Common-sense pigeon breeding
rules The most valuable birds in your loft are the
good breeders. Once a bird shows promise as a breeder you
should not risk it in any races. The bird may continue to
win, but you may lose it and it is more valuable as a
breeder of future racers. You sometimes hear fanciers
saying "everything in my loft must race." The smart
fanciers don't race their good breeders.
It is very easy to tell which are your good
breeders, those birds which consistently produce winning
offspring. This does not mean just one winning bird a
year it means several, depending on how many you raise.
An essential feature of a good breeding system is
adequate record keeping. I keep extensive records and it
is time consuming, but without good records you have to
rely on your memory. If your memory is like mine then you
are in trouble.
I read through my records often and make
analyses of the various birds. You must have good records
of all the progeny from a pair, not just the successful
ones. If a stock bird breeds two winners out of twelve it
may not necessarily be a good stock bird. It depends on
the objectives you have set for it. Once you have
detected your good breeders you can start building your
own family around them and that will increase your
interest in the sport.
However, once you decide to build your own
family there is a problem. Which system do you use?
Cross breeding, line breeding, in-breeding or system
XYZ?
Pedigrees
Accurate, honest pedigrees can give you valuable information
about the background of a family of birds. If the pedigrees
give ALL details of wins and breeding performance they are
worthwhile. The pedigrees that give nothing but a string of
band numbers are of questionable value. Check all pedigrees
carefully for genetic impossibilities such as a red cock bred
from two blue parents. Later I will deal with what might appear
to be a red cock from two blue parents. (Watch for the opal
factor.)
Even well-known fanciers are sometimes guilty of
making pedigree errors. If you obtain pedigrees from a
fancier which show errors, how can you be sure about the
whole breeding program? There are very few fanciers who
house their breeders in individual breeding pens and this
is the only way to be absolutely sure about parentage.
Our pigeons can be very fickle and a whole series of
undetected chance matings can change a family completely.
I once obtained some birds from a well-known fancier and
found that the pedigrees contained errors. I asked about
the errors but I never heard from him again. Needless to
say, those birds did not remain in my loft.
Breeding
Systems
Cross-breeding, line-breeding, in-breeding? Which to use, that
is the question. At one end of the spectrum of difficulty is
cross-breeding, the easiest system, and at the other end is
in-breeding, the most difficult.
Cross-breeding: the mating of birds with
no relationship within the previous five generations.
That is what the experts say, but we could say unrelated
birds. This is the simplest system and the one used by a
lot of fanciers. You avoid some of the hazards of
in-breeding.
Line-breeding: somewhat the same as
in-breeding but it takes longer to establish purity. For
most fanciers it is less risky and less-expensive. It
could involve the following matings: grandfather to
granddaughter; grandmother to grandson; cousin to
cousin.
In-breeding: a system used to concentrate
desirable genes in a family. This system uses matings as
follows: father to daughter, mother to son, brother to
sister. Never start in-breeding with anything but the
very best stock. Do not expect to take mediocre birds and
improve their quality by using this system. In-breeding
quickly shows up all the good qualities, by allowing the
best association of genes, but it also shows up the
faults.
If you are not good at culling don't
start in-breeding because strict culling is a
given in this system.
Some fanciers start out on an in-breeding
program but give up due to the number of culls that crop
up. This should be welcomed. By getting rid of the culls
you are making progress. You must persevere with the
program and not make an outcross. An outcross produces
variability and in-breeding is done to reduce
variability, although in the beginning in-breeding would
appear to heighten variability, that is until you have
removed the undesirables.
With stock that is judged on outward
characteristics, such as show-type birds, culling is
easier. However our racing birds have many
characteristics that are not easy to determine, such as
homing instinct and constitution.
Careful records of
factors like fertility, hatchability and rearability must
be kept in order to avoid fixing any undesirable
characteristics in the family. I have stressed good
record keeping before and I will do it again here, you
cannot be successful with in-breeding without good
records.
Silvio Mattacchione raises
prize-winning pigeons in Ontario, Canada. He
has pigeons for sale and offers expert pigeon
consulting.
