Definitely please go into the ferals being their own breed thing whenever you want to! I’d love to hear that!!
In most cases, a Breed is a largely homogenous breeding population of a domestic animal.
While color and certain embellishments may vary, body type generally breeds true generation after generation.
I consider Ferals to be a Performance breed in themselves, shaped by their environment to have an almost completely homogenous body type and temperament.
Traits like the average size and pattern of a flock vary by region, but the same is true for Birmingham Rollers, who are judged only on their rolling performance.
Ferals are judged by circumstance for their ability to survive with minimal human involvement.
Here is a wild Rock Dove in its native environment.
This is a cliff nesting dessert bird that flies great distances for water and food.
Because the latter is in short supply and difficult to find, this is a very lean bird shaped not unlike the Eurasian Collared Dove.
Alex is a Feral that we used in our program.
Dodger was a flock mate of his, roughly a week older.
Both are from a flock in Macon, near Atlanta.
Pippin is from here in Augusta.
Coal is too.
And Panther.
Fiona
Lyndon
Archie
Bridget
Pete
and Masnud
Licorice is from Atlanta.
So was Pierce.
Loki was a surrender from Wisconsin
Passenger was from Maryland.
I don't remember where Ember came from and can't find her records to save my life.
Ferals are mostly homer and roller mixes, and you can look at the faces of these birds with near identical slight, small builds with long, narrow beaks and see the regional ratio.
Most of the Augusta birds have more of a sloping gradient to their forehead, showing they had a LOT of homer ancestry.
Where as Alex, Dodger, and Pierce, from Atlanta and nearby have more rounded foreheads, typical of the Rollers also commonly flown in the region.
Dio
and Murine are Alex and Dodger's children, hatch by me for the Assistance Pigeon Project.
You can see that the body type of their parents bred true.
In order to be recognized to show, a breed must have a written standard, which Ferals admittedly do not.
But a preformance breed does not need a bench standard to be recognized as a breed in its own right.
And being a mix of long established, preexisting pure breeds, they cannot be considered a Landrace.
They consistently breed true in body type, temperament, and intelligence.
Therefore, I consider Feral to be a performance breed in and of itself.
The problem is that the word "Feral" already has a specific meaning, and referring to the offspring of ferals as feral may muddy some communication waters.
So I may have to find a different way to refer to individuals of the breed hatched intentionally in human care.