La Rue

I have a family of old American Rollers that trace back to an old timer named Fred Scouzafava. Scouzafava lived in New York and had bought out the roller stud of John "Jack" H. LaRue, a prominent breeder in the 1920's and 1930's. LaRue called his lofts "Yankee Roller Lofts" and sometimes called his birds "Bucowina Birminghams" because he had crossed Bukovina Rollers with his Rollers to increase their depth. LaRue got the Bukovinas, as well as many valuable Birmingham Rollers from Lee S. Crandall who was a famous zoologist. In his travels to buy zoo animals, Crandall scoured the world for the finest performing pigeons he could find. It is known that Crandall imported rollers directly from Whittingham in England. It is said that Crandall received the Bukovinas from an Austrian animal importer in 1915. Fred Scouzafava routinely advertised the LaRue birds in the American Pigeon Journal, often calling them "Bucowinas". Quite a number of these seemed to have wound up in Portland and Seattle where they took on the name "American Roller".

Back in the 1960's, 1970's and 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 or hear of them much anymore, though some breeders are still raising "American Rollers" with big heads and necks for show purposes that much like their so-called "Pensom Show Roller" counterparts, seem to have very little in common with what their original flying breeders actually intended.

These that I have are mostly Ash Red Badges, Balds, Beards, Saddles and Offsides. A few Blues - not many. Most of the Reds have a ribbon-tail.

At one time, these birds came in all colors.  LaRue was mainly known for having good Black Badges, Black Mottles and Almonds, which was apparently the most common colors in the original Bukovinas that Crandall gave to LaRue. They kit better than the Blackburn and Manz birds and are sometimes pretty deep rollers, but are sometimes too frequent for their own good.

A pair of LaRue squeakers headed to the kit loft