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hi all,

im after some tips for next years breeding,

ok here goes i have 5 pairs of birds in stock loft all from a top natianal loft,next year will be there first breeding year so i can make them into a strain/family,so these will produce 20 y/b's,

now i fly 12 widow cocks 5 old birds the rest young birds,all o/b's taken cards,same with the 7 young birds,

the hens all get raced as y/b's but not as o/b's,but they all have good results and cards,

now all i want to do is breed perhaps 6 more y/b's, now yes i know best to best, but when theres perhaps 6 cocks and 6 top hens to breed from i have to cut the breeding list down, most birds are busschaerts but all from different places!

so what is line breeding?

what other systems are the?

how close do people breed,cousins,brother sister?

ive heard the best way is grand parents to grand children?

any other ideas and help much appreciated,

cheers stu

hi stu,   i have won before with brother sister mating [first by accident] but then won a  few times,off course the offspring of these would be out crossed, but in my opinion, there are no hard and fast rules, and if most of my team had scored, i used to let them pair up to what they wanted to,[ love matches] ive looked in to the genetics of pigeons and found it no help really, my old dad used to allways say, pair a good inbred cock off one family to a good inbred hen off another family,but as far as i experienced, sometimes the exeptional one  was luck, as long as you have a winning team, only my opinion for what its worth

Stu,
you would not be making the most of your stock investment if you pair best to best. The best advice I could give on breeding is to score each bird by the same rule of thumb. this could be 10 points for each quality, wing, feather, weight, eye etc, it could be any number of things to your fancy, as long as they are all scored by the same. Then pair the best to the middles and get rid of the low scores.. This way you will raise the quality of your loft quicker by breeding more youngsters from the best pigeons. The next season you would do the same exersise and raise it even further.
Chris