best breeds

[davieboy]

since racing gabbys last 4yrs they win 109mls to 480 verry good 400mls good all round pigeons

[PIGEON_MAN]

The best birds are birds bred from winning parents. "Strain" or "Breed" means nothing, except perhaps as a starting point for your selection. If you breed from your winners you will automatically select for the type of racing you are involved in.

In America at Spring Hill, Florida, they have selected from mainly young bird winners. The result is that they now have superb birds that mature much faster than normal here in Britain. The young bird specialists on the Continent have done much the same.

Here in Britain I think we are asking for too much from the birds. We want them to win at all distances and carry on winning right up until they are six or even seven. Selection would be much easier if we selected for a narrower performance. Even if we had to keep two or three differant types of birds to satisfy the wide variety of competitions we fly in. So in my opinion, it is not "Strains" or "Breeds" that will give us success but the ability to select for what we need to win pigeon races in our particular competition. So to me, that means when I want to buy a bird my question is, "What has he won"? And not "What Strain is he"?

 

If it was only that easy we would all have a loft full of good birds.

[Guest Owen]

TONY

I am sorry if I gave the impression that I think breeding winners is easy. We all know it is not. But, the only way in the end will be through progeny testing. That is the only tool we have to confirm that we are going in the right direction. There are plenty of people who will take the long gamble and breed from non-winners and birds from a winning ancester. I think that is pushing chance to it's limits. I breed winners to winners and, yes, I breed plenty of rubbish. But as each year passes my birds are getting better. Better because I do not loose as many and better because they are better racers.

I do not judge my birds on anything except performance. Not colour, or size or eyesign. Just performance. The interesting thing to me is that they are getting bigger and more pear shaped as each generation passes. This trend seems to be the opposite to what is happening in general. Because, I believe that generally pigeons are getting smaller and mature earlier.

Regardless of what happens to my birds physically, I will carry on doing the difficult thing. Breeding better birds by pairing winners together.