Building consistency part 2 of 6

To identify which pigeons are the ones to surround your program around you must breed many youngsters from them and fly them out. I have never been one to coddle my young up and coming pigeons. My best stock birds and proven champions get my respect and are given the best, but they must earn it. I don’t give any preference to youngsters off of “big name” in the sport pigeons or imports. They are flown just like the rest. They have to prove to me they are worthy of any attention.
It is best to keep notes. I keep a notebook handy so I can write down what I observe. I used to use my memory for everything but realized that writing things down keep it very realistic. You cannot be sentimental about the birds that are in the process of proving themselves if you truly want to build top quality pigeons. I am now sentimental toward some of my champions and best proven stock birds but they earned it and after all we do keep pigeons because we enjoy having them.
There are many things to look for with the building process. One of the major things not to look at is physical appearance. Beginners to the sport will begin listening to all the old secrets of champions. There are no secrets. If there was a secret it would be this, “do the work”.
I would advise against looking at wing length, structure, keels, eyes, feather etc until you understand what it is that gets the job done. A pigeon may look like someone poured the feathers on and they are truly beautiful but the bird could be a hopeless cull.
Learn what a true champion looks like then you might begin to pay a little attention to the physical characteristics. The most important aspect of a great pigeon is what he has to commend himself in the smarts and intuition department.
You can always make a pigeon with excellent character and tenacity more beautiful through selective breeding but you cannot make a beautiful pigeon smart by using just beautiful pigeons in the stock loft.
For myself personally I prefer the look of a true champion above any others and until proven I am highly suspicious of the pretty ones. Once we have a few proven champions we keep the parents and discard all of the other breeders that did not make the cut. Culling the stock loft is more important than culling the flyers. The flyers will cull themselves but you and you alone are responsible for what goes in the stock loft.
When you have several proven champions from the air you will want to try them at breeding. There are countless methods of breeding but none have ever out matched the pretzel breeding method. I ran across it by accident really. When I was a boy my father and grandfather advised against breeding too close. There was a lot of apprehension associated with breeding close relatives. Since then I have bred them very close and tried every kind of mating you can imagine and using the very best of stock. Having tried inbreeding, line breeding and just plain old out crossing I can tell you, the best method has proven itself over and over again to be the pretzel breeding method.
The Pretzel breeding method is simply trying to keep your best three or four pigeons blood at the forefront of your breeding program in heavy concentration without breeding brother/sister or mother/son or father daughter mating. It is geared toward mating uncle / niece or aunt / nephew or cousins. Double cousins is a favorite of mine. It is not good enough to just mate double cousins and expect excellent results. They must be all proven pigeons and this takes time. They have to be flown out to prove themselves worthy of a shot in the breeding loft. Then they must prove themselves as stock birds. They must reproduce as good as themselves or better and in good percentages. Part 3 next week

good read Rene

Will second that Rene

Good info Rene