Yes! This is a good sign!
Hello everyone! As you can see the breeding birds are settling in nicely.
There's actually an unexpected little egg under there.
I wasn't expecting eggs for another four or five days, so I'm a little surprised to see
this one. I'm not even sure if it's going to be fertile or not she should lay her second egg
this afternoon and I'll leave them there for a few days just to see if they are fertile,
but it was a little surprising to see an egg there the other day.
If i do let these eggs hatch I will be able to tell if this guy is the father or not.
There was only one cock in the hen's side where this hen was kept in the other loft
and he wasn't a recessive opal like this guy is, so if the babies are recessive opals this guy is
definitely the father, and if they're not then he's definitely not the father. Either way I was pretty
surprised to see that egg. Now we will have a look at the rest of the pigeons today but before we do that
I'd just like to go inside and do something that a few of you guys have asked for; we'll have
a look at a few of my pigeon books and I'll show you the ones that I recommend. Let's go inside now.
Okay, it looks like Friedrich wants to join us for the book reviews, but there are five books that
I'd like to show you guys today, so let's take a look at them one by one. The first are these two
both by Wendell Levi there's The Pigeon and the Encyclopedia of Pigeon Breeds. We'll have a look at
The Pigeon first. This book is really a must-have in your pigeon library, let's take a look inside.
Now if we take a look at the contents you can see this really covers everything: the
history of pigeons, different breeds, anatomy and physiology, it even has a little section on genetics
right through to diseases, diet, housing, even commercial squab production which is something
we don't see too much of these days but there's a whole chapter on that. This book's about 700 pages long
and it covers just about anything you could want to know about pigeons. It is slightly out of date
it was written originally in the 1940s and I think it had a few updates towards the
70s so if you get a later printing it might be slightly more up to date but it is an old book
but despite its age there really haven't been that many other books that really cover as
much as this one does, this is quite a complete and almost all-encompassing book about pigeons.
It can be a bit hard to find it's not in print anymore I don't think, but I've left a link to
some Amazon listings where you can pick one up if you would like, they do tend to go fast, it took me
a while to get this one, so if you'd like it, make sure you pick it up quickly and don't miss out!
And then we have Levi's other book: Encyclopedia of Pigeon Breeds and this one's great, it actually has
full colour pictures. Levi's other book has mostly black and white pictures but this one's full colour.
It's really great, this one's even longer, it's closer to 800 pages. As you can see mine is an
ex-library copy because just like the other one it can be a bit difficult to pick up, so I just
picked up the first one i could find, but if you want to know just about anything about almost any
pigeon breed it's probably in here. Of course this was written by an American and doesn't include
all of the Asian breeds, the Chinese, Indonesian, Filipino breeds that are available these days
and it doesn't have all the Middle Eastern breeds that are becoming more common as well,
but it really has a lot of information and I'd definitely recommend picking up a book like this.
And then we have two books for anybody interested in genetics; there's one by Hollander and if you
know anything about the history of pigeon genetics you know that WF Hollander is pretty much the
father of pigeon genetics, and then we have one by Axel Sell and this one's
about the most up-to-date book you can get at the moment. So let's have a look at Hollander's book.
Now this one, although it is a book it's more like a collection of articles than a cohesive book
but it goes through a lot of the basics of pigeon genetics and also looks into the history of some
of the different genes, how they were discovered and just the research that's gone into pigeon
genetics in the past. Again this book can be a little hard to find but I've heard from
Dr Hollander's son Paul that an e-book is in the works, so I'm not sure if it's going be a paid book or a
free one but hopefully not too much longer and we'll be able to get this on online as well as
in print. But really if genetics is your thing this is the book that you want to pick up, this
comes in English, there's also a German version if you're more comfortable speaking German,
and again this one has full colour pictures and it has information on most of the genes that have
been described at the moment. Some of the, you know, brand new ones that aren't quite as well
understood aren't in here but even some of the most rare genes at least have a little paragraph
in this book. So if genetics is something you're into I'd definitely recommend picking up this one.
Again I'll leave links in the description to all these books. This one can be a little hard to get
on Amazon but it is also available from Axel Sell the author himself so I'll also leave a
link to his page if you can't find it on Amazon. And finally we have Pigeon Health and Management.
And this one is by Dr Colin Walker, now he is an Australian pigeon flyer but he's also an expert
pigeon veterinarian. If you've enjoyed any of the health videos that I've made in the past most of the
information came from Dr Colin Walker and I can't recommend enough the books that he puts out.
Just looking through the contents you can see that this is really a complete
health guide for pigeons, for both racing pigeons and for fancy pigeons, but it's primarily for
racing. Dr Colin Walker is a pigeon flyer who is also a vet, like I said. He actually has a more
recent book out that I haven't picked up yet and I'm really looking forward to it... if anybody would
like to pick me up a gift that's definitely what I'd like to see! Now some of these books are fairly
expensive but really I would say they're worth the price. These books were written by pigeon experts
and they have information that you can't really find anywhere else so like I've been saying I'll
leave links to them in the description if you want to pick them up check on those links. Some
of these books can be hard to find, they're not always in print, but if you can get your
hands on them I would recommend them. All right, let's go back outside and look at the pigeons!
All right we're back!
And these guys have done the same thing, there's an egg there as well...
this is really surprising, they've only been in these boxes for a week now
and I usually like them to lay their eggs after about ten days,
not five or seven like we've got here. I'll have to have a think about what to do with these eggs
we'll see if they're fertile anyway . These guys are going well, she is sitting on the nest
and you think looking at this behaviour that there'd be an egg there
but there's not.
She'll probably lay in a couple of days, but she's just letting me know that I'm
not allowed to have a look, this is her nest, her box, and she doesn't want me here.
this cock bird's much quieter. It might change once there actually
is eggs, but he hasn't tried to fight me yet. he might even be a little bit scared of her!
These guys were both sitting on their nest
but as I opened the door they both hopped off.
Like you guys know these guys were paired up at the old house so they should lay in a couple
of days as well. I'm really hoping we get a little almond or stipper baby out of them
if we're really lucky it'll be the brown/black almond like I'm hoping for
but either way I'm hoping we do get at least one, it'll be nice to have an almond flying this year.
Here we have our nice little red checker hen and her partner up there on the perch
a couple more days, maybe towards the end of the week there should be some eggs in here as well
and not long after that there should be some champion little babies in this nest.
I'm really looking forward to seeing these ones come out. And finally we have this guy
he really is my favourite at the moment, he's so tame he always wants to come and
say hello, and the good news is I have seen a little bit of breeding interest in this box
over the last few days... mostly from him, not so much from the hen, but given that he's been chasing her
it won't be too long until she gives in and we should get some eggs in this nest as well.
This guy really is my favourite though, my wife has named this one Gus so say hello to Gus everybody
he's just so tame so quiet and so friendly
and also very good looking. I'm really happy to have this guy in my breeding box at the moment
and I'm looking forward to his babies too.
I'm planning on keeping him for a while, he's he's probably going to be a permanent stock bird,
so I hope we get some nice little brown daughters out of him, and although this is a colour breeding
project the pedigrees of both of these birds are actually quite good so I am expecting, or at least
hoping that we'll get some good racing results out of their young no matter if they're brown
or blue or black anyway guys that's the end of the video today, thanks for watching, I hope you
liked my book recommendations, there's links in the description so you can have a look at them again.
I definitely recommend those books by Levi, they are a bit expensive but they're also a little hard
to find and full of great information so they're worth the price if you wanted to pick those up.
Anyway guys that's all have a good one and I'll catch you next time!
Yes this is a good sign!
I'm very happy to see this!