Wanted to ask a Temperament question.
Would you rather a reactive bird who is extremely social, will finger feed from people, gladly explores your lap and shoulder, and will even raise random squabs around the loft and simply quickly retreats when a human touches them.
Or a human social non reactive bird who is exceptionally territorial over you and likes to fight other birds off your shoulder and lap and takes treats eagerly.
If I could only pick one or the other, especially for the Therapy Composite, I would have to say the latter.
Human social, non reactive, and extremely focused on their specific handler are all vital traits for a service animal, and while pigeons cannot legally be that now, service work is the intended goal for the breed I am developing.
Friendly, curious and playful with everyone, but shies away from contact is fine for a household companion, especially if you like the combination of independent and interactive, and you have guests who will also want to interact with your bird.
I'm going to be blending those aspects.
That first category is the Portuguese Tumbler, Birmingham Roller, and Turkish Takla temperament in a nut shell.
I will be incorporating all three of those breeds because of their uniquely joyful, social temperaments and the natural biddability that stems from generations of looking to their breeder to warn them about danger and call them in.
The Rollers and Tumblers hate to hold still and are not generally cuddlers, but they are extremely social, curious, playful, and interactive!
The second category describes several exhibition breeds like Frillbacks, Danzigs, Lucerne, American Show Racer, Show Type Racing Homer, Indinan Fantail, Classic Frill, and many others.
But they tend not to have the intelligence the performers have for independent decision making.
I need a bird that's smart and reactive enough to make decisions when their person needs them to, territorial enough over their specific person to focus on that individual to the exclusion of all distractions, biddable enough to want to listen to their person's instruction, social enough to seek their person out for companionship, and calm enough not to startle easily.
That will take a combination of the two categories of traits you have for me to select between.
When to add which will be largely dependent on what is lacking from the resultant offspring.
