The Bull System

[andy Burgess]

The idea of taking the hens and youngsters away at 14 days is to prevent the feeder cock from impregnating the hen. When the hens and the youngsters are away on their own the hens will concentrate on feeding the younsters because they are not being driven by the cock and all the hens will share the duties as feeders.

You can return the hen to the breeding pen when the young are around 25 days old and off you go again. This way it is possible to get as many as 40 youngsters from one cock plus the 2 he will have with a hen he will be mated to at the end of this exercise.

There are some important things to do before you get started. Check the pigeons' droppings and swabs. And vaccinate the adult birds. I do mine twice before they are used to breed youngsters. Then vaccinate all the young at 28 days old and again 4 weeks later.

Rear the youngsters on deep litter and you ought not to have any sign of YBS.

If you intend to have the youngsters on darkness make sure that you get them out of the loft and airborne as young as possible because any delays with this can cause you a major headache later on. When I have slipped up on this I have always lost youngsters to the falcon.

i intend to use the "bull" cock with 8 hens ,after sitting 10 days i want to float the eggs under racers . then place original hen with the "bull"cock",and allow all pairs to lay there own eggs freely.i am hoping with as many as 16 young from the "bull" this will show me if ive chosen correctly. and if i havent ,then still have sufficiently sound well bred young from the others to compete.if from those 16 young the majority do well for me ,then i will use the "bull" fully the following season for 2 rounds .its a sort of insurance policy ,but hopefully with enough off-spring to use as a unit of measure.do you seen any problems with this ,or any further guidance ,fully appreciated.

[andy Burgess]

i intend to use the "bull" cock with 8 hens ,after sitting 10 days i want to float the eggs under racers . then place original hen with the "bull"cock",and allow all pairs to lay there own eggs freely.i am hoping with as many as 16 young from the "bull" this will show me if ive chosen correctly. and if i havent ,then still have sufficiently sound well bred young from the others to compete.if from those 16 young the majority do well for me ,then i will use the "bull" fully the following season for 2 rounds .its a sort of insurance policy ,but hopefully with enough off-spring to use as a unit of measure.do you seen any problems with this ,or any further guidance ,fully appreciated.

?? bump,bump ??

[PIGEON_MAN]

Andy I might have missed something somewhere but in your first line you said after 10 days you were going to float the eggs under racers,what birds will be sitting them until then.

[andy Burgess]

Andy I might have missed something somewhere but in your first line you said after 10 days you were going to float the eggs under racers,what birds will be sitting them until then.

stock birds Tony

[PIGEON_MAN]

stock birds Tony

Why not put them straight under the racers surely you want to breed off your stock birds.

[andy Burgess]

Why not put them straight under the racers surely you want to breed off your stock birds.

i normally breed 2 rounds off the stock ,each round going into a section of there own ,along with any off-spring from the racers .trying to reduce my work-load and just have 1 section of youngsters this year (all around the same age too) so first round layed will go under racers after 10 days ,then stock can lay again and raise there own .all young should be over within 3 to 4 weeks which will be fine by me.if i float the eggs as soon as layed ,would be a strain on stock hens i feel?

[demolition man]

i normally breed 2 rounds off the stock ,each round going into a section of there own ,along with any off-spring from the racers .trying to reduce my work-load and just have 1 section of youngsters this year (all around the same age too) so first round layed will go under racers after 10 days ,then stock can lay again and raise there own .all young should be over within 3 to 4 weeks which will be fine by me.if i float the eggs as soon as layed ,would be a strain on stock hens i feel?

 

 

Andy

 

how do you select your bull cock, has he already bred winners with other hens, a champion racer or bred from a certain line? just interested

 

Regards Bernie

[andy Burgess]

Andy

 

how do you select your bull cock, has he already bred winners with other hens, a champion racer or bred from a certain line? just interested

 

Regards Bernie

in all honesty Bern ,its a shot in the dark .he has won club,fed and combine tickets back in Wales for me .in 18 months at stock up here bred 3 x 1st fed and Grandsire to a 1st fed ,with the same hen (with production like that i dont want to split them) it maybe the hen who is adding the quality ? but at least it will give me some answers ,hopefully good ones ?

[demolition man]

in all honesty Bern ,its a shot in the dark .he has won club,fed and combine tickets back in Wales for me .in 18 months at stock up here bred 3 x 1st fed and Grandsire to a 1st fed ,with the same hen (with production like that i dont want to split them) it maybe the hen who is adding the quality ? but at least it will give me some answers ,hopefully good ones ?

 

 

Best of luck with him, I've got 4 cocks that i want to bull so will select 4 hens for each.

 

 

And P.S. dont for get to breed me a fed winner from him:emoticon-0136-giggle: :emoticon-0136-giggle: :emoticon-0136-giggle:.

[just ask me]

in all honesty Bern ,its a shot in the dark .he has won club,fed and combine tickets back in Wales for me .in 18 months at stock up here bred 3 x 1st fed and Grandsire to a 1st fed ,with the same hen (with production like that i dont want to split them) it maybe the hen who is adding the quality ? but at least it will give me some answers ,hopefully good ones ?

 

 

were the children cocks or hens that won

[andy Burgess]

were the children cocks or hens that won

all produced have been cocks ,i raised one for stock recently beleiving because of its colouring ( a light chequer) to be a hen , flown out not trained or raced. its in the hen section ............. driving anything that comes near it

[DJWa]

all produced have been cocks ,i raised one for stock recently beleiving because of its colouring ( a light chequer) to be a hen , flown out not trained or raced. its in the hen section ............. driving anything that comes near it

 

there is a belief andy that

good hens come down from the sire

and good cocks come from the dam

 

but both might be throwing the goods

[Guest Owen]

If you breed on a cock line as I do you will produce better cocks than hens. Most of my winning is done with cocks when both sexes are raced as youngsters. In my last race I won the first 4 positions and they were all cocks. 2 differant hens have won for me this year but that is unusual.

I think it is much better to breed from a cock line because I really don't like birds bred from a hen line. The cocks tend to be henny from a hen line as as time goes on you breed more and more hens which I don't like.

My racing cocks are quite bold and tend to be of a good size. This has nothing to do with my selection because I don't select for anything physical, just performance.

In regard to the Bull System. I think it is the best way to place a value on a cock because if he does not produce something from one of a group of hens he is obviously no use as a breeder. I have a really lovely cock that has won a lot of money for me but he has not produced even one decent youngster from any hen he has been paired to. I have demoted him these days to the role of feeder.

[demolition man]

If you breed on a cock line as I do you will produce better cocks than hens. Most of my winning is done with cocks when both sexes are raced as youngsters. In my last race I won the first 4 positions and they were all cocks. 2 differant hens have won for me this year but that is unusual.

I think it is much better to breed from a cock line because I really don't like birds bred from a hen line. The cocks tend to be henny from a hen line as as time goes on you breed more and more hens which I don't like.

My racing cocks are quite bold and tend to be of a good size. This has nothing to do with my selection because I don't select for anything physical, just performance.

In regard to the Bull System. I think it is the best way to place a value on a cock because if he does not produce something from one of a group of hens he is obviously no use as a breeder. I have a really lovely cock that has won a lot of money for me but he has not produced even one decent youngster from any hen he has been paired to. I have demoted him these days to the role of feeder.

 

Owen i remember that cock, i told you it had a feeders eye :emoticon-0136-giggle: :emoticon-0136-giggle: :emoticon-0136-giggle:

[andy Burgess]

If you breed on a cock line as I do you will produce better cocks than hens. Most of my winning is done with cocks when both sexes are raced as youngsters. In my last race I won the first 4 positions and they were all cocks. 2 differant hens have won for me this year but that is unusual.

I think it is much better to breed from a cock line because I really don't like birds bred from a hen line. The cocks tend to be henny from a hen line as as time goes on you breed more and more hens which I don't like.

My racing cocks are quite bold and tend to be of a good size. This has nothing to do with my selection because I don't select for anything physical, just performance.

In regard to the Bull System. I think it is the best way to place a value on a cock because if he does not produce something from one of a group of hens he is obviously no use as a breeder. I have a really lovely cock that has won a lot of money for me but he has not produced even one decent youngster from any hen he has been paired to. I have demoted him these days to the role of feeder.

this cock line ,hen line statement has me confused to be honest ?

[Guest Owen]

No problem there Andy.

Due to the fact that I select my pigeons from performance it will always be cocks that I select to breed with. Hens are selected on the basis of what their Fathers and Brothers do and also to a lesser extent on what they might do as youngsters. This means that the genes I want to select are in the cocks, a male line.

If I were a long distance flyer with very good hens I could select hens to concentrate my breeding on, then that would be a hen line.

I would far prefer the cock lines because cock have XY chromosomes rather than the XX in hens. This will give you a better chance of breeding a sport which is something unexpected and can be something very valuable to the breeder. Obviously these sports can give rise to negative genes and more often than not the unexpected result can be of no consequence at all.

The main problem with a hen line is that the birds become more henny in appearance and eventually you will find it harder and harder to breed cocks. Dexter cattle are a good example of that because the calves born are mostly female and bull calves are much more difficult to breed. We all have cocks that we think are hens in the young bird loft. Some families of pigeons are very henny as you know. When you continually breed from a hen line the sexual differences become less marked.

Of course this does not mean that the birds from a hen line are less good at racing because there are plenty of examples where some families produce top hens regularly.

The trick with breeding livestock is to keep things simple. It is important to reduce your selection to as few factors as possible. In the case of racing pigeons, in my view, we can keep things very simple indeed. We select birds that are successful at racing. Better still we can select birds that are good at say sprinting. The Belgians have been doing this for a long time. Just look at people like Staf van Reet and more recently Lambrechts. These people have chosen to compete in races of a very selected type and don't vary from their chosen race type. In Britain we want to win with same family of birds from 60 miles to 600 miles. That is fine but it is a nightmare in terms of selection.

[andy Burgess]

thankyou Owen ,thats cleared that one up.

 

 

i intend to use the "bull" cock with 8 hens ,after sitting 10 days i want to float the eggs under racers . then place original hen with the "bull"cock",and allow all pairs to lay there own eggs freely.i am hoping with as many as 16 young from the "bull" this will show me if ive chosen correctly. and if i havent ,then still have sufficiently sound well bred young from the others to compete.if from those 16 young the majority do well for me ,then i will use the "bull" fully the following season for 2 rounds .its a sort of insurance policy ,but hopefully with enough off-spring to use as a unit of measure.do you seen any problems with this ,or any further guidance ,fully appreciated.

could you comment on this statement please .

[Guest Owen]

Andy

that is one way to do it but I would not do it that way myself. I will do it in one of two ways. 1) mate the hens with the Bull and when the young are 14 days old remove the young in the nest pan with the hens and put them into the Youngbird Loft. When the young are weaned you then use the hen with the Bull again and she will not have been impregnated by the feeder cock. There will be plenty of time to get a nice team of youngsters. 2) Do what I say above but after removing the hen leave the cock in his box to get over the loss of his hen and young and then introduce another hen and off you go again. In theory you can rear 48 young from just one cock by using two teams of hens. This is not something I would do but it can be done. People who are interested in inbreeding will have a big advantage doing this because they will have plenty of half brothers and sisters to select from all of which can be tried and tested on the road to prove their worth. Obviously the best individuals will be selected to continue with the breeding programme.

And after the inbreeding they can have a second team of inbred pigeons to cross with the first lot and take advantage of the hybrid vigour that comes from the crossing of two differant inbred families. If this is done correctly the birds used in the crosses will be proven as racers in identical competitions which be perfect in terms of target breeding.

To answer Bernie's questions. I do not allow the hens to roam about in the breeding pen and I have never found much trouble with cocks locked in their boxes. In fact at one time all my sprint cocks were locked up all day except when they were out at exercise. When I did that I found that after they had flown at exercise for a while they could not wait to get back to the box. Belgian sprint racers often do this to make the birds protective of their boxes and to stop bullying.

[just ask me]

this cock line ,hen line statement has me confused to be honest ?

 

 

 

most think its easier Andy to line breed or in breed back to the cock Andy the masters of breeding and racing is a good read or the little red book forget the name by old hand will tell you more

 

in owens case i think hes saying that he gets stronger cocks breeding around a certain few cocks

 

i take a good breeder if its a cock or hen lol im sure owen is the same but with his bull system he would much rather it be the cock

[andy Burgess]

can you see any problems or dis-advantages in the way i intended to do it ?? if so why ?

[demolition man]

Andy

that is one way to do it but I would not do it that way myself. I will do it in one of two ways. 1) mate the hens with the Bull and when the young are 14 days old remove the young in the nest pan with the hens and put them into the Youngbird Loft. When the young are weaned you then use the hen with the Bull again and she will not have been impregnated by the feeder cock. There will be plenty of time to get a nice team of youngsters. 2) Do what I say above but after removing the hen leave the cock in his box to get over the loss of his hen and young and then introduce another hen and off you go again. In theory you can rear 48 young from just one cock by using two teams of hens. This is not something I would do but it can be done. People who are interested in inbreeding will have a big advantage doing this because they will have plenty of half brothers and sisters to select from all of which can be tried and tested on the road to prove their worth. Obviously the best individuals will be selected to continue with the breeding programme.

And after the inbreeding they can have a second team of inbred pigeons to cross with the first lot and take advantage of the hybrid vigour that comes from the crossing of two differant inbred families. If this is done correctly the birds used in the crosses will be proven as racers in identical competitions which be perfect in terms of target breeding.

To answer Bernie's questions. I do not allow the hens to roam about in the breeding pen and I have never found much trouble with cocks locked in their boxes. In fact at one time all my sprint cocks were locked up all day except when they were out at exercise. When I did that I found that after they had flown at exercise for a while they could not wait to get back to the box. Belgian sprint racers often do this to make the birds protective of their boxes and to stop bullying.

 

Thanks Owen but do you not find by keeping the widowhood cocks in boxes they become very agressive, i tryed this methiod once only to find that once they went into the race basket they would fight like mad and waisted energy in the basket.

[geordie1234]

Do you need a bull box to do this or could I put a cock in a section with 4 hens?

[Guest Owen]

geordie 1234

I think a Bull Box is a wast of time. I use standard widowhood boxes parted in the middle with a nest front. The feeder cock goes one side and the hen goes the other. The Bull is kept in a spare section but you could use a very big nest box providing he has no contact with other pigeons.

This way you can be sure that the eggs will be accepted by the feeder cock and he will rear the young as his own.

In theory you could use your widowhood cocks to act as feeders. This will give you the best youngsters while allowing the widowhood cocks to rear. And the hens would have a relationship with the widowhood cock as normal.

Not to mislead anyone, I never pair my cocks and the hens are never involved. This works out well in terms of breeding because I can use the hens in two teams to breed my youngsters. I am not interested in breeding from unproven birds or birds who have yet to show some results.

[andy Burgess]

can you see any problems or dis-advantages in the way i intended to do it ?? if so why ?

??

[Guest Rangeview]

geordie 1234

I think a Bull Box is a wast of time. I use standard widowhood boxes parted in the middle with a nest front. The feeder cock goes one side and the hen goes the other. The Bull is kept in a spare section but you could use a very big nest box providing he has no contact with other pigeons.

This way you can be sure that the eggs will be accepted by the feeder cock and he will rear the young as his own.

:emoticon-0137-clapping:

 

I have used a similar system over the years.

 

Minor differences and notes

1) Bull has his own nestbox in the loft as the other "pairs". Kept locked in and let out once a day into the loft - evening - to tread the hens who are let out to him one at a time and then locked away before the next hen is brought out.

 

2) Hens are removed when young are around 14 days and system started again approx 1 month later. When hens have "had a spell" and I am quite sure feeder cock will not be the sire of future young.

 

3) Rotate the order in which the hens are let out with the cock. - Once ran a cock with 8 hens which were released to the cock in same order every day 1-8, he failed to fill eggs of hen 8 - rookie error.

 

4) Often the hens will not let the bull tread between laying of first and second egg - apparently not a problem with fertilization.

 

Current Bull is 12 year old and on his first season as a bull. Hard work, initially he only wanted to tread hens he felt were 'mates'

 

Over the years he has produced some very good breeders for me. All mates this year are inbred Dtrs and double grand-dtrs very inbred. "Inbreeding" just because I can and trying to have the inbreeding double edged sword working, Looking for obvious faults.

 

 

 

First Round 2012 7YB