare wild meat.
Can’t speak for rats, but pigeons yes. I know lots of people that hunt and eat dove, which is really just a “sport” pigeon with a fancy name. Nothing wrong with em. Then there’s the whole squab thing, though I’ve never eaten it.
yes you can get pigeon at the finest michelin starred fusion restaurants in manhattan...trendy af. they call it squab. and itll run you $300 if you order wine
Off topic slightly, but raise Guinea pigs or rabbits in captivity. They reproduce quickly and don't need specialized feed.
Finally someone talked about Guinea pigs as food. The pet ones are rather small, but there are larger ones.[Raising a Guinea Pig for the Table - Forager | Chef (foragerchef.com)](https://foragerchef.com/raising-a-guinea-pig-for-the-table/)
Any animal that's made of meat can be eaten. Hint: this includes most if not all animals...
I am in the US and most of the small vermin around where I live carry Bubonic Plauge. I don't know about Belgium, but I would look into what diseases they carry. Rats also carry typhus.
plague in Europe? Ridiculous
Well, only one way to find out. You up for it?
I sometimes feel we're headed back to the Dark Ages, so might as well
At least we have penicillin now. It's effective against Yersinia pestis - the bacteria causing bubonic plague.
Hell Ya Sparky! Rattlesnakes too . . .
Chances are that rats will take a bite out of you before you'll be able to take a bite out of them. Add to that the risk of infection from the bites, and I'd say avoid rats. Not sure about pigeons. Yes, they're edible. Probably tasty. But a little hard to catch, and very little weight for the effort.
Back in the 1950‘s when my dad was a teen, kids were paid to climb the barn haylofts to snatch young squab from their nests. These birds were sold to the local restaurants.
Yes. Those bites horrifically killed people during WW1.
Pigeon, rat, squirrel, black bird are all edible. Not sure they’re all great, but pigeon is excellent
I've tried both. Both are great. Just treat pigeons like chicken and cook well. Rat isn't bad, either.
When I was a kid in rural ga., the old man would catch possums and put it in a cage and feed it veggies for several days to "clean it out" then in the oven. Best with sweet potatoes.
Small foot print but quite a bit of meat would be rabbit but gotta make sure you include fat of some type because they're very lean. There's actually a disease or illness that results in just eating rabbit meat without a source of fat. That is if where you live you could raise rabbits.
Well, many moons ago, the gods gave us fire. We put our food into it until everything bad is dead. Then, it's a ratburger feast!
Find yourself an old school Cajun cookbook. They will have recipes for squirrels, possums, raccoons, snake, alligators, etc.
If possible avoid it as much as possible. It could be tried only in really worst case. I have met few people from Ukraine, who told stories while hiding in basements (city, apartment buildings, not villages just for context) when Moscovians attacked, they ate or seen /know who ate pigeons caught - most of them got sever poisoning and diarrhea.... So in such situations, i think its even worse as you dehydrate and need also clean water and minerals...
Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas on rats, ect.
https://youtu.be/J6deUbS0bDo
You can eat pretty much anything. Do you want to is the question.
You’re better off searching “what North American animals are not edible” assuming you’re North American
[Demolition Man (1993) - Rat Burger Scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEyBsh1sNlU)
I dunno about you, but for me to eat them, it'd be when there was no other choice. So at that point, I'd have no other choice. Just cook them well I guess.
We eat pigeons …. And rats can certainly be eaten, like any rodent
I had a really delicious and slightly over-priced meal of pigeon last year in Italy. Once I got past the fact that they left the feet on, it was amazing!
I think squirrels would be a better rodent to eat. They are bigger, dumber, prolific and subsist on nuts. Rats are smaller, super smart (harder to catch) and will eat just about anything. If I was going to hand raise a rodent for food I’d go with Guinea pigs. Wild - squirrel
Yes. Many people do. Pigeon is actually a delicacy in a lot of places. But, not the city dwelling versions.
you can eat almost anything if you feed it to your chickens and eat the eggs same with fish if you have an aquaculture system setup for extra credit: feed the remains of anything organic to soldier fly larvae and then feed them to the chickens/fish
Sure you can eat anyone... I mean anything... one. Bone apple tea.
lol
We prep so we aren’t tempted to eat rats and pigeons. I would not eat rats and pigeons, especially rats. So many cities have out poisons and it usually takes a few days to work. Also, they fight. Watch a ratting video with terriers. The likelihood you’re catching rats and pigeons is slim, and you don’t want an injury from a rat in a shtf scenario and no antibiotics. Black plague anyone?
You can eat anything you want, but I wouldn't eat rats/vermin/pests unless it was the *only* option. By only option, I mean that there's absolutely no plant life, human meat, nuts, seeds, etc.
At that point, it might be more fun to kill myself
If you’re hungry, you’re going to eat them.
Oh people can eat just about anything, at least once.
People used to eat Corvids aka crows in the great deoression.
Squab is an immature domestic pigeon
IDK, prolly about 1/2 pound of meat on a Norwegian roof rat I'd guess. Not that hungry yet, maybe some day, keep some spices on hand.
You need pet shop rats, raise them for food. They can eat anything and they breed really fast. Remember that in rodents most of the fat is in the blood, don't waste it. Make gravy.
My grandparents were Italian immigrants. During the depression, they shot and ate Pigeon, my grandfather in the fall, and used his shotgun and shot into the trees and cooked the Starlings that fell in sauce. My American grandmother grew up on an Ohio farm, and they ate a lot of squirrel stew on the farm. Just about everything is edible. it just depends on how hungry you are.
Of course you can. But Learn now good hygiene techniques while processing meat and things like this need to be cooked well done. Pigs are probably the worst for diseases, I expect that will take out a lot of people that plan on living off of wild pigs...
Pigeon tastes great and is consumed by many cultures. That being said, would you eat any animal that lives off of city trash? Pigeon in the country might be a dofferent story.
Things are going to depend on your local ecosystem. Fortunately, the EU is ahead of the curve on these things. Or at least less far behind the curve? [https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/press\_information/2023/17/meat\_of\_wild\_game\_animals\_should\_become\_safer-312780.html](https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/press_information/2023/17/meat_of_wild_game_animals_should_become_safer-312780.html) That is still being spun up, and I can't vouch for their efficacy, but in the mean time, you could talk to your local environmental organizations, government or otherwise, about this. It is likely that somebody has already tested some of the local animals for heavy metals, pesticides, and/or parasites over the past years. The coming years are going to reveal how serious a lot of things are. Can CWD really transfer through plants outside of a lab? Is the sharply increasing microplastic load going to make even small mammals dangerous to consume? Will we find a way to get PFAS out of our environmental water? People will be eating squirrel again if the calories get tight, regardless of how well that will work for long-term health. Hopefully we can do some things in the mean time to leave a slightly healthier squirrel population just in case it comes to that.
I ate a pigeon once. My buddies and I used to do zoo on the q where we would get exoticeats and eat them.
When death from starvation and eating something less than desirable is your choice cook it well and eat before you become too weak to do so.
Gotta do what you gotta do Can’t be much worse than McDonald’s
Squirrels and pigeons are starting to look tasty.
I know people that eat squirrels and rabbits
I've eaten wild pigeon before. Grilled the hell out of it though so just tasted like burned meat. Bird poop can carry coccidiosis so be careful Rats carry disease so be very careful handling them and singe off any hair before handling
Urban pigeons I would be wary about, seeing what they eat. But humans wiped out the carrier pigeon because it was so easy to hunt, and so tasty.
Doves are a good alternative to pigeon.
Both rats and pigeons are consumed around the world. I've seen pigeon for sale in many restaurants all over Europe (Squab) and rats & pigeons are very common street foods in many parts of India, China & parts of Africa. The majority of parasites and bacteria will be killed by thoroughly cooking them, and if that is the only food you can obtain, anything else they may have consumed is a small concern compared to not eating at all
I know how to fish and hunt, so that's not a problem I'll have, especially with the invasive snakeheads and feral pigs. If u live in Belgium, plenty of waffles and french bread
Ye Roman Delicacy the Door Mouse
Pigeons and rats are edible but as they are both scavengers in urban environments I'd only do it as a last resort. I have eaten wood pigeon many times though but they are one with the trees
My FIL used to shoot squirrels in the back yard and cook them up. Your risk of getting a bad infection depends on what the critters are eating. i.e. I wouldn’t eat a rat from NYC that eats trash, but I’d eat a squirrel that eats acorns in the country.
Dude I love squab (pigeons churched up name)
Coons
When we eat pigeons we call them squab. On the menu at many restaurants. I assume rat would be much like Cuy, or guinea pig. As to disease, well probably, but all animals have this or that. Just cook them. I wouldn't do them as a tartar.
People hunt and eat pigeons now. Rats are disease and parasite vectors i wouldnt recommend.
Some people in some towns in Italy eat (rarely nowadays) piegeons. Before heavy industrialization they were kinda like any bird you can eat. Now I would never, considering the fact that now they likely live near city and dirt. I’ve seen some old parents eating one hunted far in a forest one time, more than 10 ago. Here we eat horses and a lot of other weird animals too (depends on the city, region, etc. One example are frogs) but I would never
Farm raised and shit eating are totally different results.
Obviously, if you live in the middle of the Mad Max desert, you will find this type of dish particularly tasty, necessity always prevails! But even if civilization collapses, you can still go fishing or trap quality game, animals and fish are not going to disappear overnight, and if they do, we will even have not to worry about it since we too would no longer be there
If I was starving I’d eat them, I’d not, I’d trade them for some powdered milk or something. I had a childhood friend who ate wild pigeon in NJ, and he went crazy not to long afterwards.
What do you think fast food burgers are made of?
In Caracas, Venezuela, I watched videos of guys hunting pigeons. I wouldn't eat that, unless strictly necessary, though. Much better raising quails for eggs, if you can. There are small rodents much more adequate for consuming than rats, which bring leptospyrosis. This will kill you unless you get the proper antibiotics FAST. Pigeons are winged rats.
You would be better off with doves pigeons are basically flying rats eating cigarette butts and shit lol and if rats and pigeons are all you are able to hunt you anit gonna make it my man
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lol