Re: Winter lock-down

On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 02:20:24 GMT, "Dianne & Anthony"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Hello To All The Roller People,
>      You're not going to believe this but I haven't seen one Hawk this
>year, I'm in Tulsa, Oklahoma.    The must have all gone back east. I've been
>flying my birds on a regular basis and haven't lost one yet. But I usually
>shut them down from November til April.  I know they're out there.  I had a
>real good year I've really raised quite a few birds, now if they'll only
>roll.  I've never had one of those 50 ft spinners, but I'm not going to give
>up until I get one.  We really have lots of Coopers here.  My Homer buddy's
>are aways crying the blues, they've started their racing season now and are
>hot and heavy into it.  This is my first time to write on this news group
>and I really enjoy reading about your birds.  I raised pigeons as a  kid and
>I'm getting back into it now that I'm almost ready to retire.  I really get
>some good tips from this group.
>
>Italian Tony From Tulsa......Keep Em Flying...........................
>
Hello and welcome Italian Tony from Tulsa. My guess is that you have
really good rollers. The fifty footers usually end up on the ground if
you fly them a couple of years. The deep birds mess up a kit real
fast. Especially if you have more than one in a kit. I always tried to
concentrate on raising birds that would spin  five to twenty-five
feet. You will still raise a few roll downs if you have good birds.
There are a world of people who lock up young birds because they 
are spinning deep and they want to use them as breeders. The majority
of these birds would roll down if flown out. In the sixties when I
first started in Birminghams the rule of thumb was to never breed out
of a birds till they had proven themselves in the air. The two years
of flying culled out the roll downs. I have witnessed some really
great  spins out of young birds only to have them hit by the time they
were two years old. If they had been put in the breeder loft I would
have been breeding out of birds that didn't have control. I hear
people that say they raise good spinners out of roll downs but have
never accomplished that feat myself. I have always believed that  
control was a recessive gene in rollers. Likewise I believe that lack
of control is a dominant gene. Once again welcome to the ng. 
These thoughts are not gospel but ones I have pondered for a long
while. 
cheers,
Italian Tony from KY