What made you decide to get into breeding mixed birds rather than purebreds?
That’s kind of a long, complicated story, so I’ll try to be succinct.
The first purebred pigeon I actively sought out to raise was the Classic Old Frill.
This is a beautiful little bird, and the lacing was what struck me at first glance, but the more I found out about them, the more perfect they were for me.
Small, temperature hardy, bold, famously easy to tame, with excellent parenting instincts and drive, they were everything I wanted in a bird.
Here is the Breed Standard:
“The Classic Oriental Frill is an exhibition breed of pigeon from the Owl family. It is also known as the Old Fashioned Oriental Frill and the Old Style Oriental Frill. It is the precursor breed from which the modern Oriental Frill was created. It is a beautiful ancient pigeon breed, which can now be seen on exhibit at major American and Canadian shows. GENERAL IMPRESSION: A small to medium sized (average weight 11-12 oz) cobby pigeon, with a jaunty disposition. Stations at near to a 45-degree angle with the tip of the tail just clearing the floor. Typical characteristics include a breast frill, peak crest, grouse muffs, and a medium-short thick beak. Satinettes are shield marked / tail marked birds with white bars or laces on their shield and Moon Spots or laces on their tail. Blondinettes are whole colored birds which also possess white bars or lacing on the shields and Moon Spots or lacing on the tail...Some varieties have the lacing extending over most of the body. HEAD: Roundish to slightly oval, substantial, wide. Arched forehead that flows in a smooth, continuous curve from the tip of the beak to the tip of the peak. Wattle small and neat. EYE: Large, bright and prominent. Eye cere fine in texture and flesh colored. Bull eyes in Satinettes. The eye in Blondinettes to be yellow gravel to deep red brown depending upon the variety. BEAK: Medium short in length, substantial/thick, blending into the forehead in a smooth, uninterrupted curve. Flesh colored in Satinettes, flesh to horn to black in Blondinettes, depending upon the variety. Wattle small and smooth. Classic Old Frills can feed their young and do not need feeders. CREST: Needlepoint Peak Crest. Upright and central. Rising at least as high as the highest part of the head. Peak crest supported by a well-developed mane, without any sign of a mane break. (The indentation between the Peak Crest and the mane.) NECK: Short and strong, appearing thick due to the mane at the back of the neck, and the gullet. Held proudly, and upright so that the eye is directly over the juncture of the toes with the ankle. There should be a pronounced gullet extending from just under the lower mandible down the throat into the frill. FRILL: The frill should extend from the middle of the gullet and continue into the breast (ideally 2" in length). It should be well developed and profuse. A shorter, more profuse frill is preferred over one that is sparse but greater in length. Feathers to grow outward to both sides uniformly. Feathers that grow only to one side or disproportionately to one side will be penalized. Rose shaped frills will be penalized. BREAST AND BODY FORM: Breast is broad, well rounded, held forward prominently and tapering toward the rear of the bird. Size is small to medium with Body Form to be firm. compact and cobby. WINGS: Strong, lying close to the body, covering the back, without "sails", and lying flat on the tail. LEGS: Short, profusely covered with grouse muffs all the way to the toenails. Toenails to be white in Satinettes flesh to horn to black in Blondinettes depending upon the variety. PLUMAGE: Well developed, tight, lying flat with the exception of the Frill and the Peak Crest. FLIGHTS AND TAIL: Flights short, resting flat on the tail. Flights and tail to be shorter rather than longer. Tail to be no more than 2 feathers in width. Tail just clearing the floor when in show position. STATION: Upright station at near to a 45-degree angle, which causes the tail to be held downward rather than horizontal. COLOR: While no preference is given to any one color, all colors should be bright, smooth and even. In laced birds the lacing should be clear and distinct. In barred birds the bars should be clear, narrow. long and even. The color inside the bars or laces should be white. The color inside the Moon Spots or tail laces should be white. The factors which give the Oriental Frill its unique coloring are Toy Stencil and Frill Stencil, in combination. Toy Stencil affecting mainly the body and Frill Stencil affecting mainly the tail. Without these factors in proper combination, various shades of color will be produced, from normal coloration to bronzes/ sulphurs and a root beer coloration, in their various hues. Toy Stencil and Frill Stencil causes the whitening effect that one sees in a well marked Oriental Frill. RECOGNIZED COLORS: Blue Silver (Dilute Blue) Brown Khaki (Dilute Brown) Ash Red Ash Yellow (Dilute Ash Red) Black (Spread Blue) Dun (Spread Silver) Lavender (Spread Ash Red & Ash Yellow) Recessive Red Recessive Yellow There will also be a class for AOC, for other factors which fanciers successfully transfer over to Classic Frills, such as milky, reduced, opal, etc. It should be noted that these factors must also have the telltale marks of Oriental Frills, and that is the Toy Stencil and Frill Stencil Factors, in combination, so that the same requirements stated in other parts of the standard are applicable to any new color factor added to the gene pool. COLOR NAMES: Bluette: Blue Bar Satinette Silverette: Silver Bar Satinette Brownette: Brown Bar Satinette COLOR / PATTERN / MARKINGS: Satinettes are white except for a colored shield and colored tail (including about half of the rump and the wedge to the vent). Ash Red birds are to have clear and obvious tail color and markings (It should he noted that it is most difficult to achieve the same quality of tail markings in Ash Red/Ash Yellow birds as in other color varieties). The shield is laced or barred. Spread birds have a laced tail. Non-Spread birds have a barred tail with white Moon Spots. The shield bars are to be White. The inside of the laces on the shield are to be White. The inside of each Moon Spot is to be White. The inside of each laced tail feather is to be White. There should be a clear delineation between the lacing and the ground color. The bars should be clear, long, even and narrow. The ideal is 10x 10 white flights, always with colored thumb feathers. White thumb feathers will be penalized. 7 to 10 white flights are allowed, with even numbered flights preferred over odd numbers of flights on opposing wings. There is to be an even line of demarcation across the rump between the colored tail and white back. This line falls about half way between where the wings first separate and the actual beginning of the tail feathers. An even line, both top and bottom, is more important than the actual location of the line on the rump. The same description applies to the Blondinettes with the exception that the Blondinette is a whole colored bird and has no solid white feathers. In Spot tail version of Blondinettes, usually just the tail and the wings show Toy and Frill Stencil. In Laced Tailed varieties, the lacing usually extends over most, if not all of the body--these are usually the spread factor birds.”
Let’s look at the beak section again:
“ BEAK: Medium short in length, substantial/thick, blending into the forehead in a smooth, uninterrupted curve. Flesh colored in Satinettes, flesh to horn to black in Blondinettes, depending upon the variety. Wattle small and smooth. Classic Old Frills can feed their young and do not need feeders. “
That highlighted part particularly got my attention.
Because this is what they were a return to form from;
The Oriental Frill
Has no beak.
Which is absolutely by design.
On top of the beauty, temperament, ease of housing, and parenting instincts that make them an excellent beginner breed, the Classic Old Frill is the Retro Mops to the avian pug that is the Oriental Frill.
I was head over heels in love with the breed, and ALL for being part of the effort to return a “modern” extreme to healthy physical function.
But despite the breed standard specifying that the COF should never need a feeder, the bird with the shortest beak won at every show I attended...
The breed club refused to retire breeding birds for needing their peeps fostered, because they threw babies that won ribbons.
When I pointed out that the breed standard specified the beak should never get short enough to require fosters, a respected member of the club with a lot of vocal support said that if I wasn’t raising birds to win ribbons, I was raising them for the wrong reason.
I left after replying that if the bird is nothing but a means to a ribbon, then the ribbon must matter more than the bird does.
And that’s my entire problem with purebred pigeons;
The ribbon matters more than the bird.
Preservation of any specific breed doesn’t matter to breed clubs either.
In every single breed club, the breed standard changes as soon as the current one gets “too easy” to meet.
When you put all of your focus on the aesthetic of an animal with no regard for its structural function, you end up producing animals whose physical structure is so severely distorted that it can no longer function.
I am a strong supporter of Animal Welfare.
These Five Freedoms are globally recognized as the gold standard in animal welfare, encompassing both the mental and physical well-being of animals; they include:
1. freedom from hunger and thirst
2. freedom from discomfort
3. freedom from pain, injury, and disease
4. freedom to express normal and natural behavior
5. freedom from fear and distress.
Pigeons intentionally bred to be so severely deformed that they can’t physically function cannot possibly be assured any of these freedoms except, possibly, freedom from hunger and thirst.
The beakless birds shown above are not able to feed their own young, so their nestlings don’t even have that first, most absolutely basic freedom.
Even with my focus on physically sound breeds, one of the things that sucked the most about show breeding was the need to cage the breeding pairs together to make absolutely certain that the hens mate was in fact the sire of her offspring.
This was not a problem when I bred Ringneck Doves because Ringnecks do NOT flock!
They are VICIOUSLY territorial birds that exclusively form one single pair bond and fight viciously with any bird that is not their mate or a current nestling.
It is absolutely VITAL to their safety that breeding pairs of ringneck doves be isolated in their own enclosure and their young removed the MOMENT they are fully self feeding!
Doves absolutely WILL kill their weaned offspring if they can’t get away.
Pigeons are unique among the columbidae by being EXTREMELY social!
Flocks are large extended families that live together year round and vote on everything they do as a group.
Pigeon pairs can’t engage in natural social behaviors if they are isolated by pair the way doves have to be.
So being able to just let them free fly the loft and clean it like one large enclosure is better for their physical and mental health, and much easier for me to physically maintain even with my sever chronic pain.
Instead of focusing on an aesthetic, The Ramsey Loft’s Therapy Bird Project is focused on developing a physically sound, well balanced breed with a strong immune system and bold, curious, friendly temperament, naturally inclined to focus on and bond easily with a human flock mate.
So, I am blending together the physically sound breeds with good parenting instincts best known for their docile tractability.
When a keep back baby reaches 6 months old, the adult of the same sex who is least structurally sound, least healthy, has the worst parenting history, or is the least human friendly is retired.
Other than that, I don’t interfere with their pairings.
I let the pigeons pair up as they will and just document who pairs up with who, what they produce, and what the structure and temperament of the offspring is like.
The pigeons get to be pigeons, I get to observe and document the social behavior of my flock in detail, and each generation we produce gets more human-friendly and easier to train.
