Cloning Racing Pigeon

Cloning Racing Pigeons
by Alan Wheeldon

Imagine that Federation winner you’ve got. You’ve tried him with every hen in your loft -
nothing, not one single winning pigeon. It’s never bred a pigeon anything like itself.
You’ve even bought in a champion hen of the same strain at great expense........still
nothing.
You think what the hell I’ll put it back on the road. First race.........1st Federation! What
can you do? Imagine that Combine winner you’ve got. He’d always been good but it
was not until he was three years old that he finally won the Combine. But disaster, you
have only bred two hens from him and now he is baron, a victim of some viral infection.
W hat can you do? W ell the answer to both these problems, is at hand.........Cloning!
So what exactly is cloning? Cloning is where an exact genetic duplicate, a twin can be
made of any living thing, including pigeons. It’s already been done with mammals. So
why not pigeons? Well it’s on its way. How is it done? W ell with mammals, an egg is
removed from a female donor. A minute needle is inserted into the wall of the egg and
its genetic material is sucked out.

This leaves just the wall of the egg filled only with cytoplasm. Then a cell is taken from
an animal that is due to be cloned and inserted into the empty egg. A short pulse of
electricity is used to fuse the egg cell with the donor cell, and within a few days an
embryo starts to grow. This is then implanted into a surrogate mother and in a few
months the mother will give birth to the new individual, an identical twin of the donor
animal.
Using this technique a range of animals have been cloned including sheep, cattle,
goats and mice. The technique is still being perfected and no one has, as yet, cloned
any birds. It could be argued that cloning birds should be easier than cloning
mammals. Once the genetic material has been injected into the egg, the egg simply
has to hatch.
It does not have to be implanted into a surrogate female. It could even be hatched in
an incubator. I am surprised that the large studs have not sponsored a research
project at a University to start a pigeon, cloning program. They could then create
thousands of pigeons identical to a major champion just from one small piece of tissue.
One major question that will need to be answered is will members that have cloned
pigeons in their lofts be allowed to race them? The reason that this question needs to
be answered at all, is that, to start with, cloned pigeons obtained from pigeon studs are
likely to be expensive. This means that the richer fancier could buy a whole team of
pigeons, identical in every way to a champion, and race them.
That fancier could, for example, enter 20 ‘Invincible Spirits’ in the NFC race from Pau
and likely take the first 20 positions. You could argue so what’s different? Richer
fanciers already buy direct sons and daughters of these champions and race them. But
we are not talking sons and daughters here. W e are talking about racing identical
replicas of the actual champions. Of course the cloned pigeons would still have to be
trained and prepared properly before the race, but if you start with identical twins of the
actual champions your chances of getting a winner are very much greater.
One problem associated with banning cloned pigeons is how do you identify that they
are cloned. Sure, it would be a little suspicious if a fancier entered 20 pigeons into a
race that were all identical, and were all identical to De Smaragd II, for example, but
proving that they were clones would be difficult. The fancier could simply say that he
has been practicing close inbreeding using a Bullbox system.
W ell these are the types of issues that the pigeon world will have to face in the near
future. The future is, however, nearer than we think. Commercial establishments have
already seen the potential of cloning domestic animals, and people’s pets, such as
cats and dogs, are a prime target. People get very upset when their pet cat or dog dies
and many would love to have them back as a cloned twin.
Companies are springing up, particularly in the United States that will collect cells from
your dead pets to be frozen for future use, when the technology for cloning has been


perfected. One such company, called Lazaron, already provides a kit complete with
instructions on how to collect a tissue sample.
They also provide a chart explaining when and how to collect the tissue and how to
ship it to them. They will then cryopreserve (freeze in liquid nitrogen) the tissue ready
for cloning. People are already queuing up for their services, so that when their pet dies
an identical twin can be created.
So when your champion pigeon dies or if you have just got an old favorite, just contact
one of these new cloning houses and they will keep a tissue sample frozen in storage,
so that one or more identical copies of your best pigeon can be created in the future.
You could then fill your loft with Combine winners, or even sell them, without ever
having to breed any yourself.
In addition, get ready to be surprised at the next pigeon auction you attend that is run
by one of the big studs. Lots 1-66 could all be the same pigeon. Identical copies of Bert
Brasspenning’s Champion De Felle, for example.