How to Reproduce Hybrid Vigor by Dave Henderson
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Over the last several years I have come to determine that Hybrid Vigor, also known as heterosis, is in my opinion directly linked to a hens’ mtDNA. I think if a bird is lacking or exceeding in vigor is also caused by the hen or mother of these babies. This means that the pair just doesn’t hit correctly or possibly the hen in his pairing is producing too many mutations in her mtDNA.
Many discover these unique characteristics when we outcross to our foundation line with another strain, but I have also noticed that this can also occur with straight breed pairs as well. The main reason I believe this is because in the case of our pigeons we are striving to produce better performance pigeons and not a pigeon that is larger, grows faster or is a more productive egg layer. We are looking for specific type of birds that is proportionately perfect based on muscle mass and body structure. This is why some other families could perform as well but could be built slightly different but are still proportionate to being a top spinner. We are only looking at pure performance as we seen them in the air.
This means pigeons that they have great velocity and good frequency when spinning or a faster wing beat for a longer period of time for a racing pigeon. Basically, we are only talking about stamina and endurance type characteristics. Along with these basic characteristics we also see these pigeon recover much faster from a stressful workout which leads us to believe they have improved organ function which is caused by the increased numbers of mitochondria in the organs cellular tissues. These pigeons do things with ease and it is easily noticed when they possess these traits.
Performance pigeons are really athletes and like all athletes that participate in the various sports around the world, at an elite level, there are specific qualities or characteristics to these athletes that make them naturally better than most of the other athletes in their field. These characteristics could be isolated to specific traits like sprinting, faster reflexes in shooting clay pigeons or just freakish body parts that make them dominate in the case of swimming with Michael Phelps. In the case of humans and other mammals, much of the body type can be influenced greatly from the male species because I think some of this is linked to a male’s ability to control the sex of his babies with his sex chromosomes, but the vigor again being controlled by the mother and many times also influences the height of her kids. In our pigeons it is the hen pigeon, and all birds, that actually controls all of these things (often) – body type, size and vigor or at the minimum might control a larger percentages of these things more often.
The Hybrid Vigor we talk about in performance pigeons is demonstrated in the young produced from a pair that are (mostly) better performers than either parent by obvious observable and measured qualities. In my view it tends to be the combination of depth, speed and frequency all in one package and let’s not forget the mental awareness these same birds possess as well. They are able to be super star performers and not show any ill effects from a strenuous workout that can dismember other good pigeons over time. The mitochondria greatly affects all the organs of the body and this greatly affects the brain, lungs, kidneys and liver, but we can’t really pin it down to just a few organs, because it is probably affecting every organ on these special pigeons.
I think the obvious comparison I can give you on this is with the horse named Secretariat from the 1970s that still holds every record at all distances and was also called “Big Red”. If you watched the movie and saw the final race, Big Red would always start out of the gate in last place and end with a pretty close race until in the 1 ¼ mile race where he ran faster than anyone would ever have imagined, I think this was when doping animals became a thing I feel. The owner of this horse even keys in on Big Red’s mother for having great stamina that was passed on, again a link to his mother’s mtDNA. The reason Big Red still holds many of these records is because he was a male and males are unable to pass their mtDNA to their off spring. He is obvious able to pass on other features but without the high vigor from his mtDNA he will never replicate what he was.
They said that mtDNA is a very stable type of DNA, but it’s with specific females that are able to produce these mutations. The vast majority of the mutations we see are the ones the negatively affect the performance and not one that enhances it. The say that females that reproduce these mutations are carrying a mutation of their own and this is why they are able to reproduce it more often compared to others.
I think hybrid vigor in our pigeons is somehow linked to a specific set of unknown genes (maybe even a specific mix of chromosomes) and not all pigeons are compatible to carry this trait. Most think it occurs when two families or strains are mixed and produce it. Many desire to keep producing this vigor and as long as that pair of pigeons is alive and breeding you will be able to reproduce this “hybrid vigor” whenever you want. If we maintain these two families as long as we can just for the purpose of mixing together whenever we feel the need to produce more of these great pigeons, but it is not guaranteed to hit in every pairing, but we try anyway. The ultimate goal I think should be to develop another family around the babies produced from these specific pair(s) that produce this hybrid vigor. How do we do this?
The concept of creating hybrid vigor when you cross two inbred families is not automatic and there is no way of knowing when it will occur until we try two pigeons together and it won’t show itself in every young bird produced from this pair either. All we know is that it can occur and we need to breed birds together to discover it. If we know it is linked to the mtDNA found in these birds then we know that only a hen from this pair will be capable of reproducing it. I think it kind of like a switch in the genetics that is turned when this is displayed. I think the closest pigeons in possession of it could be nest mates, meaning if there is a cock that is displaying this vigor then his sister would probably also be in possession of this vigor, but she would be capable of passing it on to the next generation. This is why first cousin and half sibling pairs are the best when this occurs.
I started my first family in 1991 and they were created from a cross pair that produced hybrid vigor in many of their babies, but all that showed it were hens in my opinion. All the off spring looked like peas in a pod and had exceptional kit performance qualities in them but they were not inbreeding compatible to either parent, because I tried going back to both parents with several key birds with no success. It was almost like the genes were changed in their babies and would not reproduce much when paired back to the parents for whatever reason. I was able to replicate this vigor because of one hen and her first cousin, also a hen. It never really dawned on me why this worked, I was just following the direction the birds showed me to go in. Once I stumbled on to this mtDNA information published by Silvio from 2009 it was like a light went off in my head and this had to be the unknown dominance I was seeing at the time and still do.
I think that when pairs produce hybrid vigor (mutated mtDNA) the mix of genes is a unique combination but also don’t seem capable to replicating what they possess. I don’t know how to explain this phenomenon, but in plants this sort of thing occurs where the F1 hybrids fail to reproduce like they look and because of this the vast majority never bred from F1 hybrids. There are a lot of fanciers out there that have experienced this with their very best birds being unable to reproduce anything significant and I would bet that most of these pigeons are cock birds and now it seems obvious why it would not work.
Since I have been experimenting with mtDNA traits, I have made some amazing crosses that don’t reproduce very well going back to either side of this cross. It is because they aren’t reproducing the qualities that they possess. The best mates for these crosses, initially appear to be, are other crosses. I have seen that a half sibling (from same mom) or distant cousin that were developed at another loft can work at times as well.
I think it’s not just cross pairs that are able to produce this hybrid vigor (mutated mtDNA) either and I think that a certain percentage of the time any pair is capable of producing this hybrid vigor at times and many have found that these pigeons are often unable to reproduce what they are added back into the family.
If a pair raises 8 babies and 1 of the 8 flown out turns out to be a super star that exceeds all others bred in performance I believe that this pigeons is also displaying this same mutation that we often see with outcross pairs. These pigeons appear to be unable to reproduce like itself when taken back to birds directly related to it in the same family. It appears that many of these pigeons possessing this vigor but are some way changed (genetically) and if this high vigor bird is a cock it will be difficult to find the right mating that allows it to reproduce. I would lean towards pairing him to a sister or half-sisters (with same mother) daughter. Again, taking in account for the mtDNA of its mom as this link. I think a distant cousin could also work that is directly related. There is really no way of knowing if it will be capable of reproducing what it is at all and after a few seasons we should be able to confirm this with proper testing.
Comparison data
The closest data that I could find on research about performance and mutated mtDNA was with human athletes and specifically elite endurance runners and sprinting athletes. What is kind of interestingly with this data is that in my hypothesis I stated that mtDNA mutations that would aid in higher performance would have a tendency to lead to onset disease later in life and even cancer at times and this human research it is also tending to show this. When someone or something is able to display extraordinary performance and it is caused from hybrid vigor (mutated mtDNA) there is a chance the body is not capable of harnessing this extreme energy long term and chances are this particular pigeon would fail to have a normal lifespan because of this.
Because these research articles and reviews is really about humans displaying this mutated mtDNA these people can get medication or gene therapy when ill affects occur. These treatments would allow humans to live longer and possibly other animals could use these treatments, but many don’t even consider this stuff for pigeons. Our pigeons will not survive these effects and will simply just die one day with very little signs of why they died.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130925112343.htm
I had an experience with a similar issue that occurred with my own pigeons and this was discovered in 1999. I had entered 2 pigeons into a one loft futurity contest and in both accounts after the bird(s) were over a year old and sold off in auction the two buyers elected to keep flying these particular pigeons, both of these birds were cocks. These two cock birds were both top spinners in these futurity contests and both died at virtually the same time about 6 months after they were purchased. They both died while performing in the air as well.
Interestingly enough in both cases the fancier was personal friends with a vet and were able to take both of these birds in for a biopsy to find out the cause of death. In both cases they were said to have suffered from a heart attack.
After I looked over the two cock’s lineage in my breeding records, I noticed that both these cocks had a common grandma and I figured she must have been the common link to this phenomenon. I would at times find defects in my pigeons and the common ones would be two feathers coming out of a single quill in the tail, birds that were blind, birds that would have seizures while flying that caused them to land prematurely and would be displaying very obvious distress and interestingly enough, they would always be a young cock bird, maybe being carried in the package of chromosomes on the hens’ single “Z” chromosome or just a mtDNA mutation? The blind birds were always black and normally blind in just one eye. These mutations weren’t common but I might see one of these defects about once per year, but these heart conditions I wonder?
This kind of mutation from mtDNA is a type of latent type where once the birds reach a specific age it is occurs similarly to how mutated mtDNA causes kidney failure or diabetes in young adults. What age is considered a young adult in a pigeon?
Here is a list of things to look at from mutated mtDNA disease in humans and I think animals can possess these same diseases.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15612-mitochondrial-diseases
After reading Silvio’s article about Mitochondrial DNA it was obviously coming from mutated mtDNA. I think mutated mtDNA is kind of a numbers game and if you breed enough from specific hens they will throw these mutations a specific percentage of the time, this means positive and negative mutations. It seems from what I have seen that some hens produce more negative traits and are removed from our stock loft quickly and the ones that produce positive mutations are seen as our best breeders.
https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-019-6171-6
I hope this information gives you some ideas of how to look at this phenomenon and give you the insight to develop a sub-family around them.
I hope to hear back feedback on what you all think of this information.
Dave at davesrollerpigeons@gmail.com