Ask A Roller Question: If you had a stock pair that placed three high
quality birds in your A-kit, of the ten young that they produced in a
breeding season, would you:
a) Pair up the best of the
offspring? b) Keep the original pair together? c) Pair up
father/best daughter and mother/best son?
Similarly, if you
had an average cock on a very good hen that produced a very high quality
performer that is better than either parent, would you?
a)
Keep the original pair together in hopes of producing more like the near-champion
youngster? b) Pair up the near-champion with its opposite sex parent? c)
Pair up the near champ with its best sibling?
Unless I was
just beginning, I would be disappointed that a stock pair only produced
me 3 good birds out of 10. However, it really depends on whom you are
asking and when. If I were still on the steep side of the mountain in
terms of developing my family, and no other pair did better for me, I
would keep breeding from this pair with the intention of implementing a
line-breeding program with the initial objective of finding the best hen
to put back to the Sire cock.
I would then put the Sire cock and
best daughter together and once I have been able to fly about 10 hens
from this pairing, I would pick the best hen and breed it to the Sire. I
would continue this process until I had a homogenous family that most
demonstrated the traits I want to see in my birds based on my
understanding of the Ideal Birmingham Roller. Here is a list of the
primary traits that are required for me to keep a bird with the
intention of breeding from it. 5 Primary Traits:
1. Roll 2.
Velocity 3. Depth 4. Control 5. Type
This is not to
say that other traits are not important, such as kitting, rolling style,
desire to slingshot back to the kit after performing a deep roll,
working as a team, etc. These 5 traits are my benchmark (Primary Traits)
that a bird needs to demonstrate in order for it to be of any use to me.
I
would select birds to pair that produced young birds that demonstrated
the 5 PT’s and produced 60% to 70% high quality offspring also
demonstrating these same traits, I would then work to maintain the level
that my roller family has reached and then look for that special cock
that exceeds the outstanding traits and character of the original sire
and then start the process all over again!
The idea of starting
all over again is that I am never really finished improving my family.
More than likely my rollers will produce a more outstanding cock than
the original Sire, or my views may change, or even my understanding of
the Ideal expands, I begin to see new characteristics in my family that
I want to see run throughout my birds.
I want to continue
improving my family and all that it entails. At a minimum, I do not want
to go backwards, my breeding program needs to maintain the 5 Primary
Traits benchmark, at best; it is a testing ground to improve on these
and more traits by mixing pairs or bringing in an outcross for some
desired feature I decide I want or found lacking in the original Sire.
So
my response to the initial question is “B”; Keep the original pair
together. Together until I had an outstanding daughter to put back on
the Sire, with the hope that this father-daughter pairing would produce
a better daughter thus allowing me to concentrate the good traits while
eliminating the faults that may appear.
As for the second
question, I am of the opinion that a family should be built on a
pre-potent cock. Pairing it with a high quality hen (daughter) in which
to line-breed is the goal.
So if the outstanding offspring was a
cock, I would pair it with its mother to produce an outstanding
daughter, I would then pair this daughter with its father and continue
with the process as explained in response to the first question.
So
my answer is I would choose b) Pair up the near-champion (son) with its
opposite sex parent (mother).
