How I Started In Rollers
As a kid, I got my start with good rollers I purchased from a man named Travis. He had a beautiful loft filled with colorful rollers. There were grizzles, bald-heads, reds and some black and whites.
He wanted to sell the whole bunch and loft for $50. This was a fortune for a kid my age but I was too excited to let the price stop me. I found a lot of soda bottles; borrowed from my mother and sold some junk I had to a guy named Steve. I came up with I think it was $40 and a promise to pay the rest over a couple weeks.
Travis said not to worry about and let me have it all for $40 but I had to move it all myself, fortunately for me he was only about 3 house down from mine, so myself and my childhood friend Sal Estrada (now from Lake Perris, CA) and some others took it apart and dragged it to my house with all the birds.
I was in pigeon heaven for the longest time. There was a red recessive hen that I called ”Red”. This bird is probably the best bird I have ever seen perform. It would bust into a spin you could not believe. This thing would drop 30 to 40 feet and go back to the kit.
At about this same time, I had the great fortune to befriend Dennis Hayes. He would come by this snot nosed kids house look at the birds, offer words of encouragement and let me ride shotgun while we visited Frank Lavin, Bob Scott and Steve Miller.
Bob Scott even once gave me a bird but not before I had to promise that it would be safe and that I loved pigeons, he would ONLY give it to me if I loved them. I said I did and he gave me a lavender and white bird. After some time, it ended up at Sal’s loft where he raised several youngsters from it.
Well as things go, I gave up rollers for girls and it would be some number of years before the rollers started looking better again!
As a kid, I saw the difference between rollers in name only and ROLLERS. The kind that knocks your socks off and you wish you had an entire kit like that. Well when I restarted as an adult in 1993, I already had a vision thanks to these gentlemen as to the kind of rollers I wanted to fly.
Starting Up Again
Before 1993, my childhood friend Sal Estrada had started up again and over this same period he had been trying to get me restarted but the timing just wasn’t right. Not enough room and dealing with kids, you know the story…
In the mean time, Sal was in the process of winning the majority of the flys he participated in or came in a close 2nd or 3rd. He has also placed well in the World Cup by winning his region a few years back.
I was not aware at the time of his reputation and how successful he really was. It was not until he moved to Lake Perris that I attended one of the flys and witnessed the commotion the performance of his birds were creating among the crowd that was there.
Sal developed his family from birds he acquired from Homer Corderre, Richard Apadoca and Dennis Gordair. All from CA. He was able to pair birds that just produced some of the finest rollers around and he has the wins to prove it!
Everyone seemed eager to have anything Sal would part with. Sal rarely sold a bird even when he was offered hundreds of dollars. He was above all that and if you seemed like a trustworthy and honest individual, you were more likely to be “given” a bird or two.
His wife, Emma has been known to serve up the finest menudo anywhere on those cold fall mornings before a fly. She is a hard working hostess preparing a fine Mexican breakfast for many complete strangers. But you never remained that way for long around Sal and Emma.
They are one of the finest couples I know and you will not find a more pleasing person than Sal to represent the sport of Birmingham Rollers. We need more like him.
Well on with the story, finally I moved to a larger home and it had a much larger yard, the kids were older and it seemed like a good time to start pigeons again, so I called Sal and he provided me with 20 young birds from his best stock birds and I flew them hard that first year. From those 20 rollers, 2 cock birds (#903 and 994) rose to the top and became the foundation for everything I currently own and breed from.
After a couple of years I bred hens that clicked with these foundation cocks and started producing the roll I was looking for that I remembered all those years before.
Later on Richard Apadoca suggested I purchase about 50 rollers from Charles Saldana that he did not want any longer. Of these 50 I ended up keeping one un-banded red check hen and flew her for a couple years before I tried her in the breeding loft. This was a hen that clicked with anything I put her on and so tried her on several cocks with excellent results.
Sal once told me I have always been able to pair the right birds together and get good results. Well they don’t always work out but if Sal said it I believe it, as he does not blow smoke up anyone’s… LOL
Over the years, some of the local clubs ask me to join their flys saying I would do very well, but I just thank them for asking but I prefer to just breed them and enjoy the performance in my own backyard.
While I do go on some flys and attend a show here and there just to see what is out there and to see if I am missing anything, I generally like to stay close to home and “play with the birds” as my wife likes to say.
I started calling my rollers “Ruby Rollers” in memory of my mother Ruby who passed away a few years ago as my own tribute to her support of all my endeavors in life.
My breeding philosophy is simple, as this is all it needs to be to raise performance rollers, breed best to best and put quality daughter offspring back to their quality father. This simple practice has been all there is to it.
It is my goal to provide quality Birmingham Rollers to those wanting to start out right or those simply looking for a world-class quality outcross to introduce to their own family.
I have provided a Ruby Roller photo gallery along with descriptions and notes that I found interesting that might add to your enjoyment of the site. Please let me know what you think of the site and how I can improve upon it.
FLY ON!
Tony Chavarria |
