The Pigeons

The Pigeons

By Inge Fagerli

I had pigeons when I was younger and some years ago the urge came on me to start over. So I did. My wife is my partner and she owns one of the lines we breed. We own all together of course, but this one is hers. Get the idea?

We keep racing homers exclusively. I have several "lines" or "families" in my loft.

Vermote, Aarden, Porsmose, Janssen, Devos, Marcelis, Kirkpatrick, Fabry

These families are not given much importance and are bred according to characteristics rather than origin. Later I will come back to the pattern we breed by, for those who will be interested in such information.

My main interest regarding pigeons is with genetics and heritage, trying to breed the better racer. Aren't we all into that one.

My first loft was initially populated with birds given to me by other fanciers. I was six years at the time, and no great emphasis was put on racing ability. I liked white birds and reds the most. I even caught some feral pigeons that had nice colours. In time my father stepped in and helped me, and together we had some good results. This is some time ago, and now I am doing this with my wife's help, but mainly by myself.

I am currently building my population of birds, and my ambitions are not the same as when I was six, I want to do it differently this time around.

I don't, as I mentioned, put very much emphasis on their family names. I breed these birds for their individual traits, not as members of a family. I only have one breeding pair that share a family name. My birds are meant to be Fagerlis and hopefully that will mean something before I take the long "dirtnap". I breed the birds according to a strict breeding program that concentrates relations and characteristics within the lines I work with. My program is currently being tested both in Norway and in USA at two lofts in Indiana state.

I designed my project with inspiration from some great fanciers like Steven van Breemen, Helmut Herder, Frank Mosca and Silvio Mattacchione. These people have written some very interesting stuff about pigeons and I'd recommend anyone with time on their hands to read their articles. I'll put links to their sites on the "Links" section of this site. I put ideas from these articles together with what I already knew and other material I read and the idea came to me; to create a special, structured program and breed the lines according to this in order to breed that "better" bird. This idea gave rise to the program, but this is for specially interested people, I will not go into it yet.

At my loft four lines are currently being developed. I haven't put all my breeders on this project. I have some pairs that haven't proved themselves as breeders yet, so they are on a traditional "best-to-best" breeding program and most are of course breeding racers. The idea is to let the four lines on my program populate my loft. The goal of my project will be to structure the population of birds in my loft in a way that favours racing ability and heritage of such ability. The key to this structure is selection. Given consistent selection and controlled breeding, the genetic structure is bound to equalise. Given the correct selection for racing ability the population will hopefully consist of ever increasingly better pigeons.

Should you be interested in this program, let me know, my e-mail is at the bottom of this page, and we can discuss it further. It might be interesting to put the design to work on more lofts still.

I know it is mandatory to publish great result sheets on personal sites, but thus far I'll have to ask for patience since my results aren't that good yet. I haven't been back in the game for more than a few years, but I have a goal that my presence will be felt within the following two years. I'll let you know when I'm there.