# Thinking about crossing to familys of rollers



## scott70 (Feb 22, 2011)

I am thinking about crossing to familys of rollers have any of you guys done this yet I cant see how this would hurt anything but you never know I have to sold familys that both throw good spinners but only want to keep the best of both and then breed them back to each other


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

A Birmingham Roller is a Birmingham roller  I don't see a problem with mixing them. Should give you some hybrid vigor.


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## scott70 (Feb 22, 2011)

*thanks*

thanks I am going to try it out and see what happens


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## 2y4life (Apr 5, 2010)

If you just want to experiment and have no real aspirations of competing, do whatever you want Scott. Crossing families is fine even if you're competing but may set you back a while.

The thing is, with a set family of rollers, especially if you get the birds from a competitor who has been working with his own family or someone else's family/families for a while, the quality of the birds are pretty much set. You know what to expect from the family. (Overall generalization as there are exceptions) With a family, you can pretty much expect when the birds will start to tail ride and start rolling, know how much feed to enough, how often/much to fly them, when they really mature, ages that they roll best, how they roll, and what qualities the family carries.

The bad thing about crossing is, it takes you forever (YEARS) to get the birds back to where they were before. With a family, it is developed by tight inbreeding/linebreeding so the genetically, the birds are very close so you have more of an idea of what to expect from the birds. Since the genetic pool is tighter, there's less of a variance of birds acting out of the so-called "norm". Here's an example below:

_Say I have Mee based birds that came directly from Rick Mee. If I breed two 20'ers, I can expect that most of the babies will probably be 20'ers. Say I mix Mees with Turners because I want a specific quality from the Turners. In doing so, I've mixed the blood of the two families and what was once a tight gene pool has now extrapolated immensely. So now when breed a 20'er from the Mee bird and a 20'er from the Turner bird, the babies came out as unknown. From those two birds, I could breed a rolldown or a roller that barely rolls._ 

While it doesn't make sense immediately as to why two 20' pigeons don't automatically give you 20' babies, it's because the gene pool is vastly different now. This is why two good birds being breed together doesn't always give you a good bird in return. Breeding two good birds of the same genetic family gives you a higher chance of have good offsprings because there is less variance in the gene pool which means less variance in the performance of the offspring as well.


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## scott70 (Feb 22, 2011)

*just for fun*

I have a lot of room now to play around with these birds and was just going to put a pair together next year to see what happens not realy worried about competing just out to have a little fun with them sticking to one group of birds this year to see how they do thank you for your time and the info


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## fresnobirdman (Dec 27, 2008)

I don't see anything wrong with crossing families; people do it all the time.
As long as the qualities are the same they should throw you some good babies and some times even better babies. 

Crossing families are what makes people famous.


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## Ross Howard (Nov 26, 2009)

MaryOfExeter said:


> A Birmingham Roller is a Birmingham roller  I don't see a problem with mixing them. Should give you some hybrid vigor.


Haha ... Tell that on the roller forum & then duck !!!!


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## 2y4life (Apr 5, 2010)

fresnobirdman said:


> I don't see anything wrong with crossing families; people do it all the time.
> As long as the qualities are the same they should throw you some good babies and some times even better babies.
> 
> Crossing families are what makes people famous.


I'd say over 90% of the people who cross families fail in their conquest because they have no idea what they are doing.

The people who have become famous know what they're doing. No offense but crossing is usually a no-no. Talk to the people who are actually famous and they'll tell you, unless you've been raising rollers for years, crossing will only set you back. Talk to a Higgins, Mee, Horner, Ouellette, Turner, Mason and so forth. Those guys can do it because they are very good at what they do and that is raise pigeons. 

The rest of us, myself included, are mere beginners. Even with all the advice in the world, we wouldn't be able to do it right because we don't have the knowledge known as experience. 

Again, when you cross, the gene pool widens and the amount of good to bad bird ration decreases so you have less good birds and more bad birds.


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

but... if you are ready to keep the results as in live birds for the rest of their lives and they have a place in your loft.. then sometimes it is fun to go against the grain so to speak..and have some fun with your birds.. but as said do not expect much.


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

2y4life said:


> Even with all the advice in the world, we wouldn't be able to do it right because we don't have the knowledge known as experience.


A thought: How would one gain experience if one did not "try"? Do you think those folks you mentioned never failed? 

Unless one is willing to risk failure one will never taste success as success is nothing more than failure overcome. 

The question that we can not answer in this forum is what you do with all those failures? In the case of raising pigeons it is an issue of mathematics. Only so many pigeons can survive in a limited space.


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## fresnobirdman (Dec 27, 2008)

2y4life said:


> I'd say over 90% of the people who cross families fail in their conquest because they have no idea what they are doing.
> 
> The people who have become famous know what they're doing. No offense but crossing is usually a no-no. Talk to the people who are actually famous and they'll tell you, unless you've been raising rollers for years, crossing will only set you back. Talk to a Higgins, Mee, Horner, Ouellette, Turner, Mason and so forth. Those guys can do it because they are very good at what they do and that is raise pigeons.
> 
> ...



What are you talking about?
The only guy I know who doesn't do out cross is Ken Easley who kept Pemsons Pure.

Rick Mee cross Jac's with masons. 
explain that. 

To pick up where a family has left off will only pull you behind because you would have to work with few numbers of birds with similar blood.


Ruby rollers are a cross of lots of birds until they were know as ruby rollers. 



And who the hell knows what Turner crossed into his color birds.

Plus Higgin does out cross with his Reed birds and Ron Kumro. 

Their crosses are what makes them famous.


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## scott70 (Feb 22, 2011)

*ok guys*

Well, I am sure you are all right in different ways. I have two really good sets -I won't say families of rollers because I dont really know what has been bred into these birds - but the two guys I have picked up birds from have both won local flys with them. I myself used to have rollers years ago and am now just getting back in to them as far as crossing them. I am sure I will do so but only to see what happens with them and yes it will take me a couple years to really say if it was a good thing or not but it will be fun to try. But at the same time I will also keep both sets and not cross them all - just a few, as I will be doing individual breeding cages. This way there will not be any mixed birds that I don't want. I guess you would call it controlled breeding, not an open loft - there is no sure thing that I can find anywhere that says what is right and what is wrong just what has worked for that person and their birds. The people out there that have ever won at this sport have worked really hard at it and I am sure they all have their way of doing things. Myself, I thought about trying to put a kit together and see if I could win a fly with them, but then after all the money that I spent buying birds and building coops I almost forgot about a little boy that just wants to have fun like I did when I was a kid and watch them fly. That was the reason we got back in to them - for the fun and the love of the birds. Don't get me wrong - good birds are a must but so is having fun with them and making them a part of the family's fun and heritage.


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## 2y4life (Apr 5, 2010)

fresnobirdman said:


> What are you talking about?
> The only guy I know who doesn't do out cross is Ken Easley who kept Pemsons Pure.
> 
> Rick Mee cross Jac's with masons.
> ...


You missed it completely. Re-read my post carefully. I never said people don't cross. I said over 90% of them fail and those who do make it make it because they have the experience to do so. Call up Rick Mee or Jerry Higgins and ask them if they were just starting out, would they recommend crossing families? Guarantee you they'll say no.

As for Scott, have fun. You'll enjoy the experience and you will, no doubt, learn. Just remember, as long as you enjoy doing it, it's all up to you. As we say, you pay the feed bill. That's my contributions to this thread. Again, enjoy the experience Scott. You'll have alot of fun. Pigeons, especially performance pigeons, are awesome.


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