July/August 2026

7 – Purebred PIGEON Article & Photos by Michael Coblentz Sugarcreek, Ohio One of my pigeon dreams for a long time has been to visit the pigeon show in Leipzig, Germany. Sometime in Septem- ber of last year I called my good friend Jonathan Miller from Florida wondering if he could look for some birds for me at the Exotic Auction that he attends in Florida. In the course of the conversation he said that he is planning on going to the Leipzig show and wondered if I wanted to go along. I was like, sure that has been one of my dreams for a long time! I wasn’t sure how often I would get the chance to travel with someone so of course I couldn’t pass up that offer. There is a young guy by the name of Jeff Miller that lives 20 miles from me that has been all out in pigeons the last couple years. We asked him to join us as well. Two weeks later we had tickets and on Decem- ber 2nd we were traveling to Germany for the largest pigeon show in the world! We arrived in Leipzig without incident. They had over 25,000 pigeons entered in the show. That is fives times bigger than any show we have here in America. To say it was almost more than we could comprehend would be an understatement! Seeing 25,000 pigeons in one place is something we can’t even dream about here in America. They were also supposed to have 15,000 chickens in the show but that part of the show was canceled because of the avian flu. While at the show we met up with Layne Gardner and Jay Beals from Utah. We went out for dinner with them and a good friend of theirs by the name of Thomas Holman from Germa- ny that we got acquainted with as well. Thomas said that in 2012 they had some kind of National there in Leipzig that had 90,000 pigeons in the show and they had to turn 30,000 away. Wow, I wish I would’ve been there. The quality of their birds is outstanding. The breeds with higher numbers generally were of better quality than the ones with the lower numbers, same as it is over here. If you want to win in a class of a couple hundred birds you definitely need some kind of outstanding breeding program. If you don’t keep breeding better and better you will be left behind. I liked their set up, everything was single tier (no birds stacked on top of each other). They put skirting on the sides which made everything look very professional. They used approximately 40 inch boards to set the show coops on, which brought all the pigeons up on a higher level which made it nice when looking at them. They also used real plastic cups that could be attached to the wire that kept the feed and water from spilling. Leipzig Show - large show hall L eipzig PigeonShow December 2025