Changing pairs every year.

[swilcox]

I change my breeding pairings every year as i have found new pairs breed more vigorous young birds and i belief i benifit from having as many combinations as possible, of course if i stumble on a golden pair then i may keep them together, this is a system that i first read about in an article by Kipp and Sohn, does others do the same??

 

Stuart Wilcox

[Guest]

While I agree with the principle, I can't say that I've had any success in practising it, and not practicing it.  ;D

 

A clubmate told me recently that I had made a mistake in splitting a pair last year. I had split them believing giving them different partners this year was an improvement. With the benefit of hindsight, I was dead wrong and the new pairings were pure kerrap.  >

 

Also when you are building a team birds, the advice Prof Alfons Anker gave in 'Art of Breeding' is if you breed a good race bird, then you should keep its parents together the following year and that way you should breed one or two useful pigeons. I did that in my second year - I was dead wrong again, the first generation went down in year 2 as yearlings closely followed by the second generation as young birds / yearlings in years 2 & 3. Didn't put that pair together again, and went off the cock for years.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Stuart if you change your pairs every year, you can't idntify the golden pair can you, other than putting them back together in future years?

[ACE LOFTS]

we change our breeding pairs every year, but next year we will be keeping a pair together and move the rest around again, we thinking about leaving them with the same pair again next season but aint made our minds up.

[chichichi]

we do rotate some pair but there a small amount of about 10 pairs that are let loose in a loft and they pair to whatever they want,,,they have paird the same for the last two years with very good results....so nothing changing there...but older stock birds will get a younger partner...they say that 80% of winners are bred from birds 4 years and younger......or the combined age should be under 8 years of age....we got some 11 year olds still breeding winners every year,,,luck I call it when pairing.....

[jimmy white]

if the 2 year old, onwards, have bred winners i leave them,, if they havent, [but won themselves] would change the pairs ,,,as for the yearlings, find it less bother to have" love matings"  i have found they race better and[ if the quality of your birds are good ] seem to even breed better yb,s

[T_T]

I think to fully justify ANY pairing, you must take 6 youngsters from them to give them any sort of recognition.