The Practical Rollerman Blog

Competition flying is one path. Maintaining a family around the true Birmingham Roller ideal is another.

There is more than one serious way to keep Birmingham Rollers.

Plenty of good fanciers enjoy competition. They like the discipline of preparing a kit, flying under rules, and seeing how their birds measure up on a given day. I have no problem with that. It is a real part of the hobby. It just is not the only serious way to keep, breed, and improve Birmingham Rollers.

My path has been different.

I do not need to make competition wrong to explain what I do. Some men enjoy the competition road. I have stayed with the breeder’s road, keeping my eye on the kind of roller that made the breed worth keeping in the first place. I breed toward the original Birmingham Roller performance standard.

My interest has always been in the bird itself: what it does in the air, how it develops, how it handles the roll, how it returns to the kit, and whether it represents the kind of Birmingham Roller that leaves an impression when witnessed.

The old standard meant something

The old description of the true Birmingham Roller still matters because it defined the breed by performance.

The true Birmingham Roller was described as a pigeon that turns over backward with remarkable rapidity through a considerable distance, like a spinning ball. That is the heart of it. The bird is not being defined by color, markings, show points, popularity, or club politics. It is being defined by what it does in the air.

That description lasted because roller men knew exactly what it meant when they saw it.

A tumbler may flip. A short roller may be quick and clean. I can appreciate both for what they are. But a real Birmingham Roller that drops with depth, speed, style, and control — and holds it through the roll — is a different thing altogether. That is the bird that stays in your mind.

Seeing that kind of performance does more than entertain. It makes an inquisitive person want to see it again. It makes you start asking why one bird can do it and another cannot. It pulls you deeper into the breed.

That is the attraction of the Birmingham Roller.

What I am selecting toward

When I say I am selecting around the original Birmingham Roller performance standard, I am not talking about one isolated trait.

A good Birmingham Roller is not only a bird that rolls. It has to be the right kind of bird before, during, and after the roll.

I look at the whole bird before I get carried away with any one trait. I like a calm bird with good expression, a solid muscled body, good feather, and a balanced cobby look. I do not care for them too long in body. I like a bird that stands right, looks alert, and gives me the impression there is something there worth watching.

Type, body, muscle, wing carriage, feather, and expression all matter to me, but none of that replaces what the bird shows in the air.

A bird has to kit. It has to respond to training. It has to trap properly. It has to fly with the team. It has to handle conditioning. It has to be able to fly and perform over a proper amount of time and still look good doing it.

A bird can be too much for itself. That is not what I am after. I want a bird that controls the roll, recovers, and gets back to the kit like it knows what it is doing.

The best ones seem to enjoy the work. They fly, kit, perform, recover, and come back to the team with purpose. That is the kind of bird that gets my attention.

Development matters

I also pay attention to how a bird develops into the roll.

Some birds come in early. Some come in later. Any good family can produce birds across different development timelines. But in my experience with Ruby Rollers, the later developers that do it right often become the better birds overall.

That does not mean every late developer is automatically good. It means I do not want to rush judgment simply because a bird has not shown everything at a young age.

A bird that develops more slowly may be more mature in the head when the roll begins increasing in force. That can matter. Early development can sometimes unsettle a bird, especially when the roll becomes too strong before the bird is mature enough to handle it.

I prefer a bird that matures into the roll in a way that produces stability, control, and quality.

That is one advantage of my position. I am not trying to make a bird fit a contest date. If a bird is moving in the right direction, I can afford to give it more time, from 12 to 24 months in some cases, and see what it becomes.

That longer view matters in a breeding program.

Competition has its own pressure

Competition flyers have real pressures.

They have fly dates. They have scoring rules. They have teams to prepare. They have birds of prey to deal with. They may lose birds during training. They may have difficulty keeping the same team together over many months or across multiple competition seasons.

Those pressures shape decisions.

A competition flyer often needs birds that develop early enough to be useful within the competition window. He may also favor birds that roll shorter and more frequently because those birds can create more scorable turns under certain contest formats.

I do not fault them for that. It is the reality of the game they are playing.

Competition rules may still recognize depth and quality. But the practical pressure of the contest can favor birds that work frequently, return quickly to the kit, and help create scoreable breaks inside the time allowed.

A deeper bird may be closer to the old ideal in certain ways, but if it takes longer to recover, rolls less often, or is harder to keep in scoring rhythm with the kit, it may not always be favored in the same way.

That is the point I want buyers to understand. A bird selected for the scorecard and a bird selected to preserve the old ideal may overlap, but they are not always the same selection.

We follow a different selection path on purpose

Our selection pressure is different.

My purpose is not to assemble a team for the next competition fly. My purpose is to maintain the Ruby Roller family in the direction of the original performance standard.

That usually means the best birds are being directed toward the breeding loft, not toward a competition team. It also means I am not forced to fly birds into less-than-ideal conditions just to meet a competition schedule.

That does not make the work easier or the standard lower. It only changes the purpose of the selection. A competition flyer is usually selecting toward the team he wants to put into the air and has a meaningful time frame in which to do it. I am selecting toward the breeding loft and the long-term maintenance of the family, so my timeline can stretch well beyond the shorter selection window a competition flyer may have to work within.

Both paths require judgment, discipline, flying, feeding, training, observation, and selection. The difference is where the bird goes after it proves useful: into the kit box for competition flying, or into the breeding loft to help continue the line year after year.

That is the fork in the road.

This is not paper breeding

A family of performance pigeons cannot be maintained from paper alone.

Pedigrees and records matter, and knowing the family matters. But none of that means much if the birds are not also flown, fed, trained, watched, evaluated, and selected.

I fly birds. I observe them. I evaluate what they do. I look for birds that kit, trap, respond to feed, handle training, perform properly, and show the kind of roll that keeps my teams moving in the right direction.

The decision to keep or remove a bird is not always easy. A performance-standard fancier has to make hard decisions just like a competition flyer does. A bird can look good, carry nice color, have good type, and still not be the bird that moves the family forward.

That is where judgment comes in.

If a bird does not move the family in the right direction, I cannot keep it just because I like looking at it.

Ruby Rollers are not maintained by keeping birds simply because they are pretty, colorful, related, or convenient. They have to keep pointing back toward the bird I want the family to represent.

Flying to the old standard is a serious path

There are plenty of roller fanciers who have no interest in competition.

They still love the breed. They still want to fly good birds. They still want to see the kind of performance that made Birmingham Rollers famous in the first place.

Some do not want club politics. Some do not want travel. Some do not want to submit their birds to the pressure of competition schedules or the losses that go with it. Some simply prefer to enjoy and develop their birds on their own place, under their own eye, according to what they value in the breed.

That is a valid way to enjoy rollers. The hobby was never meant to belong to only one format, and it does not belong to only one format now.

After more than 21 years in operation and hundreds of conversations with roller men, I can say plainly that many buyers are not looking for a competition trophy. They are looking for a good family of birds they can breed from, fly, study, and enjoy.

What keeps them interested is not a score sheet. It is seeing a properly performing bird drop out of the sky, roll with speed and quality, recover, and go back to the kit to do it again.

That is organic. That is real. That is what hooked many of us on rollers in the first place.

Why RollerPigeon.Com serves a real need in the hobby

We serve a real need in the hobby.

Since 2004, RPDC has made Ruby Rollers available in a way this hobby has not always provided: visible, organized, year-round, and tied to a known family maintained in dedicated breeder lofts. Now, a buyer can come to our website, see what is available, understand the categories, order birds, and know what family he is buying into.

That matters in a hobby where availability can be inconsistent.

Some people have local access to good birds. Some do not. Some know the right people. Some do not. Some want to compete. Some do not. Some simply want a clearer path into a family of rollers that has been maintained with a serious purpose behind it.

RollerPigeon.Com serves that buyer.

That does not mean we are the only path. It does not mean Ruby Rollers are the only good birds. It does not mean competition flyers are wrong. It means our operation and systems fill a real need.

The hobby is better off when serious buyers are not limited to chance timing, occasional auctions, local circles, or whoever happens to have extra birds available that month.

Ruby Rollers are offered as a real family line to work with and fly. Our Seed Stock birds are not sold as finished competition-team birds. What the buyer is getting is a path into this performance-standard family, along with the responsibility to breed, fly, manage, and select from it until he understands the strain well enough to enjoy and improve it for years to come.

That is the practical value of our operation.

There is room for both paths

Competition flying has its place. So does maintaining a family around the true Birmingham Roller ideal.

I do not need to collapse one into the other.

If someone enjoys competition, he should pursue it. If someone enjoys flying and breeding rollers around the old performance ideal without entering the competition world, that is also a serious way to enjoy the breed.

Our operational path is clear. We are going to continue maintaining Ruby Rollers around the performance standard that first made the Birmingham Roller distinct: backward rotation, speed, meaningful depth, quality, control, and the kind of roll that leaves an impression when witnessed.

Buyers who understand that distinction usually understand Ruby Rollers better. They are not just shopping for a bird. They are buying into a performance philosophy and a family that has been maintained around it.

The important thing is to understand the frame. We do not merely sell pigeons online. Our objective is to maintain a family of Birmingham Rollers around a particular performance ideal.

That is the frame behind Ruby Rollers.

Common Questions About the Birmingham Roller Performance Standard

The original standard describes a true Birmingham Roller as a bird that turns over backward with great rapidity through meaningful distance, giving the impression of a spinning ball. In plain language, it is about speed, depth, quality, control, and proper rolling action.

No. Competition flying is a real path in the roller hobby. It is simply not the only path. Our focus is maintaining Ruby Rollers around the true Birmingham Roller ideal and selecting toward placing top specimens into the breeding loft.

A competition flyer typically selects toward a team that can perform under a scoring format within a set fly time. That naturally places pressure on birds that can work frequently, return quickly, and help produce scoreable breaks.

Ruby Rollers are selected for birds that best represent the breed’s performance standard and can contribute to the breeding loft. In our program, birds may have from 9 months up to 24 months in some cases to show what they are becoming. That longer window gives me room to evaluate later-developing birds without forcing them into a competition timetable.

Yes. Our practice is to fly, observe, evaluate, and select birds. A performance family cannot be maintained from paper alone. The birds still have to be watched and judged by what they do.

Some birds come into the roll later and may become more stable and useful over time. In my experience with Ruby Rollers, later developers that come in right can often become some of the better birds overall.

It matters because it keeps the breed tied to what made it distinct in the first place. The Birmingham Roller is not defined by color, show type, popularity, or politics. It is defined by what it does in the air.