Tag: breeding

Intensive Line-Breeding In Rollers

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by Cliff Ball; September, 2015

This information is an assimilation of a brief review of the literature; observations and recommendations based on the successes and failures of the breeding programs of roller men who have decades of experience in the breeding, training, and competitive flying of Birmingham Rollers; personal experience; and particularly, an adaptation of a pamphlet given to me by my good friend, Eldon Cheney to coach my progress in the sport. The pamphlet on the line-breeding of high-performance Read More

Balance Breeding

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by Steven Agent, 2011
published with permission from author

I must start with hard and soft feather classifications. In my family, the hard colors are blue check and blue bar self or flights. The soft colors are white, yellow, recessive red, lavender, grizzles, torts, mottles and blacks.

The first factor I consider when selecting pairs is feather quality. I try to always put a hard-feathered bird with a soft-feathered bird, as long as they are not too closely related. What I mean by too closely related is mother/son, father/daughter and brother/sister. Read More

The Three Pigments

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by Frank Mosca, Copyright 2000
published with permission from author

Domestic pigeons have three different feather pigments: brown, black and red. Despite our common pigeon terminology usage, there is no blue pigment in pigeons. The reason we’ve always used the term is because when the black pigment is clumped together in the cells of the feathers, it refracts the light in such a way that we see a bluish tinge. Note the wingshield of the blue bar. This is why W.F. Hollander decided to designate the wild-type pigment as blue/black. Read More