"The most important thing no one should forget is that this is a hobby and a hobby should be for fun!
The pleasure in the hobby and the friends are more important than the quality of your birds."
Heine Bijker - 4 time World Cup Roller Fly Champion
JACONETTES
Richard Jaconette
Dannie "Boon" Applebury's
Boon's Roller Farm
The family of birds that I started with was a Richard Jaconette based family bred by Dannie "Boon" Applebury. I liked to call them "AppleJac's". Dannie had a "line" within his family he called the "Trigger" line which was based off a cock bred by Richard Jaconette, banded RJ 93-672. Boon named this bird "Trigger". This bird eventually made his way to Hawaii and I have a photo of him below at 13 years old.
These birds were fast, deep and full of roll, but with a lot of individual workers. The birds I had would start rolling early. I had a few that would start rolling 5' at about 8 weeks, but most would start between 4 to 6 months old.
After a few years of selection I did start to get some decent teamwork from these birds and way better kitting. I feel that any fancier, no matter what "family" he/she has, will start to get birds that perform to what they select for. It all depends on what the fancier feels is important.
The only issue I had with these birds were that when they got to be 1 year old and older they had a tendency to want to sky out , (fly way too high). I lost quite a few birds by flying them off. Eventually I was able to control the flying height with the feeding but I would have to be be very observant of the birds.
The problem I feel with using the feed to control the flying height comes when you start preparing for a competition. The feed is also used to control flying time and roll quality. I would feed a certain amount and type for flying height, but needed different quantities and type of feed for roll quality and flying time. It became a compromise as to what I wanted the birds to do and finally decided that it would be easier if I flew birds that would naturally fly low instead of having to feed them to fly low.
