Pakistani High flying Pigeons
After giving my thoughts on the types of domestic pigeons. I am now going to focus on one very amazing and superior breed in the flying pigeons world. These pigeons mostly keep in the Asian region, especially in India and Pakistan. People from this region has also taken these pigeons to other continents. Like, now people keeping High flyer pigeons in Europe, America and UK too. There are many clubs in Europe, America and UK that are arranging flying contest and these pigeons are getting popularity like racers have in those regions. In my research on the internet I failed to find useful content on this amazing pigeon's breed.
In this post I will try to discuss its breeds, its attributes, properties, performances, contest results and clubs from Pakistan and many others.
First, I will try to describe as per my knowledge about this breed. As we all know that pigeon is ancestor of wild dove. All the breeds that exist now in all corners of the world derive from the same wild dove. I don't want to get into these details that how it all happened. We will just try to discuss here, particularly about high flying pigeons. As brief above that this breed is more popular in the Asian region, especially in Pakistan and India. These two countries are the main contributor in its development. If we take out the history we will see that 95% of the high flying pigeon breeds were developed in these two countries. Before going into deep let us just give a glance at the history. The high flying pigeon fancy in this region was coming from Kings of India. Many of the Royal kings used to fly these birds. There are few very prominent breeds are also associated with kings of India. We will see this later. So, from them this hobby gets into the middle class and then into lower class of India.
These people spend lots of time to develop best flyers. They gather the pigeons from different regions and cross them to get better flying and breeding results. Some of them succeed to achieve their targets and made some greatest flying breeds. Those People contributed to keep those breeds alive even after the partition of India. Immigrants from India took some of the breeds with them and then it was introduced in different regions of Pakistan.
Afterwards, those immigrants developed new lofts in Pakistan and they cross their old pigeons with the local breeds of Pakistan to get better result according to the new environment of Pakistan. Now let us take a little glance on the conventional regions of the pigeon fancy in Pakistan. Punjab is the main contributor in high flying pigeon fancy. There were many people who got knowledge from their ancestors about the breeding and then they transfer it to their next generation. So generation by generation and with new experiments they made great breads.
For better understanding, there are two cities of Punjab, Sialkot and Qassor who has two basic categories of high flying pigeons. Breeds that came from Sialkot are bigger and very strong physically and mentally. They are famous to return at home, even after very long flying. Those pigeons are specially made to fight with hotter weather. There are many famous breeds Like 35Waley, Chohey, Bhonchal, Motiyo Waley, chat Waley, Ali Waley, tuniya, battery, border Waley etc. belongs to Sialkot regions.
After very keen and careful breeding of high flying pigeon fanciers were able to develop these breeds. There are some common signs of understanding society high flyer. Although they can be found in a variety of colors, but the main sign is their eyes. They all are commonly have grayish factor in their eyes. All pigeons almost have light grayish necks or sometime black, their feet are in darker and dry form, they have extraordinary strong structure, their beaks variation in different colors/ shade. Most of them has long had a very pointed beak. Few breeds have little wider beaks. Wing structure is long and designed like eagles. This is true that they fly mostly at one position or you can say at very limited radius, but it can vary in structure to structure. Mostly, these pigeons go very deep in the sky and stay most of the time invisible and become visible while landing back to their loft. As far as records are concerned, these breeds have shown some extraordinary performances in the Sialkot region, but out of that these pigeons didn't perform very well due to the weather difference.
Another region that I wrote above that has contributed in very large extend in pigeon fancy and it is Qasoor. Kasuri pigeons are widely famous all over Pakistan and out of this. These pigeons are medium size pigeons with very rich coloring. Most of the breeds of this region are black neck black and white feathers on wings and dotted all over the body. A basic indicator of this breed is eye color which is very rich red and sometimes mixed with bluish and grayish rings. Some of the most famous breeds are, Teddy, Golden, Kamagar, dabwaley, rang Waley etc. All these breeds have shown record flights all over the world.
These birds are famous due to their endurance flight. They have the ability to fly the whole day in very hot weather. Some of these breeds faced problem in wheather of Karachi. In Karachi humidity level is very high and these breeds failed to face them, but fancier of Karachi took the greatest result by cross breeding with other breeds. This breed has a better aerodynamic structure because their body is thin and pointed. Wings have very sharp structure and thin feathers, which provide it less resistance to heavy wind. Therefore, they get better lift in the air and also helps to fly without loosing much calories. As far as performances are concerned, they have performed amazingly well all over the country. Many pigeon fancier has won continuous tournaments with this breed. Most famous, and most widely performing breed is Teddy. We will discuss breeds separately.
Another region that has introduced many high flying breeds is Ferozpur India. Many breeds of high flyers are associated with this region. These pigeons have shown some very good results in pure and cross breeding both. They have an extraordinary ability to come back to home. It has been seen that young bird of this breed flew for many days and come back to home even if it flew for the first time. Pigeon fancier mostly cross them with other breeds to achieve balance flying and homing abilities. The most famous breeds of these regions are Ferozpuri and ferozpuri bankey. This breed is similar to Kasoori pigeons, their physical attributes and colors are almost similar.A major indicator of this breed is its eyes, they have very rare eye color which is sky blue. Banka pigeon of this region has very prominent sky blue eye color. These pigeons have also shown some an extraordinary performance in pure and cross breeding both.
| Another very old breed that i want to discuss here is Shahjahanpuri harey. This breed is associated with an Indian king Shahjahan. He used to have this breed. It has very small beak coloring of this breed is only found as blue bars or some time with little lighter color of blue bars. It's eye color is pure white or cream white with very strong aerodynamic structure. This breed has very good homing and flying instincts. This old breed is very famous in the lower region of Pakistan like Sindh and most of the regions of India. Fancier does not prefer this breed in pure form for flying tournament but cross breed of this breed has made extra ordinary records in Pakistan. |
At the end, it is really very difficult to cover all the breeds of Pakistani high fly pigeons. I tried my best to cover famous breeds and readers should note that there are thousand of breeds/strain of Indo-Pak high flying pigeons so I cannot cover in one article. In next articles I will try to describe famous breeds of high flying pigeons separately.
Note: If anyone want to add or rectify something plz feel free to comment on this article.
Dear Moiz, Excellent information. Would you like to comment on the use of droppers by western fanciers. We don't have anything like that in our local Pakistani/Indian training standards, though this appears to a SOP in the west.
ReplyDeleteMany thankx for your appreciation. In my experience droppers do work in low flyers or patti waley but do not give desirable result in case of high flying pigeons. The reason I could figure out is that low flyers fly near to the loft as compare to high flyers and there is another difference that high flying pigeons never respond to anything until they complete their flying duration. However it is still uncertain because non of us use that way of training. However, one simple thing that I saw and it is in practice that during competition fancier is allowed to open their pigeons in the loft or on roof top in agreed time. such as after 5 p.m this is also a type of use of droppers. In my experience, I definitely worked with droppers in case of low flyers and it worked I will try to share that. Further there is another issue regarding dropper's training in sub-continent. People use drugs in every competition and due to that it is near to impossible that pigeon can respond to what it was trained on.
DeleteDear Moiz. Tx for your response. Very informative. I would also like to comment on use of drugs. Apparently, in the west they do not use any banned substance in the grains/pigeon food. They just use mixtures of natural grains such as barley/canary seeds/niger seeds, etc. And don't feed more than one ounce of grain per pigeon per day, yet they get flying record hours of 20 hours flying time and more. According to western fanciers, they also do not give much water to pigeons before long-fly. Our pigeons flying time is more like 8-12 hours. why is this?
ReplyDeleteHi Asad, The one major difference is weather. The endurance flyers in Europe, US & UK fly in very cool weather. that supports alot. on the other hand, in sub-continent weather is hotter and humid but it doesn't mean that in this region pigeon cannot fly till evening. They can and they did in past. The major problem is in sub-continent people don't know how to maintain breed vigor for longer period they are fond of cross breeding that sometime increase in flying abilities but mostly decreases. This is the major differences that compel people to go for a short cut called drugs. Moreover, the drug abuse is not only in sub-continent it also happens in developed countries I wrote a complete article where I tried to explain the facts. here is the link: http://manimaluniverse1.blogspot.com/2017/12/doping-with-drugs-in-pigeon-sports.html
DeleteHi Moiz: Another point on this interesting topic. According to UK fanciers, their flying pigeon called a "Tippler" is a breed in itself. Just any high flying pigeon cannot be called a Tippler. Just like a thoroughbred is a racing horse breed; it does not imply pure bred or anything like that. If that is correct, why don't we have any true Tipplers in the sub-continent- just like we do have German Shepherds and Dalmatians!
ReplyDeleteDear Moiz: Can you please comment on use of grit for pigeon feed, and what we may use locally to make good grit. Also, how much should we feed one pigeon in a day, 2 table spoons?
ReplyDeleteDear Moiz, Recently I saw a video about a Ustad complaining that people were crossing patti wale pigeons with high flyers and getting good results. He was of the thought that this practice is unfair; and had a strong opinion on such people. I don't understand what is unfair about the practice. I have heard that the breed Teddy was made out of Sialkoti High Flyers and Qasuri Low Flyers. If that is acceptable then why patti wale cross is not considered good practice?
ReplyDelete