One of the best ways and quickest ways to get your season started is to get the birds settled. Do you recall how nervous you are when meeting new friends? Remember how after a few hours, a bite to eat and a few drinks, how relaxed you felt? It is the same with birds. You have to make them feel at home.
Generally, many will be starting the season with a newly purchased pair or two, and perhaps have the highest hopes for them. But at the end of the season, it is the old story 'had no luck'. Maybe you build all new types of nest boxes. Surely, there was a lot of fighting going on for the ownership of each nest. A lot of eggs were broken because of this. Probably a lot of young were also scalped. I've always felt that like most things on this earth, all you need is common sense.
Jacobins, by nature I believe are quite mean and possessive and they require a different nesting arrangement than other pigeons because of this.
Another thing I noticed was that Jacobins sometimes favour their own colour as a mate. I've had experiences with some cock birds that would readily mate with several different hens of his colour, but would otherwise require several days confinement with a hen of different colour before they would mate.
In mating your birds, it is wise to put the chosen pair in a completely strange pen. I breed from individual pens and I have found that if you leave, say a cock, by himself for quite some time, he will sometimes beat up the hen severely before mating with her. It seemed as though he was more interested in protecting his territory than in mating. Now this does happen occasionally, but it can be avoided.
Individual breeding pens are your best protection against all hazards. You have complete control over the act of copulation and there is no interference from other birds. Again, the birds settle down to business more quickly and most of all, the young are more likely to be fed better and not subjected to scalping by other birds. This particular type of confinement is ideal where young cocks are concerned, as they are not tempted to wander after strange hens and neglect their own mate and young.
A few years ago, I tried an experiment using one cock and two hens at the same time, and I believe it would have never worked, were it not for individual pens. What I did was, I had wire separators between my pens and I kept one hen on one side of the cock's pen and another hen on the other side of the pen. After about three days, I would put the cock with one of the hens for one whole day. The next day, I would put him with the other hen for a whole day. I better state that it is important to move the cock from pen to pen, and not the hens.
