Elk Grove Students Are Training the Next Generation of Racing Pigeon Champions

It’s not every day you walk into a barn and find middle schoolers carefully vaccinating Olympic-level athletes. But that’s exactly what’s happening at Katherine L. Albiani Middle School in Elk Grove, where students are learning animal husbandry, genetics, and competitive spirit — all while caring for some surprisingly elite racing pigeons.

The pigeons arrive each January as part of an agriculture elective, and they’re no ordinary birds. These are members of the Fort Sutter Racing Pigeon Club, overseen by agriculture teacher Jim Looper, who also serves as the club’s president. The birds will eventually compete in the Camellia City Combine, racing courses across the eastern Sierra with release points starting in Sparks, Nevada and extending further east by about 50 miles each week. Some of these birds carry four-figure price tags — a detail that surprises most people who don’t work in the pigeon world.

For seventh-graders Emily Dvorak and Lily Wiechert, and eighth-grader Kathryn Deem, the program started as a family recommendation but evolved into genuine passion. Dvorak wanted hands-on animal experience after spending time on a farm with her grandmother. Wiechert has dozens of birds at home — turkeys, chickens, and ducks — but the racing pigeon program offered something new. Deem’s sister got her hooked with glowing reports about the amazing work the ag program does. All three students are now invested in understanding the intricate details of bird care: proper nutrition (peas for protein, oyster shells for calcium, grit for digestion), monitoring nests, administering vaccines, and studying genetics. They’ve learned why narrow tail feathers reduce drag and how more wing feathers generate thrust — because aerodynamics matter when you’re competing in a race.

Looper grew up on a farm surrounded by pigeons. His father was active in the pigeon world before Jim was even born, and early mornings at pigeon shows with his dad became second nature. He stepped away from the hobby for a stretch, but returned to it in 2017 and has been acquiring lofts and birds ever since. His fascination goes beyond the competitive thrill of trash-talking with fellow racers (though that’s part of it). What really captures him is the bird itself — their homing instinct, their ability to find their way home against odds, their love of returning to their young. It’s a love story wrapped in genetics and athleticism.

On Friday, April 17, 2026, the students got to witness the payoff. Two boxes filled with banded birds sat in the back of a pickup truck outside the barn. Looper explained that he’d set up a training race — the birds would fly from the school to his house just a few miles away in rural Elk Grove. The students opened the doors, and after a moment of silence, the pigeons burst out in a flurry of wings, circled the barn to orient themselves, and disappeared into the bright blue sky. Minutes later, Looper’s phone began chiming as the birds crossed an electronic gate at his home loft. The timing was real. The results were instant.

What made the moment even more poignant: some of those birds had been raised in that same barn the year before. They’d come back home. And one of the students, Lily Wiechert, immediately saw the future:“Maybe next year one of those birds will come back in this barn, and I’ll get to raise its chicks!”That’s the full circle moment right there — not just teaching kids to care for animals, but giving them a front-row seat to the lifecycle of excellence, genetics in motion, and the tangible results of their own work.