PART 2
A stud of Rollers is never standing still, and any system based on plodding, self-satisfied inertia will soon deteriorate. To truly remain on the same plane, great efforts must be made to improve on one's past record. Real progress is a Herculean task, but certainly an attainable reality for those fanciers with the fire, direction and determination to get there. A true Rollerman can expect to divide his time between hand-wringing and ecstasy.
Once a strain of his own is established, sensations of an agreeable nature will outnumber the morose ones. The small bird (six to eight ounces) is the best bet, and correct type is essential. Some birds are too shallow keeled (no bird is too shallow at the rear!), some too deep. Some are long keeled and long bodied. Some birds fail to break cleanly up and in enough from the front to the rear of the keel. There are several physical curiosities we want to avoid. What we want is an extremely lightweight, well muscled, quickly tapering balsa wood apple body, not too shallow, nor deep. The best birds are ideally balanced for perfect rolling. Their bodies offer the least resistance to hyper-celerity revolutions.
A few words about colour and its relation to performance, might be of interest to readers. At the outset let me say my views are generalities, but there is sufficient validity behind them for me to go on. A lot of Roller knowledge is less scientific than many of us would like, some of it falling gingerly into the 'folklore' class. Even though of a homespun character, some of it is most useful, often being of a practical vein. I regard colour as one of these subjects.
In the softer colours, such as whites, spangles, mottles, saddles, reds, lavenders (barless, mealy), etc, we generally find a richer percentage of very deep wonderfully regular rated performers. In the hard colours, such as black cheq, blue cheq, red cheq, plum dun, and other dirty arrangements, we generally see more stability when alighting, taking to the sky, superior vigour, and more revolutions per second of roll. Relentless pairing of soft-coloured individuals for several generations can produce a sort of degeneracy, morbidly highlighted by numerous rolling casualties both from real hopeless rolldowns and accidents, where specimens make something of a habit of rolling at all the most suicidal times. Velocity and general vigour usually suffer too.
On the other hand, the drubbing of the gene pool with exclusively hard colours, particularly dark chequers, almost always pulls to the other side of the spectrum; a tight, sound, seldom acrobat, bent on more flying than rolling, and what can be more tedious than a kit of non-performing Birmingham Rollers? The salvation is to maintain a rational colour mix, a balance, different matings harnessing a wide group of colours, the fancier using his own initiative and cunning to protect the stud's performance virtues to the limits of their range. Some matings will clash hard and soft hues, others might well not. The individual pairs will, of course, reflect a mass of considerations in quest of progeny of the swiftest, deepest, regular safe nature obtainable.
Read more in the June 2008 issue of Feathered World
