Hello everyone, I thought today will be useful to talk about a part of pigeon breeding
that isn't often spoken about but is actually becoming more and more important.
You might have noticed that whenever a famous breeding pigeon appears on the scene
it seems like a few years later there are hundreds or thousands of direct children and grandchildren
available. A good example at the moment is the famous Dirk Van Den Bulck called Kittel.
It seems like his children are ever at the moment. If you look on Facebook or discussion forums
a lot of the comments are from people who seem to think that the sellers of these pigeons are
liars or frauds making fake pedigrees because it's just not possible that there are that many
sons or grandsons of kids suddenly available. It makes sense that people might have
ideas like that because most of us are used to breeding pigeons where we have one pair together
for a breeding season, they might have three rounds, that's six babies. Maybe if we have a really good
pair we might foster the eggs out, run the eggs under different pairs, we might get around, you know,
20-25 babies out of them that way. Or if you had a really good cock bird you might try the
bull system and you might pair that cock bird up to, you know, four, five, six different hens and then trick
the other cock birds into raising those babies and you might get another 20-25 babies a season out of
a cock bird that way. But of course even if you were running legs that way or using a bull system
it's still not possible to get hundreds or thousands of babies out of a single
pigeon in just a few years. But these sellers they're not frauds, they're not making this up,
these genuinely are sons and grandsons of Kittel, and the way that they're able to get that many
children out of a single pigeon is by using artificial insemination. Now there are a few
different ways to do artificial insemination and I'm not completely sure which method any of the
different breeders are using so I'm just going to do a bit of a brief overview of the process
and try and help you understand how it actually works and how there are this many sons of Kittel
suddenly on the market. So of course we have to start by harvesting the semen from the cock bird
that we're using. Of course if you have a famous hen and you're trying to breed babies out of her
you're a bit out of luck, a hen can only produce so many eggs but when you used to get cock bird
you can actually harvest the semen almost daily, and then you can use what's called an extender
fluid to raise the volume of the semen. So the semen you take from one harvesting can actually
be used in up to ten different hens. The next step, of course, is to then inseminate the hens. And at
this point you're probably understanding how we can get this many babies, if we can harvest the
semen daily or every couple of days and each harvest can inseminate up to 10 different hens
the numbers quickly explode. But there is a little complication, of course we know that pigeons need
to be raised by their parents, they're not like chickens where you can raise them in a brooder.
And a cock bird isn't likely to want to raise babies that he knows on his.
So this is where the different methods start to diverge, some breeders like to use a box system
where the hen and cock can see each other but can't physically meet, I've heard this is what
Gaby Vandenabeele used to use but I can't confirm that. Another method is actually to vasectomise the
cock birds that are used to raise the babies, and this is a little bit easier, it means that the
cock and hen can be together, they can even mate and the cock bird will think that the eggs are actually his
but as he is vasectomised he hasn't fertilised any eggs and obviously he ends up raising the
babies from the stud cock that we're using. Now of course the vasectomy isn't 100% perfect
so some breeders actually quite cleverly use genetics as a bit of a tell so they can pick
up if it's ever gone wrong. Instead of using a normal blue bar or blue checker racing pigeon as
the foster father or the vasectomised father they'll quite often use a bird like a crossbred fantail
or a red grizzle or some other unusual dominant colour and that way it becomes quite clear really
quickly if the vasectomised cock has actually fertilised an egg. Of a baby comes out with a
fan tail or it's a red grizzle or a dormant opal or something like that it's quite obvious that
the stud cock didn't fertilise the egg. Now back at the start we said that if you used the bull
system or if you were running eggs you might get you know 25-30 babies from a cock bird or
pair per season, but you can see that when we're using artificial insemination the numbers add up
really, really quickly. And using a system like this it is entirely possible to raise 100 or 200
babies per season. And if we go back to our example of Kittel, I don't know what method
Dirk Van Den Bulck or the current owners of Kittel are using, but he is an eight-year-old cock bird so if
he raised a hundred babies a year for five years that's that's 500 babies. And if each of those
babies had 10 babies themselves we're up to 5,000 now. When you take these numbers into account you
can see how it actually does make sense why there are that many grandsons, sons, daughters, children of
Kittel available for whoever wants them. Some people might ask "is this a problem?", "is this
damaging pigeon breeding in any way?" Personally I don't think so. My personal thoughts on the
matter are if you're able to spread the genes of a good pigeon this far and wide it makes it much
more affordable for everyday breeders to get their hands on some top quality pigeons. There are some
silly people out there who don't agree with record keeping or pedigrees and they say silly things
like "the learning board is my pedigree" but the real fact of the matter is top quality genetics
really do give you an advantage when it comes to any kind of pigeon racing. You're not going
to win any races with a pigeon that you catch in the town square or on the side of a cliff, it is
these top quality racing genetics that make all the difference and if artificial insemination
makes it easier for your everyday breeder to get their hands on some really good quality birds then
I think it's great! And obviously these breeders are making money, they're probably making quite
good money on these sales, but really if you were in their shoes I think you'd be doing the same
thing. I think if you were given the opportunity to make hundreds of thousands or even millions of
dollars off your pigeons I don't think you'd say no to it. Anyway guys that's that's how artificial
insemination works in pigeons. Here is another video that YouTube thinks you might like to watch,
if you think it looks interesting give it a click, and I'll catch you in the next video!