Dovecote
A dovecote is the raising and breeding of domestic pigeons by protecting them from the weather and predators. After the construction dovecotes are also referred to as built-in shock, Bodenschag, Garden shock or blow open. Special forms free-standing dovecotes are dovecotes and dovecotes. Pigeons and doves boxes caves also served to accommodate pigeons. Because of inadequate protection, and poor hygienic conditions, but they are hardly used.
In some cities are dovecotes of population control feral pigeons. The different usage patterns of the pigeon as an exhibition pigeon, pigeon, racing pigeon flight or meat pigeon pose different conditions in layout and furnishings of the blow.
Dovecotes in Germany
Since the acquisition of a dovecote often beyond the financial capabilities of a hobby breeder pigeons are frequently found together several breeders and found a blow Community, economically similar to a stables, where several people share a dovecote and accommodate their pigeons there.
Meanwhile, domestic pigeons in Germany are held almost exclusively for breeding or for the pigeon sport as have settled in the cities of huge populations of feral pigeons. Use as a meat supplier was forgotten; use as a fertilizer supplier has been hampered by regulations: The feces of feral pigeons is considered waste.
The " pigeons plagues " in the cities brought the well-tried system of dovecotes again this week. Thus reduced, for example, the city Basel their pigeon population of about 20,000 animals by killing thousands of animals and by an awareness campaign against feeding of pigeons by half, while at the same time built dovecotes, to where brood controlled 500 animals and stay. An increase of this small population is reduced by replacing the eggs to eggs and dummies. Until a few decades ago in Germany the free flight attitude of pigeons in rural areas was widespread.
History and distribution of dovecotes
Already in ancient Egyptian times the domesticated form of the rock dove was kept in a purpose-built lofts. Pigeon breeding was also known for Assyrians, Phoenicians, and in ancient Greece. The attitude of the pigeons was spread by the Romans in Central Europe and in North Africa. The Roman columbarium is the first recorded design of a pigeon. Dovecotes were used primarily for the production of valuable fertilizer, which was also exported and then move to the food production and breeding of pigeons.
In the European Middle Ages were dovecotes large detached building on the site of monasteries or mansions. Your operation was lucrative, but required the approval of the king. Pigeon breeding was an enjoyable affair of the nobility. Cotes was integrated as in the Villa Barbaro in Veneto as pavilions in the park design. This class privilege was abolished only with the French Revolution, and pigeons were especially in winter for the population, the only alternative to dried meat.
British Isles
In the Middle Ages only landowners could keep the birds so that the remaining medieval dovecotes with mansions, former convents and parish houses are connected. When about 1600 relaxed the legal situation, also had many farmers dovecotes.
Many dovecotes ( dovecotes ) have survived the centuries because they are considered as the building of particular historical or architectural interest. For the year 1126 the oldest preserved dovecote in Rochester Castle is handed down. From 1326 is in the English town of Garway in Herefordshire of the oldest free-standing dovecote occupied. The Scottish dovecote probably earliest surviving dated on his door inscription 1576. He stands at Mertoun House in St Boswells ( Scottish Borders ).
In the British Isles partially intricately designed dovecotes were in the 17th century about 26,000, mostly counted in monastery gardens and parks of the aristocracy. Most of these dovecotes, which offered a high round towers an eye-catcher, could accommodate 200 to 500 pairs. The dovecote of the village of Culham in Oxfordshire reached the dimension of a small house and offered nesting boxes for birds 3000. From the end of the 18th century, the Pigeon breeding was in the UK back significantly smaller dovecotes were set up only on the roofs of existing buildings. Since the beginning of the 20th century some of the remaining buildings by the National Trust or the governmental organization English Heritage are maintained as monuments and are open to the inspection.
France
In France, dovecotes ( Pigeonniers or colombiers ) were spread throughout the country, where they were common in wheat -growing areas than on the barren and rocky soils, for example, large parts of Brittany, Provence or the Cevennes. End of the 17th century, it should have been 42,000. From the year 1261 there is a message that the royal court daily devoured 400 pigeons and the royal household of the queen as many.
Dating of dovecotes are difficult as it is functional buildings that barely style historical changes (modes) are subjected; therefore, the designs are often repetitive. Most surviving buildings are attributed mostly to the 17th and 18th centuries, so the pre-revolutionary era. While it is assumed that in the early and high Middle Ages, everyone had the right to build a dovecote and operate, there are restrictions in 1312 first in favor of the feudal lords who were observed more and more in the following years. It was only in 1789 that legal equality was restored by appropriate laws and decrees of the National Assembly.
Dovecotes are available at all sorts of places: Most of them belonged to a - in the French Revolution often destroyed - an aristocratic residence; others have been preserved on feudal estates; still others are in the midst of smaller communities and form an essay above doorways etc.. At the former priory of Saint -Nicolas Civray there is even a dovecote on the south side of the Chorjochs the main apse. From a height of about 400 meters above sea level. inst it occur any more.
Egypt and Nubia
From the Nile Delta, there was the Nile to Nubia in ancient times on the flooded annually fields on the banks of the Nile cereal and vegetable cultivation. In addition to natural fertilization with Nile mud dove's dung was used. The arrival caused by rains in Ethiopia Nile flood was further reported by pigeons. From the time of Roman rule, some lofts have been preserved in Lower Egypt. Excavations that were made in the 1920s and 1930s in Karanis southwest of Cairo, show five largely preserved dovecotes in the midst of the urban settlement. The dovecotes were built of adobes, they are mostly square in plan view, partially tower high and several feet wide. Since most of these earthen buildings were built on the roofs of houses and are thus inevitably collapsed first, it is assumed that a once much higher number. The walls of the freestanding buildings were at the base up to 1.5 meters thick, the interior was reached in three of the towers obtained only by a ladder to the only three meters higher door. The size of the dovecotes suggests the pigeon crap out as a commodity. In the archaeological layer of the 4th and 5th century, found the dovecotes generally on the housetops. Dovecotes were built in Roman times even at farms outside the cities, they were part of the building or were free, often in the vicinity of vineyards.
In papyrus of the 2nd century BC, the methods of pigeon breeding are described and made size information on lofts. With the pasted as nesting sites in the walls of clay pipes it is the same rectangular box- shaped construction, which is still to be found in the lower reaches of the Nile. There are extremely ornate dovecotes, whose roof form by rows inward rising turrets (Italian: Cupola ) is divided. In another construction, which is to see in Egypt and further south in the Nubian part of Sudan in villages, the clay pipes are installed with the opening inward circular towers of mud brick. When ingress openings some open tubes serve in the wall or it can be put together to form a triangle of bricks pitted. The flat end of the roof consists of a layer Asthölzer and-daub. Where pigeons are kept as producers of fertilizers in the first place, these towers are located on the outside at the top of one or two circumferential rows of branches that protrude from the wall as seating. On a graded mesh with another row below the pigeon droppings collected. The part of the landscape contributing dovecotes are in Egypt part of the national popular culture.
A similar construction with conical tower structures and round Lehmziegeldach found throughout North Africa; Pigeons breeding on a local scale is recommended as a cost- meat production for the rural population.
Large pigeon towers in the center nordsudanesischer villages that were formerly operated jointly, are often no longer maintained. But are smaller, two to three meters high towers, the individual families belong, distributed to the perimeter of the homesteads. Pigeon meat for Muslims has generally a high priority, it is tahir ( "pure" ). In Islamic northern Sudan dovecotes are built because of the cultural significance of birds. Pigeons related to women, fertility and purity, determine all the concept of sharaf ( "honor" ). The most important part of the multi-day marriage ceremony is the pigeons dance listed by the bride before her future husband.
Cycladic island of Tinos
As on other Greek islands, the pigeons breeding on the island of Tinos was probably introduced in the Greco- Roman period and later abandoned. Dovecotes were built only after the conquest by the Venetian Republic. The right to breed pigeons and construction of lofts was limited as elsewhere in Europe on nobles and the ruling class. On Tinos were the Venetians. It was only during the Turkish period (1715-1821) there was a general right to pigeon breeding. Few dovecotes were built on rooftops, most were released in field borders. From the 18th century, rectangular, two- to three -story buildings were built that compete for the even more beautiful ornamental facade design at the top. They have remained as attractions of the island and get in their function. On the ground floor there is a place for devices that nesting sites are reached by a ladder and a hole in the ground. The assembled with little clay as mortar stone walls have below a thickness of about 80 centimeters, are smaller on the top and end in small corner turrets. The towers can accommodate usually 200, maximum 500 pigeons.
Southwest Asia
The British historian Thomas Herbert talked 1629-1631 in the Persian Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid dynasty and reported on the use of pigeon droppings as fertilizer. A little later, from 1666, the French traveler Jean Chardin lived for several years in the city, where he saw over 1000 pigeon towers in the area. At the beginning of the 18th century are said to have 3000 towers, about 100 are received in the province of Isfahan. They are called Farsi Borj -e- Kabutar ( " doves castle " ) or generalized Kabutar Khaneh ( " dovecote "). There are two basic types: truncated pyramids and round towers with flat roofs, which also happen to stepwise upward tapering towers. The diameter can be 15 meters, 10 to 20 meters in height. The walls are built of adobe and partly covered with lime plaster. With the seizure of power by Shah Abbas the late 16th century Isfahan reached a commercial peak. From Zayandeh River channels were derived, conducted the water only by water basins in urban parks and then for irrigation on the outlying fields. For the less fertile soils of these fields large amounts of fertilizer were needed. Pigeon droppings was also used as a mordant in the leather industry and for the manufacture of gunpowder. The sale of pigeon fertilizer was, although the Shah introduced a tax on their property into a profitable business, which more dovecotes were built. Each pigeon took about 5,000 pigeons.
Another region with special Taubennistplätzen is Central Anatolia. In the bizarre rock formations (Turkish: Peribacalari ) of soft tuff in the landscape of Cappadocia were easy to form cavities that have been inhabited for centuries by people and have served in the vicinity of settlements as cattle shelters and pigeons accommodation. Pigeons populated higher ground rock holes where they were safe and where the pigeon could be collected as fertilizer for vegetable growing and viticulture. Here, as in Isfahan the importance of pigeons fertilizer for watermelon cultivation is highlighted. In the porous volcanic rock caves also for pigeons were rock faces artificially created and carved in the interior wall niches as nesting sites. From a distance, the painted facades of these pigeons caves can be seen, some dating from the 18th century, mostly from the 19th to the early 20th century.
The Turkish town Gesi located 20 kilometers north of Kayseri in a lush river valley. Near the surrounding villages there are in groups standing together, a total of about 1,000 chimney-like stone towers with a sloping, partially getreppten top end. The basic plan can be square, rectangular or round. They form the aboveground part and the entrance to the below- ground doves room, which was carved out of the tufa and measures about five feet in the plane and four meters in height. On the walls are hundreds of nesting sites are deepened. As access to the room to collect the pigeon droppings, is an oblique tunnel passage which is closed by a wooden door. The two-to six-meter- high stone towers form protection from wild animals, storms and snow-free entrance in the winter. Since the mid-20th century, the pigeon breeding has declined, the introduction of artificial fertilizers on fields, modern chicken farms and the rural exodus of the population are reasons for this.