Huge Changes Coming to our Breeding Program
I have already spoken briefly about this on the discord today, but there are a lot of things pretty much perpetually on my mind in regards to the Assistance Pigeon Project.
Up to this point, the question of how to develop a working bird has been focused in on the breeds I want to blend and how, the logistics of blending them, and the effort to balance the ethics between how many birds I need to raise in order to ensure proper genetic diversity while avoiding all unnecessary clutches...
How to set up the housing all of those birds will need.
And how to manage my time so that all of them would get enough one on one time to train and socialize properly...
And after considering all that, especially while I have been sick for a full week and spent half of another week building back up to baseline physical strength and stamina, where I had nothing to do but think...
I think I got a little ahead of myself in planning again.
And I need to slow my roll and refocus.
I had initially planned to let Serket and Titan hatch a clutch, then either pair a keeper to Cher, or let Blot and May hatch a peep, pair those offspring, and then pair Cher to my keeper.
But then I would be starting over, and making more mixed birds to see if the full planned blend was viable really didn't sit right, the longer I thought about it.
I don't think I should jump straight back into mixing breeds.
Looking at Service Dogs as the standard for service animals, no one has developed a dog breed for service work, but service tasks have been matched to different breeds by their natural strengths and focuses.
It's possible that there is a breed of pigeon that's already well suited for potential service work.
Possibly even several!
So, I think I should focus more on the training program itself, and take the time to focus on each of my planned breeds individually before I jump into thinking about how to mix them.
I don't need a huge sample size for that.
One excellent pair per breed, and two rounds of their offspring should give me a good idea of how the breed is supposed to develop and allow me plenty of one on one time with the peeps to practice developing the training program, and seeing what, if anything, needs to be changed from one breed to the next.
There are 16 breeds on the planned list, with two alternates.
So, devoting a year to each individual breed and documenting absolutely every aspect of their growth, development, and how each breed took to harness work and language training...
This individual research phase is going to take me the next 18 years before I can even begin any blending.
I'm not in a hurry to scale anything up.
A pair and two rounds of offspring per year will allow me some limited space to devote to small scale rescue work without needing an entire building for any of it.
The bird room is pretty comfortably set up for a small flock, and as the current residents move out and their smaller enclosures go into storage, space can be made for larger, long term enclosures that allow me to add crate training to the program.
Of my current birds, only May will be staying.
Once everyone other than the three house pets finds their forever homes and move out, I will be looking for a healthy feral cock to pair her with for 2027.
Ferals have the most adaptable, rapid uptake of any pigeon, and are by far the most reactive, so her first two rounds will be the baseline I begin the year long breed documentation with.
Once hatching resumes, to collect as much data as possible, I am going to need clients who will be willing to continue working with babies who have been trained through out their development into mature birds and keep me abreast of their progress for the duration of their lives.
The full list of breeds and which year I plan to devote to them will be a later post, but I look forward to hearing from anyone interested in following our future babies through language, harness, kennel, and other aspects of household training towards eventual service work.