BN-05 · In research. Waitlist open.

Bird N3rdz

Name: Bird N3rdz Pigeon Block
Brand: Bird N3rdz

Pigeon Block

Every pickstone in the loft is a mixture of clay, grit and shell. Not one of them tells you the calcium to phosphorus ratio it delivers. This one does, because that ratio is the reason the stone is in the loft at all.

Join the waitlist See the demand curve

Racing and breeding lofts. No stick, no cage mount. A pigeon pecks, so the stone sits where a stone belongs.

Concept geometry, not a photograph. Free standing rather than mounted, because a pigeon works a stone from above with the beak rather than gripping it with a foot.

The demand

A breeding hen has no off season.

A hen lays two eggs every ten to fourteen days, and eggshell is very close to pure calcium carbonate. Then both parents produce crop milk for the squabs. The draw does not arrive once and end. It repeats, and it lands on both birds. Eggshell calcium alone accounts for roughly 0.34% of dietary dry matter across a twelve-day cycle, on top of maintenance, before crop milk is counted at all. That figure is calculated from assumed egg and shell masses, not measured in loft, and should be read that way.

Days 0 to 4
Shell formation, two eggs

Days 5 to 22
Incubation, reserves rebuild

Hatch onward
Crop milk, both parents

then it repeats

Cycle timings are typical rather than fixed and vary by pair, season and loft management.

01 / The diet

Grain runs the wrong way

Seed and grain mixes are phosphorus rich and calcium poor, and a grain only ration does not meet mineral requirement. That is the same grain based imbalance that our parrot line is built around, arriving through a different feeding system.

02 / The shell

Two eggs, then two more

Eggshell is almost entirely calcium carbonate, and the hen builds it from whatever is available at the time. On a ten to fourteen day cycle, calcium has to be permanently available rather than periodically offered.

03 / The crop milk

Both parents pay

Pigeons and doves are unusual in producing crop milk, and both cock and hen produce it. So the nutritional load of raising squabs does not fall on the hen alone, which is why a stone belongs in the nest compartment and not only in the loft section.

The gap

Read the label on the stone you use now.

The most widely used picking stone in the world is sold in over forty countries to more than a quarter of a million fanciers. Its stated composition is clay, seaweed, magnesium, grit, redstone, oyster shell, stomach grit and charcoal. That is a list of ingredients. It is not a formulation, and it does not tell you what ratio of calcium to phosphorus the bird actually receives.

	Conventional pickstone	Bird N3rdz Pigeon Block
Calcium to phosphorus	Not stated	Stated, and formulated for intake tolerance
Phosphorus source	Incidental to the mixture	Deliberate and measured
Selenium	Not stated	Stated level
Certificate of analysis	Not published	Per production run
Heavy metal screening	Not published	Hard gate before release
Format	Free choice stone	Free choice stone

The last row matters. We are not asking anyone to change how they keep pigeons. The stone goes where a stone already goes, and the bird uses it the way it already does. Only the chemistry inside it is different.

Inside it

What earns a place, and what does not.

A stone the bird paces itself against can carry baseline mineral status. It cannot carry an acute intervention, because it is neither dose controlled nor time controlled. That single constraint decides everything in the formula.

Formulated to 3:1. That is wider than the arithmetic optimum for this species, which falls near 2.5:1, and we took the more conservative number deliberately: the 2.5:1 window does not open until roughly 6% of intake, which would leave a resting bird in the same loft below range. The bird that eats least should not carry the cost of an assumption we have not tested. The target is provisional while the register item on the pigeon band stays open.

Earns its place

Selenium, with the limits stated

Flight raises metabolic and oxygen demand sharply, that generates reactive oxygen species, and selenium is the active component of glutathione peroxidase. Dietary selenium has been studied in racing pigeons specifically rather than extrapolated from poultry.

And the honest part. In that work the muscle enzyme markers, ALP, AST, ALT, CK and LDH, did not change significantly. So the defensible claim is antioxidant status, not proven reduction in muscle damage, and we will not print the second one.

Earns its place

Magnesium, zinc, manganese, iodine

Magnesium is a cofactor in ATP dependent reactions and sits naturally in a mineral matrix. Zinc is present in tissue and keratin chemistry, manganese in bone and cartilage chemistry, and iodine in thyroid chemistry; inclusions are stated as concentrations, not as animal outcomes.

These are chronic status minerals. They belong in something the bird visits when it feels the need, which is exactly what a pickstone is.

What is not in it

Four things we left out on purpose.

Because a free choice stone is the wrong vehicle for them

Sodium. Pigeons are salt sensitive, and a free choice article removes the dose control that makes sodium safe. Electrolyte replacement belongs in the water after a race, where the fancier decides the dose and the timing.

Vitamin E. It is fat soluble and oxidizes in a dry mineral matrix. This is a real limitation and worth naming, because selenium and vitamin E work as a pair and this stone can only carry one half of it.

Vitamin D3. Minerals catalyze the breakdown of fat soluble vitamins, so a D3 figure printed on a mineral article is largely gone before the bird pecks it. Loft birds with access to unfiltered daylight also make their own, through a reaction that shuts itself off and cannot overdose them.

Glucose, probiotics, carnitine and amino acids. All of them are timing dependent, and a stone has no timing. They belong in a post race water product, and that is a different thing we may build later rather than a claim we will bolt onto this one.

Development status

We publish the open questions too.

This is a research program, not a finished shelf product. Items stay flagged as open until a certificate of analysis or bench data closes them, and nothing goes on sale while a safety item is still open.

ClosedGrain based rations verified as calcium poor and phosphorus rich against published nutrition sources.

ClosedSelenium mechanism and the absence of a significant muscle enzyme effect both verified in racing pigeon literature.

OpenTarget calcium to phosphorus band for racing and breeding pigeons. A provisional working target of 3:1 is derived and stated above; the item stays open pending veterinary input rather than being carried across from psittacines.

OpenSelenium inclusion level against published tolerance, given the narrow margin and the free choice format.

OpenHeavy metal screening for lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury on every mineral input. Hard quality gate.

OpenStone hardness and phosphate requirement, coupled. Binder level set by hardness testing changes the calcium load and therefore the phosphate needed; the two cannot be closed independently. Calcium sulfate is 27.6% calcium with no phosphorus, so at 20% inclusion it contributes 5.52 percentage points of structural calcium the formulation must then offset.

OpenCrop milk calcium draw, currently unquantified. We could not find a figure we were willing to cite, so the cyclical peak stated above is an underestimate.

OpenRacing organization compliance review, so the product is provably clean for tested lofts.

OpenFeed registration and label format review before any unit is offered for sale.

Get the first run

Lofts first, retail later.

The first production run goes to working lofts rather than to shelves. Join the list and you get told when it opens, what the analysis showed, and what was still open on the register the day it shipped.

Bird N3rdz beta program

We can only keep so many birds at home and in the lab, and one flock only generates so much data. The beta program extends the testing to your loft.

Selected testers receive products free of charge to trial, a discount code, and coverage of their birds alongside ours across the Bird N3rdz channels.

Registering sends you one email covering the testing rules, the format we need feedback in, and a few questions about your birds.

Your details are used for beta testing and feedback only. We do not sell them and we do not share them.

Part of a platform

One correction, many species

The same calcium system runs through companion parrot blocks, a loft pickstone for racing pigeons, a two fraction poultry amendment for small flocks, a reptile dusting powder and an aqua remineralizer. Built for small keepers, not large commercial herds. The species change, the husbandry changes, the delivery format changes, and the underlying defect does not.

See the parrot line See the poultry line