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| Rob Grogan |
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Rob and Pigeons |
I have been breeding pigeons for about 40 years starting off with common homing pigeons and through the years I have kept most breeds. My first english short face tumbler was given to me by my grandfather who strayed the bird in with his racing team.
I was only about 10 years old and I remember how small and different it was from my other common pigeons. This bird became my favourite bird back then, all these years later they are still my favourite and now the only breed I keep.
I have been breeding english short face tumblers seriously for the past 22 years and over the last 6 or 7 years I have introduced some new colours into the breed, I now have short face tumblers in black, blue, silver, mealy, cream, opal, andalusian, reduced, black agates & whites all these colours still need work but they have type and are improving every year as I selectively back cross.
I am very pleased with the progress I have made, even though I enjoyed creating new colours and the challenge to improve the quality, Almonds have always been my main objective and most importantly the other colours are kept separate from the almond breeding stock.
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| Robs experiance with almond breeding |
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Almond short face tumbler breeding has always been a very debatable subject, through my years of breeding experience and through many genetic talks with other fanciers I believe the ground colour of the almond should be a rich yellow in colour but not the colour of a yellow but the colour of a deroy.
The deroy colour is a colour that is between red & yellow the young are short down in the nest like an almond but are not dilute the colour can vary from a lighter shade of red to a rich yellow the latter being the more desirable.
The best deroys that I have bred have come from red agate to almond matings, sometimes this mating can produce almonds with bad ground colour, too much recessive red coming through and that is why kites are very important. A kite has only one single dose of recessive red and helps to create the right balance of red in almond, too much recessive red will give you red almonds with the wrong ground colour sometimes more of pinkish ground colour.
I try not to use yellows in my almond breeding as I believe dilute should not be in almond, yellow is a red in its dilute form and as I have stated above about too much red, when dilute is in the mix it can make it very hard to distinguish yellow agates from deroy agates and you need to know what you are using for your matings, a kite deroy mating will breed almonds, a kite to a yellow agate will produce golden dun, red & yellow agates and kites, you will never get a deroy or almond from this mating.
I remember reading years ago the best remedy for breeding almonds is by continuously mixing the colours and I have found this to be true, always mate to breed almonds kite-deroy, almond- red agate, almond- kite, almond-deroy and almond-almond and if you use the young short face tumblers from these almond matings and mix you will have better luck at getting the right combination.
Breeding Almond short face tumblers is not easy, even when you have the right mix you will not always get the ideal colour bird; almond splash is also a valuable colour I have found. An almond splash is a heavily spangled almond lacking recessive red, I have mated these to red agates and I have bred some of my best coloured almonds from these matings.
Below are a couple of pics of a 2005 bred almond cock bird, this bird was bred from an almond splash hen, as a young bird this pigeon had excellent break in feather, now as an older bird he has started to darken in his tail and some flights.
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Below are some must read articles about almond breeding |
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