Nov/December 2025

Breed of the Issue - CHINESE OWLS CHINESE OWLS – Page 39 – Purebred PIGEON Almonds and qualmonds can have ground color and color breaks or flecking by simply adding recessive reds and dirty t-pattern blue checks to your matings. Just make sure your recessive reds are check bred and not spread, like blacks. The first picture below is of a bird produced from straight blue check, no modifiers, so it lacks the desired ground color and flecking seen in the ideal picture. The second one is the result of adding recessive red and dirty factor in a t-pattern blue check. In other words, don’t cull it when you can fix it in a couple of generations if it has everything else you want. In closing I will point out that our standard lists only one major fault for color; “Birds that don’t meet their color or pattern as defined in the color description.” This means that very poor colored birds should not win their color class and certainly never be picked in the top 10 at larger shows.• to a small area. The darker one has also been a reserve champion. That one I do not agree with because he lacks the grizzle effect in his neck, wing shields, flights, and tail and has very little in the breast frill. That is more than half of the bird and there should be several points deducted. We have all seen grizzles win that are mostly white (not storks) and some with several solid white flight feathers. If color isn’t important, why does it have so many points? Do I think quality birds with poor color should be culled? In most cases, absolutely not. Many of the color problems can be fixed in a couple of generations. Poor colored blacks, duns, browns, and khakis can be improved simply by not using anything with bars or checks in your matings. Eventually, the spread factor will become homozygous, rather than heterozygous, and your color will intensify.