Pigeons in MyPigeons
How a pigeon record gets created, why the ring number is unique inside one federation, how the ownership-conflict triangle appears on club races, and how administrators resolve conflicts on the profile or in bulk from the Admin Panel.
Good to know before you start
- There is only one record per pigeon per federation. If two clubs both basket the same pigeon, both arrivals link to the same record.
- Whoever owned the pigeon the first time MyPigeons saw it becomes the owner on the record. There is no "second create" event later. Two situations break that initial assumption:
- Reported arrivals (where the fancier reports their own pigeon from a phone or home computer) and community lofts are exempt - no triangle is shown for those.
Pigeon identity
Every pigeon in MyPigeons is identified by its full ring number - country, year of birth, organisation code, and the ring number itself - for example SK-2022-01002-783. The combination of these four parts is unique inside one federation: the same ring number cannot exist twice, no matter how the record was created.
A pigeon record stores more than just the ring. It also keeps the sex, colour, name, photo, parents, pedigree, prizes, distances, and - most importantly for the rest of this page - the current owner (a fancier in the federation database).
There is only one record per pigeon per federation. If two clubs both basket the same pigeon, both arrivals link to the same record.
How a pigeon record is created
A pigeon record is never created on its own. It appears the first time anybody types or imports the ring number into MyPigeons. There are four usual paths.
From pigeon listing
When a fancier or administrator adds a pigeon to the pigeon listing for the new season - either manually or by importing the ETS chip-pairing file - the system stores the ring number against the chosen fancier. If this is the first time MyPigeons has seen the ring, a new pigeon record is created with that fancier as the owner.
How the mistake happens: the user types or imports a wrong ring number and creates a pigeon under their own loft by accident. Even after the entry is removed from the listing, the pigeon record and its owner stay in the database.
From the fancier's My Pigeons section
In the My Pigeons section every fancier can add a pigeon to their own loft on their own - no administrator required. The first time a ring is saved there, a new pigeon record is created and the fancier becomes the owner.
How the mistake happens: the fancier mistypes the ring or picks the wrong year and creates a pigeon under their name that should belong to someone else. Removing that pigeon from their loft does not delete the pigeon record.
From manual race entry
When an administrator types arrivals directly into a race result - the classic LED basketing/arrivals form - and the typed ring number does not exist yet, the system creates the pigeon record on the fly and assigns it to the fancier who is being basketed. This is the fastest way for clubs that do not maintain pigeon listings.
How the mistake happens: the administrator typos a digit of the ring or assigns the arrival to the wrong fancier. A pigeon record is born under the wrong loft; deleting that arrival later does not remove the pigeon record itself.
From BENZING Live import
When arrivals are pulled from a BENZING Live device, every basketed pigeon comes in with a ring number and a fancier ID. Unknown rings are inserted as new pigeon records and assigned to that fancier automatically. No human types anything - the import does it.
How the mistake happens: the fancier loads the wrong pigeon into their ETS clock at home. That ring travels through to MyPigeons under their fancier ID, and even removing it from their clock later does not undo the record in the database.
In all four paths, the moment the ring is saved for the first time, the owner is set. Removing the entry later - whether from the listing, the fancier's My Pigeons loft, a single race, or even the ETS device - does not delete the pigeon record and does not change its owner. The only way to correct ownership is the transfer described further down this page.
Why this matters: the owner sticks
Whoever owned the pigeon the first time MyPigeons saw it becomes the owner on the record. There is no "second create" event later. Two situations break that initial assumption:
- A typo at first basketing or first listing - the ring went under the wrong fancier and stayed there.
- A genuine ownership change - the pigeon was sold, gifted, or moved to a different loft in a later season, but nobody told MyPigeons.
In both cases the pigeon record now points at one fancier while the club paperwork (or the live basketing) lists a different one. The result is an ownership conflict.
Pigeon sex
The same first-creation rule applies to the pigeon's sex. Whichever sex was entered the first time the ring was saved - in the listing, in a manual arrival, or in a BENZING Live import - is stored on the pigeon record. From then on the sex shows up on the profile, in pigeon competitions, and on the pedigree.
On top of the value on the pigeon record, MyPigeons also stores the sex on every single arrival. Each arrival keeps its own cock-or-hen flag - whatever was typed at basketing for that race - even if the value on the profile changes later. That is why a pigeon's past races can show one sex while the profile shows another.
Two modes: synchronise or lock
Each fancier has a setting that controls how the sex on their pigeons' profiles behaves. It lives on the fancier's settings page, in the Pigeon gender synchronization card.
- Synchronise pigeon profile gender based on last arrival (default) - whenever a pigeon's profile is refreshed, MyPigeons looks at the most recent arrival for that pigeon and copies that arrival's sex onto the profile. So if the last race had the pigeon listed as a cock but the profile said hen, the next profile refresh quietly updates the profile to cock. Useful for fanciers who let basketing be the source of truth and would rather not maintain the profile by hand.
- Lock pigeon gender based on manual setting - the profile value is the source of truth. New arrivals do not change it; only an explicit edit on the pigeon profile (by the owner or an administrator) does. Useful for breeders who maintain the loft database carefully and do not want a clerical typo at basketing to overwrite a known sex.
Why sex matters for results
Sex-based competitions - performance cock, performance hen, ace cock, ace hen, and similar splits - rank pigeons by the sex stored on each arrival, not the one currently on the profile. That is intentional: the result of a race that already happened should not change because someone edited a profile a year later.
There are two consequences:
- Changing the sex on a pigeon profile does not rewrite the sex on past arrivals. Last season's standings stay as they were, even if you fix a wrong sex today.
- To push a corrected sex into the standings of competitions that have already been calculated, those competitions need to be recalculated. After the recalculation, the new sex - read from the (now corrected) arrivals - is used.
Ownership conflict in club race results
When a club race is calculated and a pigeon is basketed under a fancier who is not its current owner, MyPigeons flags it in the by-pigeon results view. A small warning triangle appears next to the fancier name; the tooltip reads Pigeon ownership conflict.
The triangle does not change the result - the prize, the speed, and the rank are all calculated normally. It is a hint that the pigeon record and the basketing entry disagree about who the pigeon belongs to, and someone with admin rights should reconcile that before season statistics roll up.
Reported arrivals (where the fancier reports their own pigeon from a phone or home computer) and community lofts are exempt - no triangle is shown for those.
Why this matters for pigeon competitions
Pigeon-level competitions - Performance pigeon, Ace pigeon, district point pigeon, season-long pigeon championships - rank pigeons inside one organisation. The platform decides which organisation a pigeon belongs to by looking at the owner on the pigeon record, not at who basketed it in any one race.
When the owner on the record is wrong, the pigeon scores under the wrong organisation. It shows up in the standings of the federation, district, or club its registered owner belongs to - which may be the wrong one - and it is missing from the standings everyone in the actual club expects to see it in. The pigeon still flies and still earns the prize in each individual race; only the season-long pigeon tables go to the wrong place.
That is why reconciling the owner is worth the effort: fixing it once on the pigeon profile (or in bulk through the Admin Panel) puts the pigeon back in every standings table it should be in, for the whole season.
How to fix the conflict
There are two ways to reconcile the record with the actual basketing, depending on which side is wrong.
Open the pigeon profile
Click the ring number in the results table - it links to the pigeon profile. The Owner field is on the main card next to the picture; the small transfer icon next to the owner name lets administrators move the pigeon to a different fancier in one click. After saving, the triangle disappears from this race and from every other race that pigeon flies.
Fix the arrival on the import page
If the pigeon profile is correct and the mistake is in the race itself - someone typed the wrong ring or assigned the arrival to the wrong fancier - open the race's data import page and correct that single arrival. Either replace the ring with the one that was actually clocked, or move the arrival under the right fancier. The pigeon record stays untouched, and the triangle disappears once the calculation is rerun.
Deleting the pigeon does not fix the conflict
A common mistake is to open the previous owner's loft, find the pigeon, and delete it - hoping the conflict will go away. It will not. Deletion only marks the pigeon as removed from that loft; the owner field on the pigeon record stays exactly the same, so the triangle keeps showing on every race that pigeon flies. The only thing that resolves the conflict is the ownership transfer described above.
Moving all pigeons of one fancier
When an entire loft changes hands - someone retires and passes their birds to a relative or clubmate - moving pigeons one by one through their profiles is tedious. The Admin Panel has a dedicated tool for the bulk case.
Go to Admin Panel and find the Move pigeons to new fancier card. Pick the current owner, pick the new owner, and press Move all pigeons. Every pigeon currently registered to the old fancier is reassigned to the new one. Past race results are not rewritten - they still record who basketed the pigeon at the time - but new conflicts stop appearing because the pigeon record now matches future basketings.
This tool is intended for full transfers. For a one-off pigeon, use the transfer icon on the pigeon profile instead.
Who can do what
- Creating a pigeon record happens implicitly whenever a listing is saved, an arrival is typed, or a BENZING Live import runs - no extra permission is required beyond the right to do those actions in the first place.
- Changing the owner on a pigeon profile is open to every administrator on the platform - any local administrator (club, district, or country) can open any pigeon's profile and transfer it, regardless of which organisation the current or new owner belongs to.
- The bulk Move all pigeons tool is available to organisation administrators (club, district, or country level) for the fanciers inside their organisation.
