It was with some reservation that l accepted an invitation to judge the Croppers at the American National Pigeon Show held at San Diego on the 6, 7, 8 January 2011. My main concern was the long distance both ways by plane, outwards from leaving home to Los Angeles being a total of 18 hours, also the time difference of minus eight hours makes for a long tiring journey. Wishing to be positive I decided to take up this once in a lifetime opportunity. Leaving home with my wife at 3.00am on New Year's Day during one of the coldest winters on record, it was a relief to land into Los Angeles with a warm 18¼C.
Our first pigeon loft visit was to the home of the American ambassador for the German Brunner Cropper Club, Mr Larry Jolly; Larry and his charming wife Carolyn live at Oceanside, by San Diego in the South Morrow Hills. Here they have an idyllic house with a avocado plantation farm along with many orange, lemon and grapefruit trees. Larry's pigeon house is a big barn holding about 350 to 500 pigeons, German Modeneser, Holle Croppers, Voorburg Shield Croppers, Turkish Highflyers, Rollers, Brunners and Norwich Croppers. Larry is first and foremost a genetics expert, I saw Birmingham Rollers in toy stencil and Isobel and his latest Norwich Cropper project is working on introducing recessive red pied; several of the F3 generation have given perfect figures for the correct Voorburg type; Andalusian and Ice factor in Holle Croppers. Larry has introduced almond colour factor successfully into the Brunner, two cock birds were excellent in almond ground colour, but a little strong or big in the body. Other standard colours in Larry's lofts were whites, yellows, blues and self blacks all top quality. Unfortunately Larry had no pigeons entered in the show. Why? I asked. Larry explained that he has to work in Turkey six times a year and was travelling to Turkey directly after the show and could not afford the chance of any young bird sickness while he was away.
For me, too much to see in so little time and so many birds! Larry kindly drove us to Orange County by Los Angeles, to the home of the President of the American Brunner Club, Mr Fred Maenpa. On arrival at Fred's home we were met by my co-Cropper judge and very good friend, John Logeman from the Netherlands, John is one of the top breeders and judges of Holle Croppers.
