Pigeon Lofts - any words of warning? Thank you

When I was a child there were several back garden lofts, each with 50 plus birds. They are kept for racing so they will regularly be let out to exercise. I don’t recall any complaints.

My dad and his pals were all pigeon fanciers and I spent hours of my childhood in the lofts, helping my dad to log them all in when they returned from a race. I don't recall any smells, noise or vermin and my dad certainly wouldn't have exposed me to such if there was a danger.

A month ago a neighbour told me he had seen rats at the back of my garden shed. I paid the council £125 to get rid of them and the "rat catcher" told me the whole of our (privately-owned estate of abt 700 houses was rife with rats, especially round the streets with a stream running underneath the roads and he reckoned that most of them had had a rat infestation at some point or another in his forty years of experience.

I've never seen one (and don't want to) but left alone a few rats can produce thousands of offspring in a year.

So a few homing pigeons can't be as bad as that.

Sorry no knowledge of this but would be wary of living nearby.

I suppose that as they aren't wild pests they are trained to return to the loft so won't roost elsewhere. The only person I knew who kept pigeons let their birds out twice a day for exercise.
Maybe you could visit to look at their flight path?
Are you thinking of moving near a loft?

I suppose it depends how dedicated they owner is whether there would be rodents, or much smell - I expect it would be hard to keep it away entirely in the heat