Racing pigeons are kept and trained for competitive long-distance racing, raising welfare questions about the losses, injuries, and training pressures involved in the sport.
Pigeon racing presents welfare questions that are difficult to resolve because the birds appear to have strong homing motivation and many return from races without obvious distress. The welfare concerns are primarily at the margins: birds lost in races that die at sea or from exhaustion, birds experiencing navigational failure in poor conditions, training pressures applied to immature birds, and the fate of birds that do not perform competitively and are culled or rehomed. The natural homing drive means racing may engage rather than frustrate the birds' behavioural motivation, but this does not resolve questions about the acceptability of high loss rates or the disposal of retired birds. Welfare-informed racing culture would involve lower loss rate acceptance, care standards for all birds regardless of performance, and transparency about race-related mortality.