“Articles”

By Rick Schoening Proper Feeding of Kit-birds

A lot has been written about how to breed and fly the Birmingham Roller pigeon. Getting the best from your rollers, believe it or not depends on what you feed them and on how much you feed them. The latter seems to really evade most roller fliers in this country. I will try to explain what I feel is the proper way to nourish the roller from the day you wean it.

First off you need to know what grains are best and the simplest to use. First off, red hard spring or winter wheat should be the main staple of flying rollers. Don’t use soft white wheat. It is very low in protein and the birds don’t like it. Another very useful grain is red milo. You can use white milo just as effectively. Austrian Winter Pea, Trapper Pea or any other pea, should seldom be used except when trying to bring your birds into top form for a competition. Grains like, millet, canary seed, vetch, flax and safflower are also sometimes used to soup-up a flat kit. Those grains are loaded with oil and will cause quite a reaction to a kit that has been feed only milo for three weeks.

So lets start off with the weaned babies. I use straight red wheat to feed the youngsters. I’ll add a little milo now and then once they have been flying good for a couple of months. Pretty simple, just red wheat. Now depending on the protein level in the wheat, the flying speed of the birds may be affected. Very high protein wheat, usually grown in a drought year, may cause your birds to race around and fly very strong. The “screwing themselves to the ground” is a phenomenon that drives roller guys nuts. A lot of young kits pull this stunt on you . High protein grain can be your cause. This may be the time to change over to milo.

Milo is very low in oil (fat) and protein. It will cause your birds to fly slower. Not the next day, but after four or five days you will see a noticeable difference. A problem with milo is that the feathers begin to fray and deteriorate after a month on straight milo.

What percentages of protein am I talking about? 12-15% on wheat and 9-10% on Milo. I can’t explain why this minor difference makes a team of rollers fly different, but it does.

A big mistake most roller fliers do is to over feed their fliers. A team of rollers should always hit the floor looking for grain when you rattle the feed can. EVEN after they have had their ration. If they don’t, you can be assured that you gave them too much. Most kits in proper condition will become great actors. These birds always give you the impression that they are starving to death. Don’t let them fool you into feeding them up. One thing you must remember, a roller has to fly slow, in order to roll. You want your kit to fly slow and stall on the turns. This stalling will turn into concert performances once the team develops their roll.

I feed about 50% milo and 50% red wheat for most of the summer and fall. When winter hits a fellow may have to add corn during 10 degrees F.or colder. A rule to remember is that if it is too cold for you to stand out there and watch them fly, then don’t fly them. If they come down with ice build up on their crops, you are pushing it

When a team is put onto straight milo, you will really notice a difference. I like the way a kit flies on milo. The only problem is that the speed of the roll may slow a bit. The way to keep the speed and still have slow flying, is to add peas to the milo. I add about 15% Austrian Winter Peas to the red milo when I am honing a team for an upcoming fly competition. Try it you’ll like it!

So just how much feed per bird are we talking about? A good measure for young birds is a tablespoon, rounded per bird. Depending on your family of birds, the amount will vary a little. Trial and error will get you there. Weather extremes will cause some grief too. I am amazed on how little a roller needs, to be healthy and able to perform.

How long should a kit fly? Young birds about 45 minutes. Old birds will go an hour. If they fly more time, then you need to look at your feed ration. You might think you are being cruel at times, but you will see the difference in performance (flying and rolling). A poorly fed roller that acts like a cull, can usually be fixed by proper feeding. For example; cock birds that have too much body fat, will want to breed. They will race through the kit, drive a hen down or clap they wings and stray from the kit. A lot of these birds are culled for it. If you never let that bird get fat enough to want to breed, you won’t have a problem.

Here is something to try. I did it when I came back from a trip to England. I learned how to fly rollers over there. Take one of your kits that is at least 9 months old. Put them on straight milo. The same amount that you were feeding them. Say half of a small coffee can. Then each day, cut one teaspoon out until the kit follows you around the yard!!! They will go from an hour flying time, to 10 minutes. You will be amazed at what happens. You will have birds doing things that they never did before. .

After you have them rattled to ten minutes, rest them a couple of days and boost them with their normal ration. Whether it was wheat/milo or straight wheat. Those birds will come out of the box and really perform. This exercise will demonstrate the power of feeding a team right.

I could go on and on but will end by saying the above methods work best with young birds. Old bird teams are another matter and take some different methods. Depending on your family of birds, depends on how you handle old birds. I am still learning on this subject and feel that there are several other accomplished fanciers that are better suited to writing about that.

Good luck with your birds and the bottom line is, that if you aren’t having fun, then you are doing something wrong.!

---

 By Jerry Higgins: Combination to unlocking the roll.

What is the secret to Raising better rollers? What is the combination of variables needed? This combination may be a better description of what is needed for selecting and breeding the better Birmingham Rollers. There are certain aspects of selecting Rollers as breeders, which need to be considered and studied. I will attempt to identify and explain the selection process that I use to select potential stock birds as breeders and how I matched them with each other. This process will be called COMBINATION. The selection process starts with the young kit as training begins. If you’re serious about raising good Rollers you must be willing to put the time in. How the bird develops is of Paramount importance in the final analysis and selection of stock birds Selecting stock birds and training are the most critical aspects of raising good Rollers. The birds you select for breeding have a direct relationship on the quality of the birds that you will produce and fly. By taking your time at this point and having a good understanding of what you’re looking for you will save many hours of frustration and anxiety.

The selection of stock birds starts with good observation and notes in your breeding records. Time and time again you’ll refer back to your breeding records to refresh your memory as to how the bird has progressed. In selecting stock birds you will want to know at what age a bird started to develop the spin.

You must have a clear understanding in your mind’s eye of what you’re looking for in a stock bird. You should be able to close your eyes and visualize the ideal stock bird. You should be able to see this ideal bird in 2 ways, what it looks like spinning, what it looks like standing on the ground. This picture that you have in your minds eye must be firmly instilled to make sure that it does not change throughout the selection process.

The ideal situation would be to have a bird that has all the primary attributes I have listed below, but must understand that very few Rollers will have them. To achieve this combination we must make sure that in our mating’s that all attribute combinations exist. The combinations needed to create this balance will in most cases not be found in any individual bird but between the 2 mates.

 

THINGS TO LOOK FOR IN SELECTING A STOCK BIRD

1: TYPE

Type is one of the most important factors to be considered in selecting a stock bird. Type is the set of physical attributes that make up the Roller. A roller should be small. If you do not fully understand type, 1 general rule that will help is that the best spinners are small. The smaller a Roller is the less resistance it has to the roll. Because of this fact we want to breed our Rollers small; this is a feature and quality we must always keep in mind. The rule of thumb I try to use is ”short short short and short”: short wings, short keel, short tails, short legs and an overall short body.

If you select a small bird in most cases it will not have a wealth of feathers. This is good. One of the features the Roller does not need is a wealth of feathers. We want a bird that has thin flight feathers and tail feathers. Balance is very important in selecting the correct type in A roller. Balance means that all the features we have discussed are equal to each other in there relationship to each other. For example, the wing tips would not be longer than the tail. A small bird would not have big feet and long legs; they would be in proportion to the rest of the body. Balancing the bird will also mean that its keel depth would not be excessive. You would not want a good balanced Roller to carry excess weight in the chest. Too much weight in the front of a Roller would cause it to spin out of balance. I prefer a narrow bird through the shoulders. In most cases hens are better spinners than cocks. I think the reason is because hens are smaller and narrower than cocks.

NO. 2 EYES

Eyes in my opinion fill an important role in my family of Rollers. I prefer an eye that is clearer without any blemishes; this will exclude any cracked eyed or half Bull eyed birds. This does not mean that those birds cannot roll; it simply means that I do not like these birds for stock birds. The eye color I prefer is a light lemon colored eye. This eye color to me indicates the bird that has been cultivated for the roll. The eye color I do not care for is the pearl eye which in my opinion indicates a strong flyer. It is important to know that the pearl eye and what it represents is a useful part of the combination you will need to match a pair of Rollers. For example, if you have one of the mates come to the roll early and rolled very deep, you would want to add to this mating more vigor in flying capabilities. In this case, if you did not have a strong dark colored bird both mates could be recessive red If one had pearl eye.

NO. 3 COLOUR

Color may not seem important as a selection criteria for breeding better Rollers to some, but I have found over the last 30 years color plays a significant role in breeding Rollers. In my family of Rollers I try to balance the hard colors with the soft. A hard colored Roller is a dark checker self or blue bar self. They can also be red checkers or red bars. The soft colored bird is normally the recessive red. The hard colored Rollers carry the vigor and stamina to fly long periods of time and have the strength to continually roll for substantial time. The soft colored Rollers carry an abundance of the roll factor and provide frequency and fly lower and less time. In order for a Roller to fly the time, roll often and deep and still be able to get back to the kit, a balance between these 2 factors is required.

I have heard many people state that color has nothing to do with roll but in the same breath they would tell you that they want to break up the hard colored blue checkers so that they have white flights or badge to improve frequency. For the past 10 years i have used color balancing in my pairs and this technique has served me well. It is important to remember just because a bird is recessive red in color on the outside it may not carry a strong roll factor. Some birds that appear recessive red in color on the outside are actually blue on the inside. This is to say that they do not carry the roll factor as most recessive red birds that have been cultivated for the roll generation after generation do, you need to know the family and individual bird.

NO. 4 SPIN

The spin in the Roller has been described many times so I will not elaborate on this point. It is sufficient to say that the bird should spin at a very high velocity and as deep as possible and still be able to get back to the kit. Many Rollers can spin but it is not pleasant to the eye. These birds my fall a long distance but he velocity is so slow that it does not meet minimum qualifications. I find the reason in most cases is that the owner has mated his pairs based only one consideration: spin. Most of the time when pairs are selected solely on their spin ability and mated together they have identical faults. Because of this offspring have the same faults multiplied. When the faults compounded and carried by offspring, they are not able to spin correctly. When matching your pairs together, make sure they never carry the same or similar faults. Always attempt to balance your mating’s to correct any fault that each of the birds may have. Do not base your mating’s solely on spin. Spins is but one of the factors in combination that should be considered; it carries no more weight than any of the other factors.

The age at which the bird came to the roll is very important to me. I like early developers, 5-6 months of age. A Roller in full-grown at 6 months of age and I see no reason it should not roll hard at that age. My family of Rollers usually start rolling at about 3-4 months of age and continue to develop to their capacity through the 7-8 month of age. They then stabilize at the depth that they are going to be for most of their life, usually around 20’-30’. Their velocity continues to improve through their 2nd year of life.

Another very important element in this category is where the bird flies in the kit. Our preference would be that the bird flies at the front of the kit, but if not at the front of the kit in the middle would be good. Frequency is another element in this category that we would want to consider. If we could select a bird that flies at the front of the kit and volunteered to roll often this would be our ideal bird. A frequent spinner should roll at least 30-35 score-able times in a 20 minute period.

NO. 5 TEMPERAMENT

Temperament is also one of the most important features to look for. Temperament is the hardest feature to describe and in most cases it is only learned through experience. One of my best ways to describe temperament is to make sure you do not select a bird for stock that is always the last bird to land or the last bird to drop through the trap. Poor temperament in a bird will show sometimes in a bird that will fly above the kit most of the time. In temperament you want a Roller that is easy to train and is always eager to cooperate. Some people can see a calmness when looking into the eyes of a Roller, they sometimes describe this by saying the Roller appears to be looking back at them and making some evaluation.

COMMENTARY:

These 5 features we’ve identified are like the numbers to a combination lock. Each one of the pairs you select for stock must contain these 5 features. It is necessary, nor will it often find any 1 bird that has all of these features. But as long as they exist in the pairs make up you will open the lock and be successful in raising a high percentage of good Rollers.

---

By Mark Fields

January 2020

As I am dispersing my flock for health reasons, I wanted to get down these notes before I forget.   Bob Westfall and I were friends and while we talked many times, he was always hesitant to give me an exact formula on feeding his family of birds. Instead he’d push me to adjust the feeding myself and decide what worked for me.   Being a guy who deals in “specifics” this always frustrated me, but at the same time caused me to really pay attention to the feed, the birds and their reactions to adjustments.

Joe Beach was another roller guy that had lived in the Midwest and in 2012 he first told me to feed rollers a mix of 47% wheat, 47% milo and 6% safflower.   He would feed this 6 day of the week and on the 7^th day he’d add a few peas.

Joe would mix 50 pounds of wheat, 50 pounds of milo and an 8 pound bag of safflower. Using Joe’s ration as a basis I finally came upon the following mix. I’ve changed it from percentages to ratios (almost identical) so that you can mix any quantity you wish.

• 7 parts wheat
• 7 parts milo
• 1 part safflower
• 1 part whole barley

Wait a minute, where did that barley come from – you ask?   In the many discussions on feeding various grains a consistent thread has been walking that fine line between being fit and being overfed. With this family I have found that adding this little bit of whole barley resulted in a more uniform flight and slightly slower wing beats. When feeding this mix, if you see any barley left in the tray that is an indicator you have overfed them.

I ascribe to the 1 level (not heaping!) Tablespoon of feed per kit bird.   This is the starting point. Now let’s get into the fine tuning.   For this I’m going to fall back to something Graham Dexter chatted about when he visited to judge the World Cup in 2019.

Let’s assume you fed each bird 1 Tbs of feed yesterday.   Today they flew for an hour and wouldn’t trap in as nice as you like.   When you feed them remove 1 teaspoon of feed for every 5 birds.   On the next fly watch them closely. If they still fly long or are slow to come in cut another teaspoon off the feed.

By tweaking this slowly you’ll find that amount that is just right for the kit.   A couple words of warning, however.

• First, and I found this interesting, each kit, even though exactly the same family, may take different tweaks to the feed, especially if you’ve separated cocks and hens.
• Second, periodically you should bounce the feed back up to the full measure and start tweaking again. As they age, as weather changes or as they become more fit, the birds need this reset to make sure things are “just right”

Grit. Yes, they need grit and yes that will mess up the program for a couple days. I like to free feed grit or pullet oyster shell about once a month on a day when I know they won’t be flying tomorrow. Can’t exactly understand it, but it seems like the first day after the grit they are full of energy and fly too long and too fast.   OK, usually I’d go ahead and fly them on that day, knowing it would be a bad performance day, but never ever tweak with grit right before a competition unless you’ve really figured out how your birds respond to it.

Wheat is the mainstay of many pigeon rations. In fact, some flyers use nothing but hard red wheat for their kits.   I’ve found that when given just wheat the Westfall birds will become “lean mean flying machines”.   They will fly long and high.

Safflower is like the wheat in that it causes long and high flying because of the fat content. It is a good grain to increase in cold weather as this added fat helps with heat and feather quality.

Milo almost always gets eaten first out of any mix. It is the equivalent of pigeon candy.   It will slow down the kit as it is burned up quickly.   Likewise, they will fly lower and for less time.

Barley slows down the rollers even more so than milo. If too much barley is fed, the birds simply will not fly, and their rolls becomes very sloppy.   Basically “they fall apart.”

Using this information on the effect that different grains bring to the mix, you can tweak the feed. If they are flying too high or two long increase the milo and barley. If too short, then add either safflower or wheat.

Now one interesting point that must be considered is the location where you are buying the grains. Hard Red Wheat as grown out West is not at all the same as we have in the Midwest. Our hard winter wheat is somewhere between a soft wheat and the hard red of the West. Likewise, red milo vs yellow milo should be considered. I only used the red milo as the yellow seemed to give them too much energy.

So, at the end of the day, Bob was right. You start your birds on a feeding regimen and then you tweak it. I hope that what I’ve given you will help give you an idea of where to start.

---

Creating the perfect kit

The Phases of Training the Roller Pigeon by Guil Rand

 Much has been written about how to properly train the Birmingham Roller.  Most of the articles I have read concerning this subject usually only address one of the several phases of the training process.  Rollers develop through several different phases.  The first phase is starting with good breeding stock and healthy babies.  The second phase is weaning the youngsters from their parents.  The third is young bird training, which continues until the birds are rolling with stability.  The fourth phase is when you start to create a kit of performing rollers.  And the fifth phase is flying a mature, hardworking kit of rollers.  I do not profess to know all the answers, or to be an authority on this subject.  I have been fortunate to have had some success the last couple of years, and have developed a philosophy that works well for me.  I owe thanks to Rod Elsner, Monty Neibel, and Jerry Higgins for the bulk of this information, and for teaching me how to be somewhat successful with my pigeons.  Please understand, that it is not my intention to just regurgitate their writings.  I have worked with these concepts, and know that it has helped my kits to be consistent, and have made modifications to fit my family of birds, and my local.

PHASE I – GOOD BREEDING STOCK

Having a good kit of rollers that work together obviously starts withgood breeding stock.  My philosophy is that once you have found the breeders that consistently produce high quality rollers, it is important to use them as much as possible.  Get as many youngsters as you can out of them as fast as you can.  Use foster parents for the best pairs as ofter as possible.  If you put your birds together by the first of March and break tehm up in September, you should be able to get at least 12 rounds from on pair using foster parents.  This past year I used a polygamous breeding program and was able to raise 41 youngsters out of one cock.  I could have raised 60 if I hadn’t made so many mistakes with the first round of hens, and if a stray dog hadn’t gotten into the pen and killed the cock in July.  Fortunately, I have 41 young out of 10 different hens, so I will have lots of options next breeding season.  If you have a pair that is really clicking, then it only makes sense to get as many youngsters out of them as quickly as possible, so that you can start developing a “family” of rollers.  It seems such a waste to only raise three or four rounds from a pair each season.  It will take forever to develop a family that way.

The first step in developing an excellent kit of rollers is to make sure that the youngsters are healthy.  I use ‘Lay Pellets” for my breeders during the breeding season.  These pellets are very high in protein (20% – 22%).  They also have the calcium to help form strong eggs, and all the vitamins and minerals that the birds need to be healthy and strong.  Another reason that I prefer pellets is that they are easy for the adult birds to digest, and they can feed the squeakers almost immediately after they have eaten.  They don’t have to wait for the grain to break down.  The babies also seem to be healthier because they are receiving a high protein diet with all the necessary vitamins and minerals.  These healthier babies seem to be able to make the transition to independency very easily.

PHASE II – WEANING

The babies are removed from the nest at about 18-21 days, and placed on the floor of the loft.  a 1 x 8 wooden board about 12″ long, leaned against the wall of the loft is provided for the squeakers to hide under.  I haven’t had any problems with cocks scalping or beating up on youngsters, but the babies seem to like to hide under the board anyway.  By placing the babies on the floor of the loft at this young age, they learn how to eat and drink and fend for themselves.  At about 28 days the babies are moved to a weaning pen.

The youngsters must be watched closely for the first couple of days to make sure that they have learned where the water container is, and how to eat.  Most of them do not have any problems.  If a bird does not pick up eating, then it is returned to the breeder loft for a couple of days so that it can get fattened back up again.  Then it can go back into the weaning pen.  If a birds looks listless and mopey, then it probably just needs a drink of water.  Dip its beak into the water container, and it will usually suck up several large gulps of water, and return to its healthy state.

I treat the water with Aureomycin for the first 5 days of weaning.  The Aureomycin is an antibiotic, and will knock out a myriad of possible illnesses.  This insures the babies health during this traumatic time of becoming independent.  I also allow the youngsters to have all the feed they want for the first 5 days.  I start them with pellets, and gradually change over to pigeon mix that includes popcorn, wheat, milo, safflower, and Canadian peas.  After the first 5 days, I cut back the feed quantity, so that they will eat it all when it is given to them.  I always use my call (a whistle) when I feed them.  At about 5 1/2 weeks I start leaving the door of their weaning pen open so that they can start flying in and out of the loft.  Each time I allow them out, I call them back in and give them a little feed.  By 7 weeks they are up and flying about the back yard.  One day they decide it is time to take off into the wild blue yonder, and they look like a swarm of flies all over the sky.  About the third or fourth day they will come together as a kit.  Getting the birds to the point of kitting is the first phase of training.  Very seldom do I have to cull a bird because it will not kit, and I rarely lose a bird following this system.  I have found that I can add another round of youngsters to an older kit very easily if I wait until the younger group has been properly trained and is kitting on its own.  Then they can easily be added without causing too much disruption.  I do not like to fly birds more than a month apart in age in a kit.  At least not for the first 3 or 4 months.

A young bird kit should be flown every day if possible.  Train them to fly not more than 45 minutes, and make sure they don’t fly too high.  Thirty minutes is preferable.  If they start flying too high, or for more than 45 minutes, then cut back on their feed, until they are flying the way you want them to.  The young birds should be flown this way until they start rolling hard and deep.  Some families of birds will start rolling with style and depth as early as 3 or 4 months.  I have found these early developers to be as stable as later developers in my family.  If a young bird can show me that it can remain stable for a few weeks, then I pull it out, and promote it to a kit of more active birds that are working harder that the others.  These hard working birds seem to do better when they are together as a kit.

PHASE IV – COMPETITION TRAINING

I will continue to fly these faster developing birds daily, as well as the less active birds.  Each time another bird can demonstrate that it has developed the roll, and can control it, then it is moved up to the “N” team.  Occasionally a bird can’t keep up, and so it is returned to the “B” team.  If it still can’t make it, then it is eliminated.  These more active birds can be flown daily for a short while, but soon they are only flown every other day, and I start varying their feed quantity each day.  The day the birds are flown, they are given a very ample quantity of feed when they come in.  1 3/4 to 2 cups of pigeon mix for 20 birds is a good starting point.

The next day, the birds are rested, and given about 1 cup of wheat or milo.  This is the amount they are fed during the cold winter months.  The feed quantity will have to be varied slightly depending on the temperature.  The colder the weather, the more feed they need to keep their body heat up. The warmer the weather, the less feed they will need to keep in good condition.  I feed my birds twice as much in the cold winter months, than in the hot summer months.  The key to knowing how much feed to give the birds is to watch how long and how high they fly.  It is important, that you watch the kit every time you fly them to ascertain the amount of feed they should be given.  Remember that as the weather gets hotter, then the feed amounts must be decreased.  Feed quantities and type of feed must be adjusted daily depending on how long, and how high the kit flies, and by how cold or hot the weather is.

PHASE V – THE OLD BIRD KIT 

Phase five of training starts when the birds are eight months to a year old.  They should start being flown on a 3-day rotation.  This schedule is for a mature competition kit only.  A group of birds that works hard for the few minutes they are flying does not need to be flown every day.  On the day the birds are flown they are given 2 1/2 to 3 cups of pigeon mix when they come in.  The next day they are rested, and only given 1 1/4 cups of wheat.  The next day, they are again rested, and given 3/4 to 1 cup of wheat.  The quantities will need ot be adjusted slightly based on how long and how high they flew the previous time out.  I have found that by using this 3 day “yo-yo” feeding system, the birds seem to be much more consistent when they fly.  Every time I flew my competition kit last spring, they put on a pretty decent show.  Sometimes they were better that others, but they were always fun to watch.  Monty Neibel has used this method for his competition kits for years, and has had tremendous success with it.  A mature, active kit of rollers needs to be rested in between training sessions.  Another advantage to flying the competition kit only every third day, is that there are fewer chances that the birds will have an accident, or have a run in with a bird of prey.

I realize that this may sound fairly complicated, and it will require you to spend some time with your birds, watching and analysing them each time you fly them.  But it gets easier as you learn how to do it, and the rewards of being able to put up a nice kit of rollers every time you fly them is well worth the effort.  Last year I was able to get my birds to be consistent.  Now I have to learn how to get them to that next higher level on competition day.

---

The Monty Neibel Way By Brian Krog of Lumby, BC, Canada

Sept. – Oct. 2000 “Tribute to Monty Neibel” NBRC Bulletin

I first met Monty Neibel 32 years ago, and since then he was my best friend and mentor.   I was twelve years old and Monty was 27, so I guess you could say that in our relationship he was somewhere between a big brother and a father to me.  It’s therefore hard for me to distinguish my own beliefs from those of his own, as I sought his advice so often, did what he advised, and later questioned him about the “why’s” and “how’s” of his advice.  We had a very close relationship, we hunted together, we fished together, we travelled the world viewing pigeons together, and we usually phoned each other couple times a week about something or other.  I’ve never had a friend like that before, and I’m sure I’ll never have one like that again.

I have written a lot of articles in my life about my own opinions about Birmingham rollers.  I’ve been criticized by some, for my lack of “credentials”.  It’s a fair criticism, because my own isolation has made very difficult for me to compete very often with my birds.  I also have been criticized for merely parroting what Monty said about a given issue.  In that respect, I plead guilty, because when it comes to pigeons, my own beliefs do mirror Monty’s beliefs.  I was once asked “What motivates you to write so much?”  My answer was, “because Monty Neibel writes so little.”  Even when Monty chose to write, it was difficult for others to understand what he was really trying to say.  Monty’s written word had a lot of similarities with Yogi Berra’s spoken words.  In short, it could be hard to follow and difficult to understand what he was trying to get at unless you knew him as well as I did.  Many readers missed the wink and smile behind his opinions, and believed him to be a hard character.  It wasn’t true.  He had a heart of gold, and I was fortunate when reading Monty’s writings to know where he was being serious and where he wasn’t.  That wasn’t always true for the rest of his readership.  Jerry Higgins once jokingly referred to me as “Monty’s press agent”.  It was probably a pretty fair description, as basically whenever I saw something that Monty would have disagreed with I started hammering at my keyboard – and usually wrote an article taking issue with it.  I guess at this time, the only real claim to fame I have is that I was Monty’s best friend, and the recipient of all his birds upon his untimely death.  If I accomplish nothing else of value in this hobby, other than being the best friend that Monty had and the one he thought he could count on, I’ll always feel I accomplished something of importance.  I have vowed to always maintain his pure strain of birds also, and I feel that will benefit the hobby.

Looking back at the way I did things, I can see now that sometimes I was deliberately attempting to do things differently than Monty did, for no other reason than to attempt to establish my own individual mark.  Monty cast such a large shadow that I was forever trying to find ways to peek out from underneath it and be recognized as a separate individual.  In retrospect, it was a pretty fruitless endeavor as my own writings always brought me back to the huge shadow again.  I did different things like attempting to bring in birds with different colors than Monty had, or from different families to somehow separate my own birds from his.  Sometimes I would feed them differently, handle them differently, and looking back, it was all for nothing.  Under Monty’s shadow is where I deserved to be, should be and probably always will be – and now, I finally recognize that that is a pretty good place to be.  I will endeavour, to the best of my abilities, to relate what Monty Neibel believed and did in regards to training rollers.  I can’t promise that my emphasis won’t be different than his, because at this point in my life I truly can’t differentiate where Monty’s beliefs end and my own beliefs begin.  Whenever I know my emphasis is slightly different than his was, I will make a point of pointing it out.

I guess with any good fancier their actions are motivated by a clear belief system behind them.  I’ll attempt to start with some of Monty’s belief systems, as I understand them, in regards to rollers.  Monty believed in looking forwards, not backwards, and as a consequence he placed very little emphasis on pedigrees.  I don’t think that Monty knew the band number of one pigeon in his loft.  Whenever a visitor would ask “What pigeon is that?” or “What’s the bird out of?”  Monty’s reply would be “How would I know?”  Usually followed with “If it’s important to you, I’ll look it up.  Why do you want to know?”  In my entire life of listening to Monty, I can’t recall hearing him ever referring to the grandparents of a particular bird.  It was ever very rare, for Monty to refer to the parents of a particular bird.  He wasn’t really concerned to what the bird was out of, but rather what he would do with it in the future.  I guess that was the reason that Monty used to place so little importance in the band numbers of any of his pigeons.  He referred to the band number only when he was making an entry into a book.  The only time that I knew that Monty went to his book and looked at it intently, was when he was trying to figure out what bird he might use his prospective mate for another.  In the latter years of his life, Monty’s breeding reflected a desire to inbreed in more deliberate and systematic fashion.  The last few years of his record book indicate he frequently used brother and sister, father and daughter, and mother and son pairing whenever the bird’s aerial abilities indicated they were worthy of considering in the stock pen.

Monty was exasperated and perplexed by people referring to birds like Pensom’s famous 514.  He would say with exasperation in his voice, “Are they still talking about a pigeon that’s been dead for almost 30 years?” – Usually adding, “Haven’t they produced anything that has improved on that pigeon yet?”  Monty never could understand why so many people were so fascinated with the past.  I believe Monty felt that people should be referring to pigeons they bred in the last year or two.

Monty also believed in survival of the fittest – and the way in which Monty chose to use nature to help him cull his stock was a very strong belief.  In regards to the medication of pigeons, Monty was against it very much.  I heard the same quote over and over again when Monty would refer to this topic.  “Out of 100 pigeons in my kit boxes, eating out of the same containers, eating the same food, drinking out of the same water container, this one gets sick.  Why would I ever want to save it?  Who would want to pass those genes on anyway?”  He was adamant about this point.  In Monty’s eyes, that same philosophy held true in the breeding pen, and in the very rare occasion that a stock bird got sick, Monty would simply pick it up, pull its head off, and throw its body into a garbage bag.  Again, the refrain you would hear would be the same – “Well, that’s the last time it’ll pass those weak genes on”.  Monty didn’t own any medicines, or use any medicines.  People with experience with Monty’s strain of pigeons have indicated that they are indeed tougher than the average bird.  No doubt this quality relates directly to his feeling about medication.  That’s not to say that Monty didn’t believe in helping his pigeons maintain health.  Due to the fact that Monty had non-chlorinated well water, Monty did believe in adding a little bleach to the drinking water to chlorinate it.  Monty also believed that apple cider vinegar, crushed garlic, and a few drops of iodine all helped his birds maintain a natural health and vigor.  he was a huge believer in the importance of lots of airflow in a loft, many times chastising people for having lofts “too tight”.  Monty would berated a person even more if he found any moisture or wetness within the loft.  As a consequence, Monty always watered his birds out in the fly pens believing that dry litter was the most important preventative medicine that a person could practice.

Monty’s belief in survival of the fittest principal extended to the way that he handled his kit birds.  I don’t believe I’ve ever known the time when Monty gave a pigeon more than three chances to correct something it was doing wrong.  Whether the offense was tree sitting, out flying, rolling down, hanging back in the back of the loft and not wanting to fly.  Monty would write the birds band number down, tape it and then give it two more chances.  Upon getting that third strike, the pigeon was killed.  In my lifetime of knowing him, I never knew Monty to ever hand release a pigeon.  Monty always told me he regarded the necessity of hand tossing a pigeon as a sure sign that such a bird was a cull.

Monty wasn’t one to maintain a lot of different feeds at his place.  His breeders were fed a mixture of wheat, corn, peas and layer pellets.  In addition to that, they receive red grit, oyster shell and sprinkle of Belgian mineral powder once a week.  Monty’s young birds were put on an almost all wheat diet from the day they were separated from the parents.  I used to think that this was somewhat harsh and worried about the health of my young birds and potential of such a diet causing weak feathering or sick birds.  In retrospect, I believe that my worrying was out of place – because Monty seemed to have pigeons with feathering every bit as good as my own and with no more sickness in his kit pens that I had.  Monty believed in feeding the birds a small sprinkle of millet as they were trapping, believing that this tiny grain gave the bird something to “work on” while the slow birds had a fair chance to get into the kit pens. 

He would usually let the birds pick away the millet for about five minutes in order to give the harder working birds time to cool down, catch their breath and relax.  Monty would then go up to the kit pen and give the birds a measured portion of wheat.  That was all the young birds ever got to eat for about nine months of the year.  In winter, temperatures caused Monty to give the occasional mixture of corn in order to get the young birds to fly long enough, but he believed it was a detriment to roll and used it only one necessary in extreme temperatures.

Monty’s old bird kits and holdover kits were fed in much the same way except that on occasion he would use peas.  Usually the use of peas was restricted to birds that were working excessively hard and were having trouble making the required flying time.  For such a bird, Monty would pick the bird up in his hands, open up its beak and proceed to hand drop a dozen or so peas down into the birds crop.  This was an ever-present ritual before a big fly.  This was due to the fact that Monty always had his birds cut down so much that some of them (usually very small hard-working hens) would have trouble flying the required time without the extra assistance.  In the last few years, Monty was playing around with the use of peas two days before they were released for a big fly.  He didn’t believe that young birds prior to the age they were working hard needed anything other than wheat and that very small handful of millet.  When the young birds began to perform, he would slowly alter their diet to get more in line with what he was feeding the holdover birds and the old bird teams, and of course fly them less.

Monty coined the phrase “Yo-Yo” feeding to describe his beliefs in the importance of varying the competition kits diet up and down.  He once told me he liked what Bill Schreiber had said about getting the best out of the kit of rollers.  Bill impressed upon Monty the importance of “tickling their nervous systems” as Bill put it.  Monty loved that phrase and remembered it.  Monty related to me, how in the past many years ago he had attempted to keep his birds lean all the time in an effort to get the most performance out of them and to minimize the risk of having them overfly.

Monty said that such a system of feeding was always a tightrope walk between disasters, on the one hand (feeding too much and risking overfly) and on the other hand, feeding too little and seeing the birds weaken and seeing their performance suffer.  For the longest time Monty struggled to maintain a consistent unvarying diet for his kit birds, to no avail.

Once he started playing around with dramatic increases and decreases in the kit birds’ food supply, he told me that he realized once and for all, that he would never go back to his old way of doing things.  This method of feeding became his trademark, and the term “Yo-Yo” feeding is now well known and understood by most of the hobby.

In a very simplistic fashion it can be described as follows: once the young birds start to perform in unison, they are eventually weaned off of the everyday flying and everyday similar feeding that they’ve become accustomed to, and are put on the new Yo-Yo feeding and flying method.  From this point on, the birds will be flown every three days only.  On the day they fly the birds receive that small closed handful of millet in order to get them to trap, and they are then fed approximately 2 1/2 measured cups of wheat after a short period of rest to enable the hard workers to catch their breath.  The next day the birds are not flown and receive approximately 1 1/4 measured cups of pure wheat.  The next day after that, the birds are not flown again and receive only about a half a cup of pure wheat and a sprinkling of grit and mineral powder.

Any bird that needs it might be given a few peas individually.  In short, that’s all there is to the Yo-Yo method of feeding.  Monty believed it was important for everyone to use their own variation of the system (usually by only changing the last non-flying day’s amount), varying it for variables such as updrafts, downdrafts, temperatures and the individual strain of bird with which one is working.  In using such a method of feeding, Monty believed that individuals should be attempting to have a competition day (at least a practice one) every third day at their own place.

The only variable to the system that Monty used in regards to an upcoming important competition was that lately Monty was keeping the birds in for four days.  On the third day Monty was experimenting with using peas (and had done so with his last World Cup team on that  day they performed so well) the fourth day that birds receive only a tiny sprinkle of millet throughout the day in small measured doses and some grit and mineral powder.

Monty’s feelings on the importance of colour, as related to performance, were pretty well known.  He absolutely knew that colour was of no importance in his own strain of pigeons, and he believed it was probably of little importance in other people’s strains.  Monty particularly hated to read people expressing the opinion that the so-called hard colours could not be bred for a long time steadily without resulting in the loss of frequency.  Monty had only four colours in his loft – blue bars, mealys, blue checks and red checks.  Almost 99 percent of those were self’s.  Monty had bred them that way for over 30 years.  He used to say, “How can people watch these pigeons in the air and still come up with that opinion?”  He would then add, “Do people really believe everything they read without bothering to check it out?”  He had absolutely no diminishing of frequency and in fact said that frequency in his own strain of pigeons was more often a problem than infrequency.

The World Cup team that scored 1890 points the day before his accident had 48 or 49 breaks in 20 minutes!  The breaks were described as “telephone pole depth and greater”!  I believe Monty’s flying record indicates that Monty’s birds were getting better and better as time progressed.  In international competition (the Northwest International fly) and in the World Cup competitions, his record would indicate that since the 1960’s his wins were becoming more and more frequent and the quality of his birds was always improving.  He did this without the benefit of any recessive red, grizzles or birds with much white in them.  Today we read that these colours are important and necessary in the best birds for competition.  I think, without a doubt, that Monty’s record lays that myth to rest, at least in his own strain for sure.

In some articles, Monty did mention that he liked to clash his blues with his reds.  In one article I read, he said he didn’t know why he did it that way when asked, just that he had always done it that way.  In later years he told me many times that since learning about sex linked mating, he enjoyed having the ability to sex young birds in the nest while banding them.  Even in non-sex-linked mating’s, the cock birds from a blue-red clash will carry the distinctive black ticking that also aids in the sexing of young birds at the time of banding.

This was very important to Monty, because Monty chose to separate his birds based on their sex as soon as possible.  I had always used a different system in this, separating my kits according to their age while young birds and then later varying my kits by shifting birds back and forth depending on the quality of roll that they were displaying.  Monty never did this way, from the very first day that he could tell, he was separating his birds into cock kits and hen kits and he kept them this way forever.  Only a week before a big fly would Monty have added a couple of cock birds into his hen kit in order to make the best kit possible for competition.  After the contest, the birds were getting separated and flown in their separate all-cock or all-hen kits.  If any weakness is to be found in attempting to fly the so-called “hard-coloured” pigeons in competition, Monty was adamant that a lifetime of flying rollers hadn’t shown anything to indicate the truth of that belief to him.

As a general rule, Monty believed that the biggest failure of most fanciers was in their failure to cull severely enough.  Monty would roll his eyes whenever he saw a fancier hand releasing pigeons in order to spare them from rolling down.  Sometimes, Monty couldn’t help himself, and he would just blurt out “Why don’t you just pull the heads off of those culls?”  Monty was rarely “politically correct” even when in other people’s back yards.  Monty hated hearing the term “too hot” to describe rollers.  Monty said, “There’s no such a thing as a pigeon being too hot. 

What those people are describing in those birds are birds that are unstable!  I wish they would start calling them that!”  Monty was also adamant that pigeons should never be stocked until they had completed their second molt.  Some people, upon reading such an opinion, have stated “What’s so special about the 18 month old mark?”  I think this shows a lack of understanding of what it was Monty was trying to explain.  Monty never believed that pigeons should be stocked after he was 18 months old.  To Monty, that was the absolute minimum.

Most of his pigeons were never stocked until they had reached three or four years old.  In doing things this way, Monty was able to win competitions and score huge points, with birds that in other people’s lofts, would have been stocked long ago.  Monty never stocked a bird out of his kits unless he had a need to do so.  What I mean to say, is that he only wanted a certain number of stock birds; in later years this was usually about 14 to 16 pair.  Unless one of those pigeons either died from old age, or the cock had difficulty filling the eggs, or the hen ran out of eggs.  Monty would not replace it.  Monty’s World Cup team consisted of 20 individuals that all had the notation “potential stock bird” written beside their name.  To Monty, this meant that any one of those pigeons was good enough to go in his stock pen should the need be there.  As long as there was no need – the birds stayed in the kits and growing older and helping him win contests.

If his stock birds were healthy and producing, sometimes in his #1 kit he would have birds that were 6, 7, or even 8 years old, due to the fact being that he had never found the need to stock them.  I know that many people in the hobby express disbelief in him doing things this way, but his record book doesn’t lie, and this was the way that Monty did it.  Monty believed that once a bird made it into his stock loft it deserved to grow old and die there, unless it proved incapable of reproducing itself.  Some of his stock birds in the past had notations beside them to the effect, that they could not reproduce themselves, these birds were put back into his old bird teams and were flown until their death from old age.

Monty believed that fanciers should cull hard and raise more birds if necessary.  Monty believed that if a pigeon wasn’t rolling in proper style on the date of its first birthday then it should be culled.  Birds were also culled if they rolled down three times, sat in trees three times, had to be chased out of the kit box three times, came down early three times (unless the kit was flying for an excessively long period of time).

Monty believed most definitely that it was no fault for a pigeon to come down early, if it worked hard and wanted to have no part in the highflying antics of its fellow kit mates.  Monty used to tell me, he believed that such a pigeon was displaying greater intelligence than the rest of the birds, those would choose to fly until exhausted.  Monty’s opinion of the intelligence of the Birmingham Roller is well known to all whom knew him he once told me that if you took all the intelligence of all the roller pigeons on earth – and put them in a thimble you have room to spare.

Monty’s pet peeve of all the things the roller could do was the fault of out-flying.  Even the manner in which Monty killed a pigeon reflected the severity of the pigeon’s offense.  I can remember Monty picking up birds that had been marked with a tag and were not rolling.  Monty would cradle the bird gently in his hand while looking up its birth date in the record books.  If the bird had reached 12 months of age and was still not rolling and he felt that he needed the room, he would cull it.  Usually, he handled it a few times and gave it a good look to see if there was anything he might learn from viewing it.  Then, almost gently, he would twist and pull the bird’s neck simultaneously and then walkover and place the bird where he was going to put it (sometimes in his sink).

He did so with a look of resignation and he seemed saddened by having to do it.  Contrast this, to the way that he handled the out-flyer.  The out-flyers were usually marked with a special colour of tape if it was the third day that Monty had been watching such a pigeon his anger grew and grew with each observation of out-flying.  If such a bird would come down to trap, Monty would invariably grab it roughly as it attempted to go through the trap and throw it as hard as he could against a flat rock that bordered his garden and ran parallel to his kit pens.

I believe that in U.S. military parlance this is called “termination with extreme prejudice”!  It was safe to say that Monty hated this fault above all others.  He believed the out-flyers distract the kit, reduce the amount of breaks, sometimes broke up the kits, and were about the worst thing that person could have if they were attempting to win contests.

Over and over, Monty would tell me that the areas that had the slackest rules in regards to the treatment of out-birds were the areas that one would generally see the poorest kitting.  If Monty had his way, the World Cup and the Northwest International Fly would immediately go back to the old-fashioned “one bird – no scoring, one down – disqualification” rule.  Monty passionately believed that the single worst problem hindering the majority of flyers today was the way in which they coddle the out-flyers.  He couldn’t stand it when he heard people express the opinion that if you have lots of deep pigeons, then out-flyers were inevitable.  Monty believed out-flying had absolutely nothing to do with the depth of the roll, but had everything to do with the instability inherent in such pigeons.  It was his belief that out flying was often the first symptom of a bird that felt unable to control its urge to roll.  Monty felt that such a bird could not trust itself in the company of other rollers because that might cause it to trigger something within itself that it might be unable to stop.  He believed the first symptom of instability was out flying, it was often followed by tree sitting, or hanging back and being forced to fly out of the kit pen, and usually eventually, rolling down.

My favourite quote on the subject was this; “Good pigeons have complete control over the roll.  With garbage pigeons, the roll controls them – cull them!”

Monty’s breeding practices were the picture of simplicity.  Other than checking to see if the bird had another close relative in the stock loft (to increase the chance of “fit” or “nick” happening), Monty’s criteria for getting in the stock loft was their aerial expertise.  Not a 100% though.  Every bird in Monty’s loft eventually was rated on a scale of 1 (being the best) to 5 on “type”.  His records show that he then went ahead and mated them together without regard to his rated “type” score.  The only exception to this was he used very few 4’s and as far as I could see, never used a 5.

The most common comment beside a bird getting a poor “type’ rating was – “too big”.  Placing a far second, for reasons he disliked a pigeon’s type, was “head deterioration,” (meaning usually a bird with a tiny short beak, flat head or pinched in front of the eyes).  I (wanting to be an even greater performance purist than Monty), used to say, “I’ll take any of the off-type birds you don’t want to use – I ONLY consider performance in MY mating’s!”  Monty used to laugh, but he said “nope – you don’t need any of that deterioration in your program” and then he would add with a twinkle in his eyes – “those are the birds that I leave in my kits forever, to help me in competition!”  But, he would never breed from those either.  I did find one little amusing thing in his record book on this subject though.  Sometimes a pair of birds with perhaps a “type 3” rating beside their band numbers would become a top producing pair.  In future years they were often re-evaluated for “type” and often their “type” improved considerably in future re-assessments!  I found that amusing!  Also amusing were the many times at the bottom of a page where after noticing a great spinner he would write “no band” or “parents unrecorded”, followed with “STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!”  Once, he even wrote in one notebook, after forgetting to record something -“Old-timers disease?” (meaning Alzheimer’s?).  What a guy!

In his record book Monty also sometimes had the notation “DNB” besides a bird flying in one of his old bird teams.  It stood for “DO NOT BREED!”  It was often for birds that had had trouble during their development (like bumping, sporadic outflying, and swollen heads, blood in the eye or for the above mentioned “off-type” birds).  The developmental faults were noted and recorded but were of a seriousness that didn’t merit culling.  In the case of birds that had a developmental problem but straightened it out before being culled – those were the ones that got the DNB! Beside their names.  In short, Monty considered them good enough to live on in his competition kit forever but he would never breed from such a bird.

I think this might explain why Monty was willing to fly some birds in his competition kits for periods of up to 10 years.  He didn’t think they were worth of the stock pen in spite of their aerial excellence because of some developmental problem while growing up.  When other people used to make excuses for birds going through a tough period like “oh, that bird – well he was sick and is still recovering” or “well, his wings are sore because he’s on the 10th flight feather” Monty would say “Nonsense!”  Lots of the other birds in the kit are on THEIR 10th flight too – and they aren’t leaving the kit to come down early or after a particularly violent spin recovery.”  So, Monty would KEEP such a bird and compete with it forever.  But he would never breed from it and he also would never make excuses for it.

My favourite quote about aerial excellence from Monty?  “A true champion will NEVER give you ANY problems!”  Monty only raised what he considered a “Champion” about every three years or so (so that would make them the result of the production of between 1 in 200 and 1 in 300 birds, that he thought worthy of that designation.  These birds were often mated up ahead of the rest and would sometimes be allowed to go much later into the fall than the rest.

They sometimes were put on two different mates per season and generally were used to raise about twice as many pigeons per year as a “normal” (if you can call any bird good enough to get in the Neibel stock-loft, normal”) stock bird.  Monty told me he never had a champion EVER get sick – he did confess to me though that if it ever did happen it might make his “no medication” policy more difficult to live with.  I got the sense he might have “cheated” on just that one bird, just that one time though – if it had happened.  Monty loved his champions – when they died, he confessed to me that sometimes he cried.

In closing, I’d like to take this opportunity to express an opinion that Monty held ever so passionately.  Monty felt that nothing in the history of the Birmingham roller had done so much for the breed as competition.  Monty would say, once an area started to fly in kit competitions that the quality of the birds in that area would improve almost immediately and often very dramatically.  He was of the opinion that a well-judged contest could never hurt the breed, and that only very rarely could a lesser quality kit defeat a better quality kit due to the vagaries of scoring. 

Over and over Monty would derisively point out that people that derided the modern roller competitions by stating it was ruining the Birmingham roller didn’t know a thing about rollers.  With total exasperation in his voice Monty would ask, “If these guys that don’t compete have such great birds, then how come everybody isn’t talking about all the great birds they are seeing at these guys’ houses!”  Monty believed passionately that the more an area competed, the better off it would be in the production of world-class kits.  Monty believed the best thing to ever come along in the sport of roller competition was the World Cup.  It was the World Cup that he felt had united fanciers from around the world, allowed people to compare their birds with those from other areas in the world, and then generally broaden the base of knowledge within our sport.

In short, to Monty Neibel, competition was everything!  His highest admiration was reserved for the other men he competed against.  He had absolutely no time for the guys that talked and didn’t compete.  He felt it was good for people, it was better for the birds, and gave us all an excuse to get together on a regular basis making new friends – some wondering if Monty preferred salmon fishing over roller flying.  I wasn’t really sure and had noticed many times that when the big Chinooks were running the pigeons definitely would take second place for quite a while. 

He would sometimes abandon the birds for days on end leaving them only a full tray of feed and an extra waterer or two, and then come home – load them all up again, and be gone for another three or four days.  So, on one fishing trip I asked him if he had to give up all his interests and all his hobbies except one, what would it be, and why.  Monty thought about it for a few minutes before answering, and then responded saying that if he can only do one – it would have to be the pigeons that he kept.

His reason?  Monty said it was due to the fact that this hobby had introduced him to so many wonderful people from around the world that he now regarded as true friends and brought them into his backyard, and allowed him to be welcomed into theirs, and for this reason Monty felt that the roller hobby was something truly special!  I know I can second that opinion, because this hobby has given me enjoyment for the more than three decades and allowed me to meet many wonderful people from all parts of the world who I regard as true friends.

In particular, this hobby allowed me to share 32 years with a man I will never forget.  My mentor, my brother, my second father, my best friend — Monty Neibel.

---

YO-YO FEEDING Excerpts from 2 different writings by Monty Neibel

I wrote an article some time ago called HOW I DO IT and it was recently done up by Carl Schoelkopf.  He is sending out copies on request.  I have made some slight changes in my program but still fly every 3rd day with day flown counted as day of rest.  The rations are winter rations and I feed much less in summer.

Summer more like 2 1/4 cups (20) day flown, second day rest 1 cup, 3rd day rest 1/3 cup.  I no longer feed a mix occasionally as I found they don’t need it if you feed very small amounts of MILLET.  This stuff is incredible octane and must be used very carefully.  Other than that they get straight wheat and small doses of mineral grit and Belgian Powder.  All this applies to an established kit of performers not untested young birds.  You must apply stress on – stress off.  My birds ALWAYS WORK under this system.

For this competition I have held them one extra day.  Day one of rest all they could eat (17 birds).  Day two 2/3 cups of WHEAT.  Pinch of red mineral grit day 3 and 4.  Day three of rest 1/2 cup of wheat in morning and one teaspoon of millet at dark.

Fly next day morning.  Any bird that might look a bit off I will throw 10 peas into it.  All this is up to you to make slight changes according to weather and reading the birds.  You must be able to learn how to SCAN birds.  I have 2 kits entered, one is mixed cocks and hens, other all hens, 17 in each kit.  Normally I fly separate sexes.  Soon as they mature SPLIT the sexes for flying.  Always work towards a kit of old hens.  HOW I DO IT, Pages 108 and 109, May 1990 American Pigeon Journal.  I have to fight bad lift conditions.

8.  In the young bird fly between 1969 and 1984, I did not win many young bird fly’s but I was the big winner in the old bird fly’s.  I only fly with old birds now in competition as there is no B.C. Roller Club at this moment.  Young birds will not respond to my 3 day yo-yo system.  Young birds should be fed even and flown every day until you get some quality breaks.  Once they dress out or get close to it I like to fly them every other day.

20 birds about 2 1/2 cups and then 1 1/2 cup day rested.  They should be yo-yo fed like I said but on not so dramatic a scale as you would the old birds.  Old birds are a whole different ball of wax and can be abused much to kick them into gear.  Young birds I find are usually are too frequent anyway.  Old birds that are good decent rollers know they have to do it so will usually get out of the yard high enough to be safe and put on a good show even if they don’t fly very long.  Young birds if you get too tough with them might just circle low in the yard and quit.

Your friend in the fancy, Monty J. Neibel

---