The Stimulation Time for Copulation in Purposeful Strange Matings of House Pigeons (Columba Livia L.)

Abstract

The purposeful strange matings of house pigeons involved pairing 24 female and 24 male racing pigeons in special nesting cells which prevented purposeless matings. However, only 4 of the males (elites) were allowed to mate (service) with the 24 female pigeons- a mating ratio of 1:6. There were altogether 277 attempted matings in four laying periods. Out of this number 151 resulted in successful copulations (matings) whereas 126 resulted in unsuccessful matings (copulations). Successful matings (N=151) occurred between one to 35 minutes whereas the unsuccessful matings (N=126) were observed between 5 to 58 minutes. It was specifically found that over 90% of all successful copulations came within 5 minutes of introduction of female pigeons to strange elite male pigeons. 5 minutes appeared then to be the optimum time of stimulation among pigeons under purposeful strange matings.