Handfeeding young Holle Croppers is a critical item. A lot of breeders think that Holle Croppers should be able to bring up their own offspring. Everything should be done by natural causes. Well, until some point I agree with that. In rare occasions some pairs were able to bring up their own youngs. Most of the time, however, I found that the Holle were not able to do a good job. It took too long before the youngs were ready to leave the nests, in others they simply stopped feeding the youngs after 7 days, and started off for a new round of eggs.

I have been using feeders to bring up the youngs, still do in fact, next to my, at the moment 10 breeding pairs of Holle, I keep six pairs of racing pigeons, they do their job to satisfaction. 2 problems show up now. There's not enough fosterparents for the eggs of the Holle, and I don't have enough room to keep more than 6 pairs of racers.

To bring up the rest of the youngs of the Holle I started handfeeding them. Why handfeeding you might ask? Well it's pretty simple. I breed my Holles for shows, I need a lot of youngs every year, so the best of them can stay for the showseason and to improve the quality of my breeding stock. So the sportive element is very important to me. If you want to improve yourself in the pigeon sport, you need youngs, so you can select and get your average quality in your loft to a higher level.

Here is how I do handfeeding

I take some energy corn, add water to it and leave it be for about 1 hour. The corn will be weakened enough by now, you can make a thick fluid out of it with a little more water and some firm stirring with a spoon. Also a little coffee creamer is added for the needed vitamine D, the youngs need strong bones, right. When the corn and water is stirred to a smooth substance it can be injected directly into the throat of the young. Make sure that you inject far enough into the throat so the young won't have to swollow, that's where it all can go wrong.

I start feeding when the youngs are 7 days old, after 14 days the young are taken from the nests of the parents to Kindergarten, where I feed them once a day. In the Kindergarten there is some normal seeds as well, the youngs will start to pick up some seeds after a few days. When they are 23 days I put them in the youngsters loft and they will eat by themselfs.

Although I have been very succesfull using the handfeeding method, I know it isn't the way a true pigeon breeder wants it to be. I gave my motivation to act this way before, I know a lot of breeders will disagree with it. However, I've seen a lot of youngs in a lot of lofts where the Holles bring up their own offspring, I can't say that it's a pretty sight. Very skinny youngs, badly growing youngs, is this what you want? All I know is that I can't stand to see all of that in my loft!