Jacobin pigeon: selection on the verge of absurdity (7 photos)
Jacobin, maned pigeon, or simply Jacobin. You will see once, remember for a lifetime. These birds seem to be just yesterday returned from an elite fashion show, taking with them all the designer clothes. Just look! What colors, what grace! And this one flamboyant collar? Well, what a beauty! 
- Mary Ivanna, I forgot my homework at home ... - And you didn’t forget your head at home? I also forgot her...
The history of the appearance of the Jacobins, like many other breeds pigeons, lost through the ages. The pedigree of birds is not enough today who writes, and even earlier it was even more so not before. Researchers suggest that the first birds with elegant collars appeared somewhere in India, from where birds in the 16th century, along with merchants, moved to Europe. 
What is it like to be a pigeon lollipop?
Somewhere in this interval, the stratification went maned birds for different breeds. pigeon breeders from the UK, Holland, Germany and Belgium were very interested in breeding overseas birds and immediately began to improve and improve the birds to your taste. For today day the nucleus of breeders of the Jacobin breed is located in Germany and England. 
Chic, shine, kurlyk-kurlyk.
The number of such birds is very small, and it is really possible to find a purebred pigeon is not easy. But the breed is popular in everything the world. For the sake of the opportunity to admire these birds, people go to many tricks, because keeping such pigeons is much more difficult than ordinary sizars. The unusual appearance of the Jacobins is due to a special mutation, what causes the feathers on the neck of birds to grow intensively in the opposite direction direction. Effectively? Undoubtedly! Is it good for the birds themselves? Well, such... 
- Why, Svetka, didn’t you dry your head before going to bed? - Yeah...
Because of the collar, pigeons have many problems. in ordinary life. Cross your fingers: limited visibility, poor flight qualities, difficulties with feeding and education offspring ... And each of these troubles pulls followed by a bunch of others. Due to low visibility, birds may go to extremes: be too passive and cowardly. Or, on the contrary, to rush with aggression at anyone, who will come from the side, where the bird can not see anything. 
- Who are you?! - Who said that?!
Bad flying is fraught with weight gain and problems respiratory organs. For the normal functioning of the air sacs and lungs birds need to fly and flap their wings, not that's all. Nutrition is also in question - for your convenience, most likely, you will have to equip special high feeders, because pecking the birds are uncomfortable from the floor. 
So, where is the dove?
And what about reproduction? Looks like feathers on the neck, how can they interfere? It turns out they can! Pigeons you just can’t see the nest and the eggs in it, so when hatching, they can lose half the chicks, and even the whole masonry at once. And feed the babies with such a collar is not very comfortable. 
There are headless horsemen. Why don't headless pigeons show up?
Because of such problems, breeders very often resort to for two tricks. The first is trimming the feathers on the neck. The second is the help of “surrogate parents”. This is when the eggs of the Jacobins thrown into nests with other pigeons. Such a trick is very successful - and the chicks are alive, and the parents walk beautifully.
