For all of the wonderful pigeon people out there, I thought I would make my quest more understandable. Pigeons are really tough to sex. You either have to do a sex linked color mating, such as a brown cock mated to a blue hen, all blue young will be cocks and all brown squabs will be hens. Or you could mate a ash red hen to a blue cock. All blue young will be hens and all ash red squabs will be cocks. etc. etc. Or you can simply use faded factor or even qualmonds to breed day old sexing of squabs. When the male is pure for faded or qualmond all males are pure white with either brown, blue, or ash red ticking depending on base color. All hens carry only one faded or qualmond on its gene pool, so she is her color brown, blue, or ash red. So when I mate a homozygous pure male ( White color ) with a faded or qualmond hen. all white birds are males and all colored birds are females. I never have to guess the sex of the pigeon. Thus I never have too many cocks or hens, If I give somebody a pair of pigeons, I know for sure its a male and a female. Not 2 males or 2 females. Saves a lot of frustration. That is why auto/sex texan pioneers ( faded birds ) are so popular in the squabbing business. I hopes this helps everyone in the pigeon fancy.
