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