Breeding a Racing Pigeon

Where does the greatest influence come from when breeding a winning pigeon? Does it come from the sir or the dam? Some pigeon fanciers believe that the winning genes are passed from sir to Son directly, and there are a small amount of fanciers think the opposite and think the winning genes come from the dam. How do we decide? Some fanciers who fly the Widowhood system whereby they only race the cock pigeons, while their hens are kept in a separate loft and stay at home not being raced, proving that the widowhood fanciers believe the cock pigeons carry the winning genes

from son to son. There are fanciers who like to race their hens in the long distance races, when looking at these race results it shows that the hens win more than their fair share of races so this does not support widowhood fanciers way of thinking.

When the cock pigeon and hen pigeon mate the cock and hen produce the same number of cells to produce a fledgling, these cells are called a chromosome, looking at a chromosome under a microscope looks like a small rod these rods carry a number of genes from both the cock and hen. The cock supplies 31 of these cells to its sperm, the hen produces 31 cells to her egg when these two sets of cells unite, 62 cell start to grow and produce a hatching fledgling. There are rare occasions when the hen only produces 30 cells the cell that is not produced is always the sex gene and when this happens the egg hatches and the new fledgling carries the sex genes of the cock pigeon nothing from the hen.

A very important point about sex in pigeons is that the cock and the hen produce a sex gene via sperm and egg, the fledgling that grows inside the egg with the same amount of cells from the cock and hen will always be a Cock Pigeon. When the hen fails to produce a sex gene or cell, the fledgling will be a Hen pigeon. The term we use for this is sex linkage, all of this information can help us a lot when it comes to breeding and paring up the cock and hen.

Now taking all of this in formation into consideration this must show the sex factors of the sire do not descend in a straight line to the son in fact it would go in a criss-cross direction from sire to daughter then back to grand-children. We now know why in some instances the grandchildren of our best winners surpass their sons in greatness.