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.