Pigeon Passion. the Complete Pigeon and Racing Pigeon Guide. the Must-Have Guide For ANYONE Passionate About Keeping, Breeding Or Racing Pigeons by Elliott Lang

Author:Elliott Lang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: pigeons, pigeon fancier, pigeon racer, pigeon racing, racing pigeons, how to race pigeons
Publisher: Elliott Lang

6

Breeding

Natural selection, although it has worked for millions of years, is not an advisable path to take when breeding your pigeons:

Leaving your pigeons to their own devices would result in the survival of the fittest with the strongest cocks winning the best hens. This sounds like a good idea but the resulting injuries from fighting and the unrest within the aviary would upset your racers, who need equilibrium and routine to flourish. Conversely, the ‘strongest’ cocks may not be the best breeders and so their chosen mating would undermine the overall quality of your loft.

A harmonious loft is a successful loft. A disharmonious loft is a waste of space. Allowing your pigeons to mate freely would result in your best long distance racers mating with your short distance speed racers, giving you massive confusion when it came to the races and eggs would be hatched whilst other birds were still finding a mate.

Your main goal in breeding should always be to completely remove all genetic defects (minor and major alike) and to increase the amount of desirable traits to give you killer racers.

Advantages to natural selection

• It is a lot less time consuming

• It takes no effort on the fancier’s part

• As the birds are allowed to make their own choices there will be less fighting between cock and hen.

• The birds will instinctively go to nest

Disadvantages to natural selection

• Any good bird produced will be a fluke

• The overall quality of your birds will go down because there's no guarantee that two birds mating will not have the same defect, resulting in an offspring with that problem amplified.

In my opinion, it is far better and more productive to choose the mating pairs than it is to let them choose for themselves.

Your main aim for breeding should be to match your finest birds together that have none of the same defects to produce a bird with all of their strengths with the weaknesses removed. As you will see it is a process that even well seasoned fanciers get wrong and something every fancier should understand inside out if they want the best bred birds.

The problem with mating your two best racers together is that there will be a period during the racing season when they will both be feeding offspring. If, during a race, one of them is killed or does not return then you have the problem of the partner bird (who is also one of your best racers) no longer having a mate. This leaves you with the dilemma of racing your bird unmated, resting her till the next season or the time consuming process of finding her a new mate.

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