How do you pair your breeders? – Part One
Fanciers start looking back at their old and young bird racing seasons in November and start to look at bringing in new birds to their lofts. If they didn’t do well in the short races, they’re going to be looking for speed birds. If the long races were a problem, they’ll be searching for distance birds. You can investigate, search out good birds, buy them at live auctions where you can see them and handle them, or through online auctions which are becoming quite popular. You can do it all right, but remember that luck still plays a big part in getting the right birds to do the job for you.
One of the things that I’ve found to be the most successful is to get youngsters from very successful pairs. Highly successful pairs have proven that their gene combinations work, and will continue to work past the first generation behind them. I like to find pairs that are super successful, the more successful the better. The more pigeons that have come out of a pair and raced well, the better I like it.
As far as pairing the birds is concerned, I like to breed birds of the same type, unless I see that there’s a deficiency in a certain type. For example, if I am working with a short distance family that is becoming incapable of clocking at anything beyond 150 miles, or only on easy races, I feel that a deficiency has developed that needs to be addressed. In the U.S. this is not really good enough, because we fly a regimen that includes 350-mile to 400-mile races in young birds. In some combines, you don’t even start combine competition until you get to a distance of 150 to 200 miles.
You can improve that distance performance in a short distance family by bringing in a little bit of distance blood. And you can do this without necessarily sacrificing the speed. You’d bring in a distance bird whose family has proven it can also win at some of the shorter and faster races. Breed that bird into the speed family, and race the youngsters thoroughly. Then breed one of the best of these youngsters back to the speed family.
You can also go about this the other way, breeding speed into a distance family. Breed that cross back into to the distance family to introduce a bit of speed. One of the best known lofts that has done this successfully was the VanHee lofts. The Motta line of distance birds were found to be getting too slow for the races in Europe, so they bought direct Janssen pigeons. They introduced the Janssens one time as a cross, and then they took those half Janssen and half VanHee birds and they bred them back to the VanHee side, coming up with a ¾ VanHee, ¼ Janssen bird. They produced many national winners with this combination of bloodlines.
Check out part 2 => How do you pair your breeders? – Part Two
The Leading Online Pigeon Racing and Racing Pigeons Magazine – The Pigeon Insider
First you must know what you want from your birds. Sprint birds, medium distant birds, or long distance birds. Then there is only 3 ways of breeding. INBREEDING..(mother to son)…makes the birds small. Linebreeding..(father to daughter)…birds stay the same size as father. And outcrossing…introducing new blood to the gene pool. But before breeding think about your management and training from last season. Was it the birds fault or yours.
I really enjoy the different subjects you discuss and what all the different people have to comment. I didn’t think it was that much involved. Thanks for all the good information
I understand this article. Most of my birds are Janssen/Hofkens cross and I have a few Huysken Van Riels. My Van Riels are in-bred,and I would pair them to my Janssens for stability. On another point, I have noticed some of my Janssens are hawk shy, and the Van Riels are not so. Both strains seems to sprint well at 150-200 miles.
Hi we all know the Jansen pigeons because they are the greatest pigeons ever. So why not breed like the Jansen brothers.
They had only three ways to mate their birds and if you do that with your birds you will soon be breeding champions, of-cause you must start with the best, kill the good ones just keep the best.
Thinus.
Ok I got one more thing to say the pigeons with the bone stickin out like a ship are no good there bone hangs down while flying it will rip the hole chest out from the bone down farther will hit a wire or other things and pretty colored birds don’t win except a show racer comp
Ok check this out me and my grandfather have some of the best birds I’ve ever seen no trying to be a braver or an asshole I’m trying to explain how we breed it took him and I 30 year to build the foundation of great birds we had remember guys mostly all pretty birds don’t win so u know the little plastic bands like the race chip bands we use the to mark different breeds and or pairs this lets u know what u have breed wise and pair wise different colors for different things that will help a lot we had janssons,peirsons,van reel,gonglers.
Hi Chris I read your details about breeding pigons was good but I would like to share my way of breeding. I always pair my birds keeping in mind the blood line like one male and two female. The chicks which which come out I frist fly them and later pair them.The most IMP thing that I look is the bone of the bird what I MEAN is when you catch a bird with both hands one finger of your left hand has to go in beetwen the legs and your right hand put on chest of the bird and feel the bone which is going deep towards the two small bones. Those birds birds will be GREAT flyers trust me.
Hi Ed very good article but i like the Vanhee breeding withe Janssen pigeons and then breed
them back to the Vanhee they would be my kind of pigeons all rounders Brad.
Tienie de beer
I am also a pigeon fansier and I read of some of the letters,and some of them is intrest to read. And my reason is I also not under stand this sport, because I had some of my birds who was win a few of the races and then the next year they do nothing. Not even win one races.
Thanks Tienie
Hola Chris,buen inicio para este tema. Estoy en espera de la segunda parte. Saludos.