# is it OK to cross-breed?



## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

Is it ok if two types of pigeon are cross-bred? I wouldn't do it on perpose or anything, but I have several types of pigeons in my loft and was wandering if it would be a bad thing if they cross breed? What would be the results? Would they even cross-breed at all? Any advise?


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

they will cross breed, and if you don't mind just a plain non breed pigeon and plan on keeping them the rest of it's life then who will know but you. but if you ever need to find a home for them it would be easier if they were a certain breed. If pure breeds cross breed they eventually just look like ferals or street pigeons.


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## ggoss1 (Mar 4, 2009)

Unless the other bird is a COOPERs HAWK!!! Then that will be some pigeon.


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

Now that would be something to try!!!!!!!!!!!!! See if the other hawks get my pigies now!


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

spirit wings,
I looked up another thred on cross-breeding and everyone said it wasn't a good idea, but I agree with you. I think it would be cool to make up different pigies just for fun. I don't see what is wrong with it but I just wanted to know what everyone else thinks. How can you tell if a type is a pure breed? Thanks.


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

Also, how can you tell what the baby pigeons are going to look like?


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## teebo (Jul 7, 2006)

spirit wings said:


> they will cross breed, and if you don't mind just a plain non breed pigeon and plan on keeping them the rest of it's life then who will know but you. but if you ever need to find a home for them it would be easier if they were a certain breed. If pure breeds cross breed they eventually just look like ferals or street pigeons.


i disagree,my nun and komondor tumbler,hatched out a beautiful baby,and it looked just like its daddy.it did not look like a feral to me.


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

birds+me=happy said:


> Also, how can you tell what the baby pigeons are going to look like?


The breeds have specific traits that were wanted and bred with purpose for those traits and or performance. you have your fancy breeds and performing breeds, alot of hard work went into making them, some are very ancient breeds too. If you cross breed you really won't get anything special. The reason for breeding is because you want more of THAT breed, not just to do it for the heck of it...at least thats my opinion on it. you will not know excactly what the off spring will be like. but in the past when I let two very different breeds breed and hatch, the pigeons were just plain undiscript pigeons, that really had no purpose except for a nice pet, but any pigeon pure breed or not need the same care. but like I said before, not too many people will want to have mixed breeds, and I think it is wise to breed responsibly to improve or keep a certain breed going, expecially when it comes to some rare breeds....example if I bred a homer with a frillback, I would have a pigeon that would not home or home poorly, I just bred his best traits out of them, and they would not have much or any frill so I lost that as well...so , why would I want to do that....see .


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

Well, with fancy pigeons, it would just give the offspring characteristics from both the mom and the dad right? I think it would make very interesting breeds. I know it wouldn't result in the best out of the traits the mom and dad had but it would probably come up with something new and unique. I don't know, I just thought it would cool to mix breeds, but I guess not very many people agree with me on that.


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## ggoss1 (Mar 4, 2009)

Listen if the world can make dogs called: CHUG and PUGGLE and LABRADOODLE

Then we can make: Owllers, Frillpouts, and trumpetails!!!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

teebo said:


> i disagree,my nun and komondor tumbler,hatched out a beautiful baby,and it looked just like its daddy.it did not look like a feral to me.


That is if they keep breeding and breeding...eventually they will go back to look like the feral rock dove....their origins...


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

ggoss1 said:


> Listen if the world can make dogs called: CHUG and PUGGLE and LABRADOODLE
> 
> Then we can make: Owllers, Frillpouts, and trumpetails!!!
> 
> HAHAHAHAHA!!!


It IS a free country.........


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## ggoss1 (Mar 4, 2009)

On a serious note....If a bokhara trumpeter and an american fantail were to breed.....how would it look?


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## Keith C. (Jan 25, 2005)

Xavier, you can generally tell if a pigeon is a purebred by looking at how well it conforms to the breed standard, but not always.
A lot of breeders have crossed breeds together to get desirable traits more quickly in the breed they are working on. 
Some examples are: 
Crossbreeding other breeds, of rarer colored pigeons, into flying rollers, to produce rare colored flying rollers. 
Crossing racing homers with kings to make more prolific kings.
Crossing long face, clean legged tumblers to saddle muffed tumblers to create saddles with better frontals and shorter beaks.
Crossing modena and long faced, clean legged tumblers into show rollers to produce larger and more rounded body show rollers with rounder heads.
Standards costantly change as people interpret them differently too.
Breeders take the crossbreeds created and breed them back to birds from the parentage they are working on until they meet the standards.
Keith


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

birds+me=happy said:


> Well, with fancy pigeons, it would just give the offspring characteristics from both the mom and the dad right? I think it would make very interesting breeds. I know it wouldn't result in the best out of the traits the mom and dad had but it would probably come up with something new and unique. I don't know, I just thought it would cool to mix breeds, but I guess not very many people agree with me on that.


they could look like either parent or traces of them.....I don't think they tend to be like dogs, like a schnoodle, they look like both most of the time....ok example, I let a breeding from a fan tail and a modea hatch babies, they did not look like either parent birds...they were just plain pigeons......but I guess that is how all these breeds came along.....folks bred traits they wanted and walla you have a breed of pigeon. but if your going to make your own breed of pigeon it takes alot of pigeons and alot of babies to get there and time and money and a knowledge of genetics is helpful too.


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## Keith C. (Jan 25, 2005)

I have a friend whose last name is Simpson, that has lots of breeds mixed together in his lofts. 
When people ask him what breed the sometimes bizarre looking offspring are, he tells them they are Simpsons.
I think the reason feral pigeons look they do is because they have the most efficent, biological design to escape predation, breed, rare young and eke out a an existence in a sometimes deadly environment
Keith.


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

I'm thinking an italian fantail. lol


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

birds+me=happy said:


> I'm thinking an italian fantail. lol


your likely to lose most of the FAN in the tail and then they would look more like a garden fantail or just an oversized Italian.....I just don't see the point. but would'nt judge you if that is what you really wanted to do...


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

Oh, I guess I won't even bother cross-breeding then. Thanks for the advise though.


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## ggoss1 (Mar 4, 2009)

All my pigeons are mutts....but I bought them that way....before I knew about proper breeding. I would very much like to just get PURE white giant kings!!! Like the ones at the San Diego zoo.


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## LUCKYT (Jan 17, 2009)

I believe Cross Breeding has it's purpose. For Production, and performance, sometimes it is all you have.
I have the Most Beautiful Oriental rollers i have ever seen, BUT they are more for show, than Performance. I will cross good Rolling Birmingham rollers in on one side, and keep the show Line Pure also.
Last year i picked up 3 or 4 Orientals that would not even Loft Fly, but when i decided to cross them with GREAT Flying Birminghams, they looked like orientals, but flew like the Birminghams, and even better. 
My birds are for my own flying Pleasure, so it may take me years, but i will have great looking FLYING Orential Rollers. Dave


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## Margarret (May 3, 2007)

ggoss1 said:


> Listen if the world can make dogs called: CHUG and PUGGLE and LABRADOODLE
> 
> Then we can make: Owllers, Frillpouts, and trumpetails!!!
> 
> HAHAHAHAHA!!!




Actually, that is how a lot of the fancy breeds occurred. But it takes a long time. If you want cross breeds just for the fun of it, you can let your pigeons cross breed.

Just about every breed of pigeon other than the original rock dove was bred by crossbreeding for specific traits. Sometimes mother nature does that as well and you will see things like muffs and crests and color patterns in feral flocks from time to time.

Margaret


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## RodSD (Oct 24, 2008)

Having experienced it, I don't want it. It either takes out the quality or characteristics of a pure breed or add something to it. If you mix rollers and homers, you might end up with less rolling or non-rolling roller, but may have homing ability, but not as good as pure homers. Obviously it is your birds so it is up to you. No one is going to stop you. There is no law against it. And as I understand it the current homers we have is a cross of 3 breeds (Smerle, Cumulet and could be Dragoon). Smerle probably contributed homing; Cumulet contributed stamina, and Dragoon for strength and toughness.


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## Margarret (May 3, 2007)

spirit wings said:


> they will cross breed, and if you don't mind just a plain non breed pigeon and plan on keeping them the rest of it's life then who will know but you. but if you ever need to find a home for them it would be easier if they were a certain breed. If pure breeds cross breed they eventually just look like ferals or street pigeons.


That will happen to a point, Spirit Wings, but oddly pigeons do not revert to the mean all that easily. It is one of the things that geneticists find perplexing.
The rock dove is the original, which you probably already know. But rock doves are actually rare now and most ferals have crossbreed traits in their genotype, even though the phenotype looks like a rock dove.

Margaret


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

I need to learn more about genetics but I'm too lazy to go through all the aspects.


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## Keith C. (Jan 25, 2005)

One way to learn genetics is to experiment. Just remember that you are responsible for the lifes you produce.
Keith


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## Guest (May 27, 2009)

Keith C. said:


> One way to learn genetics is to experiment. Just remember that you are responsible for the lifes you produce.
> Keith


 I agree with Keith on this as its hard enuf to find homes for normal breeds of pigeons as it is , so when mixed breeding comes into play theres really not much call for them from anyone out there even when they are for free  but if you are planing on keeping fhem for yourself then it shouldnt be a problem


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

Enough birds to expirement with is something I don't have, I'm not in the process of getting, and something I really don't want at this age. I love just having a few birds and taking great care of those. I don't really want to be one of those guys who is spacifically a fancy, flying, or racing breeder. Tameing my birds is another thing I enjoy doing which is something you can't do with tons of birds.


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## teebo (Jul 7, 2006)

ggoss1 said:


> Listen if the world can make dogs called: CHUG and PUGGLE and LABRADOODLE
> 
> Then we can make: Owllers, Frillpouts, and trumpetails!!!
> 
> HAHAHAHAHA!!!


lmao you are so so right.......


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## Columba livia! (May 4, 2009)

I read in a pigeon book (called PIGEON) that the Female will pass on the type and the male will pass on color. (?)

Anyway I think it's good to expariment as long as you love your baby squabs! good luck birds+me=happy, you never know, you may breed a new kind of bird!!


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

Margarret said:


> That will happen to a point, Spirit Wings, but oddly pigeons do not revert to the mean all that easily. It is one of the things that geneticists find perplexing.
> The rock dove is the original, which you probably already know. But rock doves are actually rare now and most ferals have crossbreed traits in their genotype, even though the phenotype looks like a rock dove.
> 
> Margaret


Im not that technical....lets just say feral then.....


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

I keep going back and forth weather I want to or not. Does anyone know what a mixture of a brown mookee and a regular back pigeon would look like. I might have them as extra birds.


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## wolfwood (Jan 26, 2009)

ggoss1 said:


> Listen if the world can make dogs called: CHUG and PUGGLE and LABRADOODLE


Shelters and streets are already FULL of mixed-breeds ... why create more? Designer Mix-Breeds .... grrrrrrrr


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

allright, you guys convinced me, I guess I'm not even going to try. Thanks for the advise.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

birds+me=happy said:


> I keep going back and forth weather I want to or not. Does anyone know what a mixture of a brown mookee and a regular back pigeon would look like. I might have them as extra birds.


They will probably look more like a regular pigeon, maybe a bit smaller due to Mookee's small size. They may also twitch their neck a little like Mookees, but their posture won't be nearly as "extreme". As for color, is the brown bird the cock or hen?  And is it a bar or check? Then I can tell you what colors they'll be


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

I couldn' tell you, they havn't hatched yet.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Oh  Alright then, haha. But for my 2 cents on mixing pigeon breeds, there's nothing wrong with it if you have birds for pure fun. No competitions or anything. It is harder to find homes for mixes when it comes time to thin out the flock or getting out of the hobby. And you definitely can't sell them as people are looking for pure breeds and will think you're ripping them off. Plus, I've noticed most people looking to buy mixed breeds end up getting them for the wrong reasons


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

I do have pigeons mostly just for fun. I also think I am going to keep pigeons all my life. I probably am not going to sell any anytime soon, but even if I do I won't sell my mixed breeds (if I even get any). I still just think it would be fun to cross breed just a couple. I would just keep the cross-bred ones as tame birds and would probably not breed any. I found an awsome website on genetics and it had this "pigeon caculator" that you can use to see what color the offspring will be when you tell it what color the parents are. http://www.national-federation.co.uk/Pigeon_Calculator_Advanced.htm I found it really helpful for a person who dosn't know that much about genetics.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Well boo. That neato thing just beats the purpose of me telling people colors, when they can just go plug everything in!


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## g0ldenb0y55 (Dec 23, 2008)

Next year I plan to breed one of my dragoons to one of my racing homers, simply for my enjoyment and I don't see anything wrong with that if you plan to keep the birds. I was told that by mixing the two you get beautiful looking off-spring. I've seen pictures and right away I had to have some. Of course I won't be racing or showing the babies and that suites me just fine, I've just always wanted to have couple them in my loft.


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## birds+me=happy (May 21, 2009)

g0ldenb0y55 said:


> Next year I plan to breed one of my dragoons to one of my racing homers, simply for my enjoyment and I don't see anything wrong with that if you plan to keep the birds. I was told that by mixing the two you get beautiful looking off-spring. I've seen pictures and right away I had to have some. Of course I won't be racing or showing the babies and that suites me just fine, I've just always wanted to have couple them in my loft.


I'm probably going to do the same thing with one of my mookees and one of my black rollers. It will be exiting to see what I get!


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## ggoss1 (Mar 4, 2009)

Then you have made a MOOKER!!!


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

ggoss1 said:


> Listen if the world can make dogs called: CHUG and PUGGLE and LABRADOODLE
> 
> Then we can make: Owllers, Frillpouts, and trumpetails!!!
> 
> HAHAHAHAHA!!!


Good One!


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

wolfwood said:


> Shelters and streets are already FULL of mixed-breeds ... why create more? Designer Mix-Breeds .... grrrrrrrr


Those aren't just mixed breeds in the shelters. Many are birds that got lost, or that escaped. 

I have a loft full of rescues, and they are my pets. I love and enjoy them. While it is not my intention to breed, on occaision, I miss eggs and end up with babies. Now, being that my loft is all rescues, it has many different types and breeds living in it, from modena, roller, red saxon monk, homer, fan, and ferral. My birds pick their own mates, and so we have quite a mix in pairs. And every baby they have hatched has turned out to be beautiful. Sometimes looking like one of the parents. Sometimes not. We love them all. If they are just pets, than what difference does it make what they are? The only argument against it would be, like spirit wings mentioned, that if you wanted to find homes for any of them later on, It's a lot harder to find homes for mixed breeds than it is for a pure breed. Unless the person is just looking for a pet. It is much easier finding homes for a breed. Actually, some of my babies have grown up to be much more beautiful than either parent.


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## Columba livia! (May 4, 2009)

Thats cool Jay3


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

Jay3 said:


> Those aren't just mixed breeds in the shelters. Many are birds that got lost, or that escaped.
> 
> I have a loft full of rescues, and they are my pets. I love and enjoy them. While it is not my intention to breed, on occaision, I miss eggs and end up with babies. Now, being that my loft is all rescues, it has many different types and breeds living in it, from modena, roller, red saxon monk, homer, fan, and ferral. My birds pick their own mates, and so we have quite a mix in pairs. And every baby they have hatched has turned out to be beautiful. Sometimes looking like one of the parents. Sometimes not. We love them all. If they are just pets, than what difference does it make what they are? The only argument against it would be, like spirit wings mentioned, that if you wanted to find homes for any of them later on, It's a lot harder to find homes for mixed breeds than it is for a pure breed. Unless the person is just looking for a pet. It is much easier finding homes for a breed. Actually, some of my babies have grown up to be much more beautiful than either parent.


you don't breed on purpose though and that is a bit different. also to Happy, just because I don't mix breed in my loft does not mean I think badly of any one who would, just hope I did not come across as a "know it all"...because I don't!


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