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AA vviissiitt aatt WWiimm ttee BBrraakkee iinn AAaalltteenn Text and photos: Aviculture Europe This visit took place on February 28th. For a few days it seemed as if the Winter cold was finally over, only the road surface damage still witnessed the long period of frost this winter. While driving to Aalten, we heard on the news a weather alarm for a severe wind storm that would sweep through the Netherlands on that day, we decided to drive on and hope for the best. The town of Aalten was founded at the end of the 8th century and in 2005 it was combined with Dinxperlo, Bredevoort, De Heurne and some other surrounding villages, the area now measuring almost 10 hectares with a Population of 27,500 people of which half are over 40 years of age. Bredevoort is known for its Annual Book Market on the 3rd Saturday in March, where often many hobby-related books are offered for sale. Aalten is also part of the First EUREGIO (Euro Region) a cross-border region between the Netherlands and Germany. It was founded in 1958. Participating communities are in Niedersachsen (Osnabrück, Landkreis Osnabrück, southern part of Landkreis Emsland, Bentheim) and Nordrhein-Westfalen (Münsterland) in Germany and parts of the Dutch provinces Gelderland, Overijssel and Drenthe. A total 3,4 million inhabitants at 13,000 km2 of which 1/3 is in Dutch territory. Wim inherited the interest in keeping pigeons from his father. He was born just before WWII and after the war, only 5 years old, he already had his first few pigeons: Blue homing pigeons that he got from the local Oilman. At that time it was really something to have your own pigeons and it must have made quite an impression on him, as he can still recall the moment today. As a young lad he kept Modenas and Nuns for a while, but when he got married in 1960 and settled down, the Dutch Croppers came in his loft. Left: All his pigeons are allowed to fly free. Right: Perches like these are important for pigeons such as the Dutch Cropper, to prevent damaging the foot feathers. Next to the self yellow and the black tiger Dutch Cropper are two clean legged German Magpie Croppers. Keeping different Breeds together in one loft causes no problems here. He happened to see these pigeons at a local Show. According to the judges report it were not Dutch Croppers but Pomeranian Pouters as they were standing too high. But he bought them anyway, as he thought they were beautiful birds. Short after that he met another breeder of the Dutch Croppers, who bred the Black variety, but from time to time had tiger marked offspring, which he would normally cull. Wim asked if he could have them. Thus each year more Tigered came into his lofts until today, the Tiger Dutch Cropper is his specialty. In those days it was an advantage that there was only one tiger variety; the description was not that detailed. Left: Another corner of the loft, amongst the other birds, an ash red grizzle Silesian Cropper (below right). It was no problem if the pigeon had a wrong coloured feather in the tail, wings or muffs. Today this variety is split up in light tiger and dark tiger. The judges are very strict and mismarked feather are considered a fault. As an example Wim showed us a dark tiger Dutch Cropper that has one white feather in its muffs. Truly an outstanding bird as for type and overall impression, but mismarked. But he has to use birds like this to successfully breed the Tiger variety. In 1961 he joined the Dutch Cropper Specialty Club and also the local club of Aalten & Omstreken, thus almost 50 year a member! Right: Wim also keeps the Cauchois, here is one in the left: the bird with the white ‘bavette’ or ‘Bib’. Above and right are Silesian Croppers; they both should show a more hollow back-line, according to the Standard description of the Silesian Cropper. Left: A Dutch cropper in Red Dark Tiger. It is only since the last years that he got more interest in other colour varieties. Now he also has Red and Yellow Tiger Dutch Croppers, but showing these pigeons always is a gamble. Not every judge knows how to evaluate these difficult and thus rare varieties. Wim has been around long enough to not to take this too seriously. He enjoys the pigeons at home in their lofts and when flying free. Entering birds for the exhibition is only done on a small scale and very selectively. It always astounds him that when he comes to collect them after the show, they all ‘pose’ in the optimal show stance! For the First breeding round he used homer pigeons as foster pigeons. He prefers the ‘coloured’ ones: red, yellow, grizzles instead of the ‘ordinary’ blue ones. They are also allowed to fly free and often sit in the window-sill to see if he is inside the room. To the dis-liking of his wife, because she has nothing against the pigeons, but the windows she likes to stay clean. Right: A self red Dutch Cropper. Above: Several Cauchois and Homing pigeons, the latter as he prefers, in many colour varieties. The Dutch Cropper has been his main breed for 43 years now. He keeps the Self Black, Red and yellow and the same colours in Tiger. Tigers when bred together tend to produce offspring with too much white, so he has to mate them with self colours on regular basis. As mentioned, the first breeding rounds are done by foster pigeons, but later in the season the Dutch Croppers breed their own young. They are perfectly capable of breeding and raising their young, although it sometimes happens that the large, heavy birds break an egg. Above: A self red Dutch Cropper. Right: A clean-legged Magpie Cropper. Often one couple is more careful with the eggs and young than the other. Especially the cock birds can be a bit clumsy and boisterous, which results in broken eggs or even young squashed to death. Fortunately this does not happen very often and only at the start of the breeding season (which is why Fosters are initially used). Wim starts the breeding in March and end in June. He doesn’t use nest bowls but wooden boxes, filled with straw and covered with jute Sacking. Left: A red tiger Dutch cropper, with possibly too many white feathers at the Head, we could say this is a Light Tiger with should have more white in the muffs and tail, or it is a Dark Tiger but in that case the tail and muffs should be fully coloured, without any white feathers. At the moment he has about 40 Dutch Croppers. He never breeds a great many young and surplus birds always find a new home. All his pigeons are vaccinated, this is partly because he likes to participate in German Shows and in Germany the pigeons must be vaccinated. Nevertheless he had a nasty disease at his loft last year; many fanciers in the neighbourhood had the same problems with their birds. Especially the youngsters got sick and died. Fortunately this year he has not noticed anything like that, although the breeding season hasn’t started yet. Once he purchased some recessive red Dutch Croppers from the famous breeder Beljaars. It was commonly known that Beljaars created that colour by using the Carneau. According to Wim this had influenced the character in a bad way. You could pick them out easily, as all offspring of the Beljaars’ pigeons were bad tempered and used to slap you with their wings. Apart from the Dutch Croppers he also keeps Silesian Croppers in ash red grizzle and ash yellow grizzle. He told us that with this colours you should never pair grizzle x grizzle, but always silver barred x grizzle, or else the specific grizzle colour, which is unique for the Cropper Breed, will disappear immediately. You also have to pair red x yellow to maintain the correct colour inheritance. He also has Cauchois; as so many of us, he likes all pigeons, but you cannot keep them all. Last but not least there are the clean legged Black German Magpie Croppers; a very contrasting colour, which is rarely seen in Holland. This is the reason that there is some discussion to which Specialty Club this breed belongs. Of course we have a Specialty Club for the Magpie Cropper, but that is for the Reversewing Croppers, that have muffs. He hopes the Dutch Rare Cropper Specialty Club will soon decide to take the German Magpie Cropper as one of their breeds. Clubs and Shows His local Club is Aalten & Omstreken and he is a member of the Dutch Cropper Specialty Club and also of the Rare Cropper Breeds Club. Of course also of the Dutch Fancy Pigeon Union NBS, for more than 45 years. But he hasn’t got a silver or golden pin as the NBS doesn’t honour its members with things like that. Don’t get me wrong, he said, I am not really interested in things like that, neither for the Cups and Trophies; even my grandchildren don’t want to have them anymore! So at the last Show he asked if he could have a money prize instead of a Cup, but that was not possible. He participates at several National Shows like Noordshow, Oneto and Utrecht (Champion Show), but also the smaller Club shows in the neighbourhood.

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