The Blackburn Strain of North American High Flying Rollers

Blue Offside Bald Blackburn cock
My top producing Blackburn stock cock

I had mentioned earlier, in the post about crested rollers, that I had written quite a bit about A.D. Blackburn and his strain of North American High Flying Rollers, and that it did not save properly. So here goes again ...
As I had briefly stated in one of my early entries on here, I have, for the last twenty or so years been keeping and flying a small family of Blackburn Rollers. Like the majority of the rest of my pigeons, I keep all my Blackburn breeders in individual coops during the breeding season. I say 'the majority', because I also have a small loft of Utility Kings for the purpose of breeding squabs and I keep those in an open loft apart from some special pairs that I am using to multiply what I think is my best breeding stock. With as many pairs of breeders (not just rollers) as I have in individual coops, it can be a lot of work during the breeding season to take care of the pigeons each day, but the reward for the extra time and effort is that there is no question about what bird is off of what parents. The fact is, contrary to the popular notion that pigeons are faithful to their mates, pigeons are actually pretty notorious for infidelity, especially when new pairs are introduced to an open loft. If you don't keep your breeders in individual coops, your breeding records really aren't worth the paper that they are written on and you are really just kidding yourself about the seriousness of your breeding program. Even if you really don't have the time or resources to breed all your pairs in individual coops (it can be pretty expensive and time consuming to put together a good set up of individual coops complete with all the waterers, feeders, grit cups, nest boxes, perches, etc), an effort should really be made by all pigeon breeders to at least keep their best pairs in individual coops since these are most likely the source of the majority of future stock birds. And it is better still, to set a long term goal of housing all your breeders in individual coops, even if it's a goal that you have to work slowly toward. You'll thank yourself in the future for making this type of effort, since it is the only way to really establish a proper breeding program.

Going back to the subject of my Blackburns, they all descend from one single old pair that an old timer had left 25 or so years ago. And what is more, they have been kept completely pure. This has been a rather difficult task to accomplish, especially since for the first few years I had them, all of my stock birds was very, very closely related. The original pair I started with was a Black Bellneck cock, a really grand deep roller in the air, and a Blue Check Badge hen, also a great roller, who also just so happened to be a daughter of the Bellneck cock. Not only was the cock 11 years old and the hen 8 years old, but from what I'd been told, they had not been allowed to breed successfully and the old boy who owned them, had been throwing their eggs away for several seasons and they represented the last pair of their kind. To aggravate the situation even worse, after only raising 5 youngsters from the pair, I went out one morning and found the Blue Check Badge hen dead. While this was a setback, fortunately, three of the five offspring of the pair were hens, which gave me three pair to work with the second season: two pairs of full siblings and a father-daughter pair. All of the Blackburns that I've bred since come down from these three pairs, which were not only closely related, but already linebred. As you can imagine, in having started with such a small core of birds, there is very little variation from one bird to the next in this family. 95% of them are Blue Bars in Baldheads, Badges, Bellnecks, Saddles and "Splashes", as well as quite a number of self whites. The vast majority are bull eyed due to the predominance of white markings in the family. One disadvantage to this is that it is sometimes to difficult to tell birds apart wile they are in the kit, which requires more effort to identify who is really doing what in the air.

As far as I know, they are the last members of the Blackburn strain, despite the fact that they once existed in great numbers in the United States. As I don't have many other pigeon fanciers living nearby and I'm not in the business of selling pigeons, to date, I have never sold, traded, nor given away a pigeon of this bloodline.

As a general rule of thumb, they are highfliers with a little bit of endurance and will fly for 5 or 6 hours regularly if fed properly and are good deep rollers, averaging about 50+ feet at maturity. They are a little less frequent than my other North Americans, but unlike most other families of North Americans occasionally exhibit aerial behavior that is much more similar to that of the old Central Asiatic Rollers and some families of Oriental Rollers, in that they will on occasion exhibit sudden bursts of fast dives down to lower altitudes and often come down in a peculiar corkscrew type maneuver. Early breeders of North American Highflying Rollers often remarked about this and other types of behavior that had been inherited from their early crosses to "Oriental Sharpshooters", Bukowinas and other pigeons which are among the North American's ancestors, but typically, these types of performances were not selected for and gave way completely for the standard of the "long roll". Like some of the other old strains, they also have seem to have a pretty good homing ability (believe it or not, some of the early Cleveland breeders of Endurance type strains of this breed actually used to race their rollers for short distances - sometimes out to 30 miles). None of these characteristics came as a surprise.

Self White squeaker with crest

One surprise that did take place was that during the fourth season, one day I looked at a pair of squabs and noticed that one of them was showing what was clearly a small shell crest. Over that breeding season, more and more of these crested birds began to turn up. At first, this seemed quite peculiar, but it was later brought to my attention that during the 1920's and 1930's, A.D. Blackburn had produced some birds with crests and it is also my understanding that the Casperson Rollers, which had similar origins to the Blackburns, also sometimes produced crests. For the most part, early breeders sought to weed this characteristic out, but as I discussed in my last entry on this subject, these characteristics which existed in the parent breeds of our birds, do crop up from time to time and tend to be easily exposed by inbreeding and linebreeding. You can see some examples of crested Blackburns with this post, as well as some without the crest.

A Blue Bar Bald squeaker with a crest. This is the
clutch mate of the white crested squeaker.

While I don't intentionally perpetuate this characteristic, approximately 35% of my Blackburns are crested and the vast majority carry the crest gene. Since my interest in Rollers is really strictly in performance, though I do appreciate the cosmetics of pigeons, I have not made much effort to maintain, nor eliminate this feature in the bloodline. If I did seek to eliminate it or sought to perpetuate only it, many fine rollers would have to be wasted in the process of doing so. As well, since the gene for the crest is a recessive, it is essentially hidden in its heterozygous form until breeding tests can establish its existence. 

A pretty typical clutch of Blackburn squabs. One is
crested (rear), the other plain headed (foreground).
Their sire is plain headed Blue Bald and the dam a
crested bull eyed White Self.

In the photos above, are a pair of crested squeakers - clutch mates. Even though both are crested, their parents are both plain headed. They are by the Blue Offside Bald cock at the top of the page and a fabulous Blue Bar Splash hen that is quickly establishing herself as my #1 stock hen.

In the photo at left is a very typical pair of Blackburn squabs; almost identical save that one is crested and the other is not. Their parents are a plain head Blue Bar Bald cock and a Crested White hen that was a real wizard in the air. As you can see from the photos, while the type and markings are pretty consistent, you never quite know if they will come out crested or plain headed (though if you breed two crested ones together, all the offspring will be crested).

The crested white self at the right is the dam of the clutch of squabs above.

As far as how this strain of North American Highflying Rollers was developed, they were originated around the turn of the century by Dr. A.D. Blackburn of Cuba, Ohio, a prominent early breeder.

Arthur Dale Blackburn was born on October 7th, 1879 at Lebanon, Ohio, the only child of Thomas H. Blackburn and Eva Bowars. Originally trained as a chemist and druggist, in 1888, his father turned to training race horses as a profession and after saving enough money, started his own race horse farm at the family farm at Lebanon. T.H. Blackburn was extremely successful in the race horse business and traveled throughout the United States and Canada racing his horses. Included among his successes were top places and winners at the Kentucky Derby. He also bred top quality Holstein cattle, Duroc pigs and Silver Laced Wyandotte chickens with immense success. In the "History of Clinton County, Ohio" published in 1915, several pages are devoted to Thomas H. Blackburn and his family, about which it is remarked "The man who tries to raise the standard of the live stock of his community helps to raise the standard of that community ... Thomas H. Blackburn of Blanchester is one of these men". In fact, T.H. Blackburn was so successful as an animal breeder that in addition to acquiring several large farms to expand his interests, he also managed to send his son to Cincinnati where he graduated from the Miami Medical College with top honors. In 1902, Mrs. Blackburn (nee Bowars) died. A year later, T.H. Blackburn re-married, taking Della Schumtz, only six years younger than his son, as his second wife. His new wife was equally interested in animal breeding, especially the cattle and chickens.

Meanwhile, Arthur D. Blackburn had relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to establish his medical practice. A news item in the "Medical Herald" tells how he saved a "presumably dead" suicide victim by bleeding his patient of a quart of blood and injecting an equal amount of saline solution in its stead, after all other efforts had failed. Amazingly, he was only eighteen years old at the time.

By 1902, Arthur had decided to leave Philadelphia. In their May 1902 issue, the "Medical News" reported that he had relocated back to Cuba, Ohio and intended to open an office there. On May 18th, the Ohio State Medical Board issued him a state medical license. His motivation for the move appears to have been a matrimonial one, for on June 4th, 1902, he was married to Bessie Clevinger. Inside of the next few years, the couple had two daughters and Arthur's medical practice was successful.

An advertisement for a cattle sale
A.D. Blackburn held in 1919

Despite this, Dr. A.D. Blackburn appears to have only spent a decade as a practicing medical doctor and was far more interested in following in his father's footsteps, for by 1909, it was reported that he had officially retired as a doctor and had moved to one of his father's farms at Cuba, Ohio. Like his father, he engaged in livestock breeding, mainly Holstein Cattle, Duroc pigs and Langshan chickens, all of which he became very well known for. He was apparently very well to do at this point, for various livestock magazines of the day clearly illustrate that he was not afraid to invest very large sums of money into his breeding. As one example, at a livestock sale in Owensville, Ohio in November of 1919, he had the highest bid of the auction and paid $820 for a Holstein bull. This was in a time when the average man made about $1200 a year.

In the meantime, he also found time to serve as the County Clerk of Clinton County and also developed a livestock spray that was designed to rid barns and poultry houses of "flies, lice and other insects", for which he was granted a U.S. patent in the Fall of 1919. In 1921, he took an interest in teaching and also later served as a school principal and later a school superintendant. In 1937, he was appointed as the County Health Commissioner and held the position for the next nineteen years. A.D. Blackburn died at the age of 77 years old on July 17th, 1957.

By about 1920, A.D. Blackburn had established himself as one of the top Roller fanciers in the country, in spite of the fact that he was not only still a relatively young man compared to his counterparts, but also the fact that he lived in the same general geographic area as most of those counterparts. Included among his competitors were fanciers like Charles Lienhard, F.S. Schlicter, F.W. Liebchen, Herman Baum, Richard Krupke (about the same age as Blackburn) and others.

In spite of the fact that Blackburn lived fairly close to the greatest Roller hotbed in the United States, he actually obtained his start from George "Old Man" Stevens of Toronto, Canada who is believed to have been the oldest roller fancier living in Canada at the time and who, around 1890, became the first fancier in North America to import rollers from Whittingham in England. It was also Stevens who is believed to have started the practice of cross-breeding Oriental or Asiatic Rollers to Birmingham Rollers for the purpose of increasing the depth of the roll as far back as the early 1880's. As T.H. Blackburn routinely raced horses in Toronto, it is generally assumed that his son's acquisition of rollers from Stevens probably coincided with one of these trips before Arthur went to medical school while he was in his teens. At the same time, it is also known that the birds he secured from Stevens were supposedly composed of a majority of Whittingham blood. Around this same time, it is also notable that two other soon-to-be famous Roller fanciers were also securing breeding stock from Stevens, namely Ole C. Casperson of Neenah, Wisconsin and J.V. McAree of Toronto. As McAree was the primary source for James E. Graham's breeding stock, this ultimately means that the Blackburn, Casperson and Fireball strains, all have a common origin.

Just like the Casperson and Fireball strains, the Blackburn strain also enjoyed immense popularity in the United States, but also slipped into relative obscurity and has practically become extinct.

~ Jack Chambers

What's the deal with the crested Rollers?

 Some people have asked me "what the deal is" with the crested Blue Bar Splash bird in one of my earlier posts. "Rollers don't come crested", they say.

While it may be true that crests are not considered a breed characteristic and are not generally deemed as "acceptable" in Birmingham Rollers, they have been known to exist. Check out Thom Hatcher's book "The Last of the Greats" (1979) and you will see two peak crested Creams that were bred by the late Chan Grover in the late 1940's. At left, you'll also see a photo of a Cream Check with a peak crest bred in 1949 that was related to the two Cream Bars. They came out of some birds that Bob Evans had bred. While Evans was accused of everything under the sun because he promoted the idea of exhibiting rollers to help popularize them and he could be considered the "Father of Modern Roller Shows", Evans was a man known to have had a very high moral code. In addition to flying great kits of Birmingham Rollers and being an exceptional pigeon breeder, Evans swore that after the 1941 formation of the Pensom Roller Club, he kept only rollers that descended from the Pensom imports. Melbourne C. "Bob" Evans was a sports coach in his early years and later in life, a basketball referee. At Stanford University, where he spent most of his career, he was known as "Fighting Bob" Evans due to his straight-shooting ways and fiery temper. His reaction to public accusations that he was in the business of selling pigeons and especially, accusations that he was crossbreeding his Pensom Rollers (which was a violation of PRC rules) often culminated in some relatively hot public exchanges with his accusers and some incredibly intense public rivalries with his detractors. For a time, Bill Pensom was even among those detractors and took numerous public lashings from Evans. That being said, on the issue of showing rollers, near the end of his life (he died in 1964), Evans wrote an article entitled "Regarding The Matter of Roller Shows" (APJ, May 1960) where he showed just how straight a shooter he was by admitting that his detractors on the Show vs. Fly Controversy, who had expressed concerns about the potential detrimental effects of the "Show Craze" on the performance of the Birmingham Roller, had been more right than wrong. It takes a big man to publicly admit that he was wrong and this was just an example of the sort of character that Bob Evans had. Putting it another way, if the crested Cream Bars that Chan Grover had bred were off two Evans birds, they can be assumed to have been pure Birmingham Rollers. (Note: Some breeders have said publicly that the Crested Creams were actually birds that Chan had photographed in Bill Pensom's loft while he was stationed in England during WW2. That is not true. Note the band # denoted in the Crested Cream photo from Chan Grover's personal scrapbook; CBG #110-49. That was Chandler's personal band, not Pensom's. This confusion arises from the fact that Chan's scrapbook contained many photos that he did take at Bill Pensom's lofts during the war, but the scrapbook was not exclusively composed of such photos).  Some other breeders (including some who should  probably know better) have stated that the Crested Creams must have been bred out of birds that Chan had from his mentor, Les Manz, but that is also not true. I knew Chan Grover myself and he specifically told me that these "Crested Creams" came out of Evans birds and typically arose when he bred them too close for several generations in a row. Most of them were good sound rollers in the 25 to 30 feet range, he said.

Other breeders, including English fanciers, have also occasionally bred what are assumed to be "purebred" Birmingham Rollers with crests and other structural features. For the record, the shell crest is a simple recessive characteristic to the so-called "wild-type" or non-crested head, while in the chain of dominance, the peak crest is recessive to not only the "wild-type" head, but also the shell crest. As these were pre-existing mutations (ie. they were already known to exist in some established breeds) when the Birmingham Roller was created in the mid 1800's, it is likely that some of the ancestral breeds of the Birmingham Roller had these characteristics and were mostly weeded out by early breeders. To a large degree, this was also true of feathered feet in the breed, but THAT is another story.

That being said, it is important to point out that the Blue Splash with the shell crest in my post is NOT a Birmingham Roller, but is in fact, a North American High Flying Roller of the A.D. Blackburn strain.


I had written quite a bit about A.D. Blackburn, but since it did not save properly and was subsequently lost, it will have to wait for another time.

Until then,


~ Jack Chambers

Flying Roller Pigeons At Sunset To Prevent Hawk Losses

I came across an interesting video put together by Danny Joe Humphrey some time ago that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed by the Roller fraternity. As some of you probably know, Mr. Humphrey is mostly well known as a breeder of Color Pigeons or German Toys and used to produce an internet show called "Color Pigeons and More". He also breeds and flies a few rollers from James Turner.

 

Like everyone else, Mr. Humphrey has suffered many roller losses at the hands of Birds of Prey. What he had to say on the subject, despite it being only a very short video and having only a few hundred views, is rather important and could very well save thousands of valuable rollers if Roller breeders would bother to listen.

 

 

In the video, Mr. Humphrey explains that in his youth, when Crow hunting was a popular past time, it was well known that the best time to hunt crows was when the birds were getting ready to roost for the night, about an hour before sunset. At this time in the day, they started to settle in for the evening and were very easily hunted because of their inactivity during those hours.

 

Mr. Humphrey also deduced that hawks and falcons share similar roosting habits to crows and therefore also start become inactive near sunset. He then goes on to explain that he has been flying his kit at sunset and has not, in that time experienced a bird of prey attack on his kit.

 

Now I firmly believe that Mr. Humphrey is on to something here.

 

I have bred and flown Rollers of several breeds, as well other types of flying pigeons since the 1970's. My first problems with Birds of Prey began in late 1988 and reached devastating proportions by the Fall of 1990. During the 1990's I tried everything under the sun to try to either reduce, or least offset the losses in an effort to actually salvage something resembling a holdover kit. Some years those efforts included simply flooding the sky with as many young birds each year as I could. In 1988, I banded 50 or so young birds, which increased to 75 in 1989 and to 125 in 1990. By 1991, I was breeding 150 youngsters per year. By 1994, that number had increased to 350 young birds per year. That's a lot of young birds to try to fly out, but it seemed that the more birds I bred, the more birds I lost and come the next breeding season, no matter how many young birds I had bred, I still only had a few dozen of them left. Generally speaking, the best performers always "got it first" from the falcons. And what's more, I wasn't the only one suffering from those types of losses. Every breeder I spoke to was experiencing the same type of troubles. Contrary to the claims of non-roller fliers, these hawk losses were not simply limited to the migration season.

 

Interestingly enough, based on my best recollections of those years, the vast majority of my losses took place either early in the morning (when Big Bitch Cooper was patiently waiting for the first kit to go out the door) or at the height of the afternoon. I cannot recall a single incident of a bird of prey attack having started within the hour before sunset, though I do have a few memories of Peregrine Falcons pushing kits up "into the pins" in the very late afternoon to try to wear them down. I never lost many this way, because as twilight rolled around, they always seemed to break off their attacks and leave the areas. 95% of the time I could drop the kit as dusk rolled in and even when I couldn't, I never lost any to overflies unless they were squeakers and not completely used to flying at excessive heights.

 

Needless to say, my personal experience certainly jives with Mr. Humphrey's suggestion to fly your kit at sunset to avoid hawk losses.

 

So what do ornithology experts have to say on the subject of Bird of Prey roosting behavior?

 

First things first, there are two basic groups of birds that exist due to evolution and adaptation. The largest group are those which are considered "Diurnal", which is according to one source defined as "birds that are principally active during the day with all major life activities, including courtship, nesting, feeding, preening and other behaviors. Most species of birds, including songbirds, hummingbirds, waterfowl and raptors other than owls are considered diurnal. Diurnal birds roost and sleep at night and become active again when the sun rises." In contrast to this is the small group which are Nocturnal, which are principally active at night. While Owls are nocturnal, most birds of prey fall into the diurnal category. As well, though many diurnal bird species often adopt nocturnal habits during their migrations and have been witnessed flying at high altitudes during the darkest of night, as Raptors like hawks and falcons rely on daytime thermal currents to migrate, they do not adopt these types of nocturnal migration habits that species like Canada Geese do. In fact, it is believed that many diurnal birds often travel great distances at night while migrating as a means to help avoid predation by Birds of Prey.

 

That being said, Peregrine Falcons have been known to feed their young cached kills late at night, though no research has uncovered them actually hunting at night.

 

This being said, it is a scientific fact that the nemesis of our Rollers is mainly a diurnal bird, and the same as pigeons, have a natural instinct to go to roost for the night.

 

The question then becomes, at what point in the day does this instinct to go to roost take its effect?

 

According to scientific research, the answer to this question may actually differ by species.

 

In a study by Roth and Lima published in 2007, entitled "The predatory behavior of wintering Accipiter hawks: temporal patterns in activity of predators and prey", it was noted that the roosting behavior of the Sharp-Shin Hawk and the Cooper's Hawk differed greatly in that "During the winters of 1999–2004, twenty-one sharp-shinned hawks (A. striatus) and ten Cooper’s hawks (A. cooperii) were intensively radio tracked in rural and urban habitats in western Indiana, USA. Cooper’s hawks left roost before sunrise and usually returned to roost around sunset, while sharp-shinned hawks left roost at sunrise or later and returned to roost well before sunset."

 

You can read the full paper here.

 

While it appears that the Cooper's Hawk may hunt later into the day than the Sharp-Shinned Hawk, they still seek out their roosts by sunset. It is suggested that the reason the smaller Sharp-Shinned Hawk may seek out the protection of its roost earlier than the Cooper's, is that due to its smaller size, it is far more vulnerable to attack by Owls which start to become active during dusk.

 

Unfortunately, while there are numerous studies about the hunting behavior of Hawks and Falcons, very little research has apparently been done to document their peak hours of hunting. 

 

That being said, Mr. Humphrey's suggestion to fly your kit around sunset and his experience doing so does seem to jive with what research has been done on the subject. At bare minimum, the suggestion is good enough to see if it helps cut losses and in fact, I've been utilizing the advice for a long time now with some success now. The only hawk encounter I've seen was a female Cooper who cut up one of my hens in an outdoor individual pair coop. The hen is recovering and the hawk has not returned. Knock on wood.

 

Obviously, some roller fanciers will be a little leery at first to fly their kits relatively late in the day, but just the same as the hawks do, our rollers have a natural urge to go to roost at night. Provided you cut the feed a little to insure that they only fly for 15 to 20 minutes, the risk of loss would be a very minimal one until the birds get used to flying at this time.

 

That being said, it would still be best to train your squeakers at a more reasonable time in the day to reduce the risk for those that always seem to insist on ranging away from the loft a great distance at first from spending the night out on a rooftop somewhere. Once the young kit is used to flying a fancier could gradually start to get them more used to flying later in the day.

 

Try it; it may just save those good ones for you.

 

~ Jack

 

 

 

 

 

My other two families of Rollers

As I mentioned earlier, I have six different families of Rollers that I keep here and breed in individual pair pens. In previous posts, I've covered four of these.

The fifth family is one that I've had the longest, which I secured from Gary Millar. Gary was a somewhat active competition flier in the 1980's and had his start from Dan J. Ouellette. The birds Gary started with included a few that Dan O. had bred himself including a Red Check son off what was known as the "Big Dummy" (IRA #14601, off #7998 x one of the red check "Sister Hens" #370) bred by Joe Kiser, as well as a 1978 black-banded Tort. hen bred by Thomas Hatcher from a pair of original Stan Plona birds, a Dark Check Self hen bred by Joe Borges that was old 514 bloodlines and also a White Tic cock that was a kit bird that was actually bred by Donald Ouellette. The White Tick was from the Ouellette "Old Stock" which were birds they had started with back when they were kids in the 1960's.  In 1985 or 1986, Gary flew a Dark Check Self cock known locally as "The Bat" that may have been the highest velocity roller I have ever seen in my life. To these birds, Gary did not add a single feather and the end result was a family that today, is exclusively hard color selfs. This family is somewhat difficult to control and tend to be later developers, but are very high velocity rollers. Photo at the left shows a young cock in the kit from this family.

The sixth family I have are mostly descended from birds bred down from birds from the late Roger O. Baker of Arkansas. Roger had his start in the 1930's when he was a kid, from Russ Harter, a very famous roller man from Cleveland, Ohio. In later years, Roger became very well known for his famous Blue Lace Rollers, about which he later wrote: "In 1958 I received the gene from Carl Grafe of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in the form of a black self roller cock with a real light horn colored beak. The color was the shiniest black that I had ever seen. I mated the bird with a black hen also with a horn colored beak. They produced one pair of youngsters: one was a black self and the other an odd color that I called a "blue lace". All feathers except neck feathers were the color of a light blue bar (without the bars) and all of the main feathers were laced with a dun color.  Just about that time I also knew very little about genetics. (And at this time, not much more). But with the help of Mr. Grafe and Joe Quinn, I maintained the reduced gene in some of my bloodline." In this Baker family (which actually has some crosses into James Turner birds), I have mostly Recessive Reds, Dark Check Selfs and a few variations of Dominant Opals and other rare colors from the Turner side. The bird at right is a nice apple-bodied Baker cock.

My Dilute Birmingham Rollers

One of the things I have been reading and hearing about almost since the day I started out in Birmingham Rollers way back in the mid 70's was that yellows and other dilutes were not good rollers. And it was claimed; that they couldn't be good rollers because of some sort of inherent genetic weakness connected with the dilute gene. Now as anyone knows, that's actually a bit of sort of malarkey because it defies common sense and the rules of basic genetics, but the fact remains that historically, nobody to date seems to have been able to put up a whole 20 bird kit of these pigeons where every last one of them rolled straight and true. But we should keep in mind, that this is a pretty tough feat even to do with a bunch Dark Checks. And the fact is, I've seen some pretty good yellow rollers in my time, but there was just never a lot of them going around and you simply saw them here and there. I've also seen some nice Ash Yellows in Check, (Cream) Bar and also Spreads and Grizzles, as well as some Silvers and Duns. But again, there just never were a lot of them, and it was more of a "one here and one there" sort of thing. Since putting up a whole kit of these dilutes seems to be something of a major breeding challenge (and I really like a challenge!), not long ago, I decided that I would really like to see if it's possible to put up a whole twenty bird kit of dilutes that all show proper rolling style. Needless to say, I am currently actively working on building up a little family of dilute rollers out here in the Pacific North West.

This is one of those things that when you do it, you do it small with the idea of using the best you have to do it.

The bird in the photo is a nice Yellow Check hen that I am breeding from this year.


As always, check out the nice pigeon book below.

https://www.createspace.com/6314296

Welcome to the Roller Pigeon Blog

Welcome to the Roller Pigeon blog! In the future, I hope to begin to share my long time fascination with Roller Pigeons with you. I have been breeding and flying these birds for almost 40 years now and am anxious to share my experiences and many trials and tribulations about them with others who are interested.

I keep all my breeders in individual coops and have six different separate families of roller pigeons which I breed and fly. These include the following:

A family of North American High Flying Rollers that trace back to the late Lester J. Manz of Riverside, New Jersey, via the late Chandler B. Grover of Elk Grove, California. Mr. Manz's birds traced back to some of the first rollers that were ever imported to North America via the loft of Arthur C. Karp of Cleveland, Ohio who was breeding them in the 1880's, as well as some Whittingham Rollers brought to New Jersey by an English Roller fancier named Hargrove in the 1920's. This family is mostly Recessive Red and Recessive Yellow Spangles and have been kept as pure as possible since Mr. Manz crossed the Karp birds with the Hargrove-Bygraves Whittingams back in the 1930's. They are bred to fly high and for very long periods, as well as to roll very deep. I have had this family since 1990.

I also keep a family of old Blackburn-Colley Whittinghams which were a popular bloodline in the 1920's and 1930's. These Blackburn-Colley Rollers are said to be closely related to the old Casperson Rollers which were popular during the same period. These are exclusively Blue Baldheads, Blue Splashes, Bellnecks, etc. and some white selfs. They are mostly bull eyed. Quite a number of them come shell crested, like the kit bird you see in the photo to the left. These all descend from one single old pair that an old timer had left 30 or so years ago and have been kept completely pure, which was difficult since for the first few years I had them, all of my stock birds were full siblings! The original pair was a Blue Bellneck cock (a grand roller in the air) and a Blue Check Badge hen, also a great roller, who happened to be a daughter of the Bellneck cock. I had remember reading somewhere about crests in the Blackburns back in the 20's, but it actually took about three years for the first one to turn up despite all the full sibling matings. It is also notable that the Caspersons, to which they are distantly related, have also been known to occasionally produce crests. These Blackburns are deep rollers and high fliers, but do not fly for as long a period as the Les Manz birds. As far as I know, they are probably the only Blackburn Rollers still left in existence today.

Next, I have a family of old American Rollers that trace back to an old timer named Fred Scouzafava in Portland in the 1950's. Previously, Scouzafava lived in New York and had bought out the roller stud of Jack LaRue, a prominent breeder in the 1920's and 1930's. Back in the 1980's, these birds were very common in the Pacific North West and came in all colors and were pearl eyed with clean beaks and eye ceres. You don't see them much anymore, though some breeders are still raising "American Rollers" with fat heads and necks for show purposes that much like their so-called "Pensom Show Roller" counterparts, seem to have little in common with what their original developers actually intended. These that I have are mostly Ash Red Badges, Balds, Beards, Saddles and Offsides. A few Blues - not many. Most of them have a ribbon-tail. At one time, these birds came in all colors. They kit better than the Blackburn and Manz birds and are sometimes pretty deep rollers, but are sometimes too frequent for their own good.  The photo on right shows a pair of squeakers headed to the kit loft.

Even though these three old strains are now much out of vogue among most Roller fanciers, I keep them because they need to be preserved.

Next time, I will talk a little about the other three bloodlines I have here in my lofts.

I also collect pigeon books and highly recommend the following book on pigeons which you can obtain from Amazon.com.  http://www.amazon.com/Fancy-Pigeons-First-Pigeon-Classics/dp/1533556008/

http://www.amazon.com/Fancy-Pigeons-First-Pigeon-Classics/dp/1533556008/