Tuesday, June 16, 2015, the Minnesota Board of Animal had a meeting and decided to include the racing of pigeons in the ban set in place on May 15, 2015. To see the actual wording go to: https://www.bah.state.mn.us/exhibitions#poultry
The addendum to the original ruling reads as follows:
The directive also includes events involving pigeons, including but not limited to: racing homer pigeon events, flying rollers/tumblers, any release of pigeons and any performance birds for competition.
They told me that due to the increasing number of cases of Avian Influenza they were including pigeons in the original order today. They do not want any co-mingling of pigeons from other lofts. It did not help our situation that the other group in town released pigeons last weekend in a state prohibiting their release when they had permission in the neighboring state. I do not think there has ever been a ban that lasted more than 1 year. Please obey this order if you want to be able to race again. I have spent a lot of hours talking with our neighboring states and these state veterinarians are not against us. If however you try to get around this, you are likely to get caught and the result will be stiff penalties and more regulation making it more difficult if not impossible to race pigeons in the future.
Dr. Philip Nelson