Hello everyone! Most of our breeding pairs are settling in quite nicely
so I thought whilst we're waiting for some eggs to be laid I'll just run you through the two main
projects I'm working on at the moment, and they are my project for brown racing pigeons and for
barless racing pigeons. So this pair is the second generation in my brown racing pigeon project.
Although he's sitting in the nest at the moment he's just using it as a bit of a perch
these guys are the only pair who have not yet paired up.
I'm not sure if it's just because he's a little too young and doesn't quite know what to do
or if it's because she was paired up with a different cockbird at the other loft
either way I hope they pair up soon because I really would like to get a round out of this guy
before the end of the year. If you're wondering how we're expecting to get brown birds out
of this pair, a black and a dark checker, it's because we know that this guy carries
brown. Brown is a sex-linked recessive gene and this cockbird carries brown. We know
that because his mother was brown. That means that one of his z chromosomes carries the brown gene
and half of his daughters will be brown. With his hen and the black bird himself both having
white or pied feathers it's quite likely that we're going to get some pied babies as well
which isn't exactly what I'd like to see but this hen is a very very well bred racing pigeon
and this guy doesn't have a bad pedigree either so at the moment I'm just happy to try and breed some
brown pigeons, even if they are pied, once we have a few we'll try and breed the pied out of them.
My other main project is of course the barless racing pigeons and you would have seen the barless
breeding plans video already. She's been paired up with this beautiful dark checker
and they mated up very quickly. As you can see he's a big beautiful boy!
So we're expecting eggs from these guys in about a week. This barless hen really loves
breeding, anytime I mate her up with any kind of cockbird she's always very interested.
At the moment I do just have all the birds in this old breeding setup, I didn't do any repairs to the
setup so as you can see it's not quite straight and it's a little bit cobbled together that was
mostly because I am going to build a new loft in a couple of months so I didn't want to put
too much money into this one whilst we're just a few months away from a brand new loft.
There's actually is a nice big vacant block next door and I'd love to be able to put a loft up there
so if you want to see that happen maybe have a look at the Patreon and see if you can help out!
Anyway I'm going to do some cleaning and then we'll look at the rest of the birds.
All right well it's actually a few hours later, I did the cleanup and then I went inside and
got distracted and they've made a nice mess again in the meantime. Although really when
they're just settling in like this I can't get much cleaning that anyway, they're always a bit
too jumpy in the boxes until they've settled down on their nests. Anyway I'll show you another
thing I've done whilst I was cleaning up. I've put these little nest felts in the nest bowls.
I've never used these before, I've always used pine needles or straw but I wasn't able to get any pine
needles this year so I decided to give the nest felts a go. I'll let you know how it works for me.
Anyway this pair has settled in quite nicely, I have bred from this pair before, this isn't
the first time they've met so obviously they paired up again quite quickly. Last time I had
them the other day produced a very interesting looking baby, I'll put up a picture of it now so
you can see what the last baby these guys produced looks like. Anyway let's move on to the next nest.
Now these guys of course paired up very quickly, they were only separated a couple of weeks ago
so putting them back together they were very quick to pair up again
and like I said it should just be another week or so and there will be some eggs in there.
I always get questions whenever I post this guy so I'll try and answer some of them now. His big nose...
his big nose is not a growth it is just his natural cere.
He's quite an old pigeon and as you know the cere just grows as they get older.
He also is a homing pigeon, he's not a crossbred there's just a lot of genetic diversity in racing
pigeons or homing pigeons and some breeds do just grow a big wattle as they get older.
There was also a question about what I'm trying to produce out of this pair, somebody asked if I'll
get a classic almond out of it and the answer is no. I'm not aiming for a classic almond out of this
pair, I've shown it in the past but I'll put up a picture again now of the spread black and brown
stipper which is what I'm aiming for from these guys. All right the next pair needs some grit as
so I'll them up.
And they are the red checker pair.
These guys paired up really quickly too and she's such a nice looking little hen
the cockbird is a lot older than her but he's full of genetic potential as well so I'm really
impressed with this pair and I can't wait until they're own eggs as well. And then finally we have
the reds and I'm really happy to see that these guys have paired up quickly. I was worried that
it might take a little while especially because the hen's been moved around so much in the last
few weeks; she only just finished up her racing career and then she moved into a temporary loft,
quarantine pen and now she's in a breeding pen with a cock she's never seen before
but she's taking it all in a stride and they've paired up nice and quickly and she's such a nice
looking racing hen. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the babies that come out of this pair
and also seeing how they perform on the racetrack. Ahh, have a look at that! Whilst I was filming
you didn't lay an egg, she laid an egg! Up in the loft at my parents place all
the hens were separated into their own loft and most of them paired up with each other
so this is about the fourth or fifth egg that's been laid since I've had the birds here. Obviously
it's not a fertile egg because she was just paired up with another hen, but it would have been nice
if she could lay it in the nest. I hope in a week's time you don't miss the nest with your good egg
because we really need to get a baby out of you!
Preferably a pair! Yes, that's where we need to be, in the nest, not on the floor in the nest! Anyway
guys that's all I've got for you today, it's a bit of a calm before a storm here at the moment
all the birds are in their pens most of them are paired up but we have no eggs or babies yet
in another week about another seven or eight days we'll have eggs and then another 18 days after
that our baby boom will start and we'll have our last round of babies before the end of the year.