2013 Jan Feb Bulletin-1 - American Show Racer Association

climate. While there were always good breeders in various parts of the country by the 1960’s thepercentages of such were much more prevalent in the West than elsewhere. These birds were seldomseen East of the Rocky Mountains, due to distance, lack of fast and economical transportation and lackof sharing information from coast to coast. Then as the former soldier-immigrants began to retire andmove (in some cases) back to the homes of their youth, birds from the West and the East were seen byfanciers from a broad spectrum of fanciers and the modern day show racer gradually emerged.We can give credit to those who contributed so much toward this effort, but that has been done manytimes before. Our intent here is to provide some scientific know how. Enough to say some were muchmore gifted in this effort, and still others including some of the gifted, made greater effort and maybeeven a bit of luck was included here and there. However, there is far more than luck.I’m going back well over sixty years to two college classes I had attended. One was a class in basicphysics (with a bit of astrophysics thrown in). The other was a biology class with an emphasis ongenetics. First, from the physics one learns in the study of energy, force, shape and all else involved inthis study, that there is an unbelievable constancy at work. Late in life Dr. Albert Einstein wrote a fewsentences which have engraved themselves in my mind. In one of his last books, if not the very last, hemade reference to this consistency. I no longer have the book and can’t quote exactly, but the gist of hisstatement was that physics, both in this world and in outer space are very exact and very constant. Inother words, create the exact same conditions in physics formulations and you will always get the sameresult. We know the same is true in chemistry. We depend on this daily for our lives through medicines.We take a prescription to the druggist and expect the expertise behind the formulation of that medicineis so exact and complete that it will cause certain things to happen within out physical body each timewe use it. The difference is sometimes different people get different results from the same medicine, andsometimes the individual gets different results over time. Why? And herein lies the clue we need in ourbreeding effort and the reason that there are so many unknowns in the biological entity we know as thehumane body, or pigeon. The balance of this article will address this area of the unknown and theknown.Whether we glance at a pigeon in a show coop, on a nest bowl, in hand or elsewhere, we never see thewhole bird, simply because much of the individual bird is not visible with the human eye. Enter wordssuch as dominate/recessive or perhaps intense verses dilute. These words are usually used to indicatecolor modification, but the same genetic principles apply to every aspect of the physical bird includingamong other things, eyesight, eye shape, eye color, eye size. The same for leg, toe, bone size and orlength, station, wings, neck, every feather (shape, color, texture, moulting process) heart, liver, crop,sex, you name it. Simply stated there is most likely as much of a pigeon we can’t see or feel, as there iswe can.In the genetics class a simple illustration was made. In this case it was a five gallon jug full of marblesof every color, blend and composition. It could have included variety of shape, weight, size etc. Leaveenough empty space near the top of the jug to permit movement of marbles when we turn the jug on itsside and roll it around the room for a few minutes. Turn it up right and take a picture. Repeat thatprocess and take another picture. Repeat for a thousand or ten thousand times and take a picture eachtime. Compare the pictures. No two are ever alike. Now, think of these marbles as genes, each marble agene to be found in pigeons. No one bird has inherited all of them, but each bird has inherited manypossibilities, anywhere from two in sex determination to possible many in color , size, shape ortendencies such as station. We can’t determine which of these combinations a baby will inherit, or can36