# racing pigeon breeds



## westy (Mar 4, 2006)

what breeds do you keep


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## Jiggs (Apr 1, 2005)

I tried to get the best from our locals but I could not know what line they origionated from!

And you????


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

*Famous Racing "Breeds"*

Hello Westy,


I own some orginal Ludo Claessens, and some Janssen based pigeons bred around the famous President and Super Champion. But, the REAL love and passion of my loft..are the World Famous "WARREN SMITH" racing pigeons bred at SFL USA !!!


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## westy (Mar 4, 2006)

well i have
putmans
janssens
kirkpatrics
logans.


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## Jiggs (Apr 1, 2005)

As mr Smith says I then have good old "Justin Specials" breed right here in my back yard which also happen to be my favourites


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## hillfamilyloft (Jun 22, 2005)

That is a hard question. I have birds from Miller, Janssen originals, Engels, Bob Kinney and others. If you research these breeds or so called strains you find that they are all mutts. So I guess my conclusion is I have mutts. Mutts off the best birds I can get my hands on. I do have an original Janssen off of two Ganus birds he bought from the Janssen brothers. I take it this is the closest I have to a true strain. We might attribute this bird to Van Boxtel if we look back too far. Something that I am finding, if you keep the so called strain pure, is that the comptetition runs off and leaves you behind. There is much arguement that the Janssens birds are not competitive anymore. If you notice, Ganus is not racing true Janssens anymore in his loft in Belgium. This may tell you something. Paper vs. perfomance comes to my mind. If you do study the lineage of what he is rancing you will find much Janssen blood crossed with others in the pedigrees. Even true Janssen breeders swap their Janssen birds around. I am finding most of my birds have somewhat consistent origin. I am finding that all the Janssen Blood, Muelman, Klak, Borgman, Valk, and other blood in my pedigrees did cross Van Boxtel's plate via the brothers.


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## Grayskull (Jan 8, 2005)

*I have mostly Van Rhijn Kloeck along with a few Horemans, Janssen, Hofkens, Boers and Delbar.*


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## hillfamilyloft (Jun 22, 2005)

I have a bird with some Van Rhijn Kloeck blood via Ikon. The Keizer blood has done well for people. We see over and over how Janssen birds along with Muelmans make it to the top. You find a correlation nine times out of ten that many great racers start with either of these two so called strains and get winners. Elsacker, Piet Valk, Verkerk, and others trace their start back to these birds.


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

hillfamilyloft said:


> I have a bird with some Van Rhijn Kloeck blood via Ikon. The Keizer blood has done well for people. We see over and over how Janssen birds along with Muelmans make it to the top. You find a correlation nine times out of ten that many great racers start with either of these two so called strains and get winners. Elsacker, Piet Valk, Verkerk, and others trace their start back to these birds.


 Hello Hill Family Loft,

I am very interested in what you say above. I have some set ideals, but I am always open for ideals or thoughts on a particular subject. My thinking is, if you arrive at a point, where you think you really know alot about pigeons, the truth is, you know very little at all.....  Even this ideal, which I state, did not orginate from me, but must of come from someone way before my time.

Having said all that, I am concerned that people reading your quotes above, will misinterept what your message really means. After all, I am sure if we would all have some VERY good records. You would all be able to trace our pigeons back to Noah releasing a pigeon from the Ark how many thousands of years ago ?  

Some of the World's greatest racing pigeon's were direct Janssen pigeons. The brothers became millionaires selling them over the last thirty years. And then of course, how many hundreds if not thousands did they sell over thirty years ? How many of their offspring produced tens of thousands of breeding pairs ? Heck, the birds could have gone through three or four or more people's hands, and hundred's of thousands of birds later ? Of course, just about every racing pigeon alive today, was influenced in some measure by the Janssen Brothers. 

But, the Janssen Brothers, and their orginal birds, are for the most part gone. What is really left, is only a shadow of what it once was. There are those, I am as sure as I am writing this, that there will be those who will argue with this. But, I would no sooner race an orginal...so called Janssen, as I would my Grand Father's 65' chevey.

Yesterday's Technology....


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## hillfamilyloft (Jun 22, 2005)

I am not saying here that the Janssens exist today like they did of old, but I am saying that I am finding a relationship with the lineage of most of my pedigrees. What I am finding is that many of the so called strains have a relationship to the Janssen birds. Al Mills just sent me the pegigrees of De Soest and Wonder Van Bergen. I know the decendents of these birds to be Vic Miller birds. After studying the pedigrees back to the 60's I am finding Janssen birds via Goossens, Klack etc. They all put their mark on these birds. These birds are not Janssens and were not the day they won big races. As far as I am concerned they are Romein birds. The man who flew them. My birds are only Hillfamily birds. I have found a link to Janssen birds with most of what I am flying. I have an Engels bird whose pedigree has Den 23 on all branches of its pedigree. Is it an Engels bird? I have yet to find Janssen in its pedigree. Not to say I will not. I think we could argue that If we only had birds that we bought from the Janssens and their decendents, and only crossed them with birds we bought from fanciers that did the same, we may be able to claim we had Janssens. Karl Muelmans did not like the Janssen brothers, but the birds are somewhat related via Van Boxtel and others. If not for Karl and others that dared to cross, we would still have only Janssens. Mutations make the man! or we would still be monkeys. (Only a hypostesis here) Crosses make the winners. If we did not cross we would still have Janssens. I do have a bird that only has Janssen birds in its bloodline. The first thing I did was cross it into the Millers, Engels, Borgmans etc. My thinking is that a man that could swing from trees may have an advantage. The so called strains are only labels I put on my birds to try and make some sense of order. My goal is to breed a consistent bird, linebreed these birds, and then cross in winners from others. Thinking forward is what we are doing, pedigrees are our history. Learn as much as we can about the past, pick the best dice to roll, and we may just get lucky. Flying true Janssens is restrictor plate racing. That being said: If you could buy 4 Verkerks to found a loft, or 3 Verkerks and an Engels, which would you choose? I hope we have learned something from history.
Randy Hill
Hillfamilyloft


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

hillfamilyloft said:


> ...... Crosses make the winners. If we did not cross we would still have Janssens. .......... My goal is to breed a consistent bird, linebreed these birds, and then cross in winners from others........ That being said: If you could buy 4 Verkerks to found a loft, or 3 Verkerks and an Engels, which would you choose? I hope we have learned something from history.
> Randy Hill
> Hillfamilyloft


 And then...how does one breed a consistent bird ? By, inbreeding related birds, and selecting based on the desired genes...over a number of generations, so what then would you have ? A line, or strain, which you could then cross.

In the above example, I would take 2 Verkerks and 2 Engels. I would keep these two lines straight, and continue to fly and develope them. The very best from each line would be retained. In time, I would have developed two, highly inbred lines. Then, with some luck, these two lines would cross very well, and that is how and where, my future race teams would be produced. Since I am the one doing the selecting, the reality is, the Verkerks and the Engels are becoming more SFL with every generation. When they are crossed together, the resulting product is a cross, but it is for sure a 100% SFL creation.

If some super bird would be produced from this crossing, then the super bird could be bred back into one or both of the parental lines, in order to keep the parental lines going.

By the way, very few people learn from history. That is why the same mistakes get made, over and over again......Which is why, I rarely worry about giving away any "pigeon secrets". The information is there, but few people will ever learn from it.


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