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Can the Immune System be improved?
By Bob Rowland
Spring Hill, Florida

Can the immune system be improved is a question I hear many times or better yet, I hear people speaking about how they jacked up the immune system.

I suspect that in many cases we have done more harm to the immune system than we have helped it. If we were just completing our education to become a doctor, we would take an oath that states that if we can NOT HELP someone that our mission is to NOT HURT THEM. So if we can't do our pigeons any good, how much damage have we possibly done to them?

Before I get too deep into this thought process, I need to clarify the fact that I do use some drugs IF AND WHEN I have problems but I witness where many are using the drugs to clean their pigeons system before they start racing or breeding. Now I ask, if the pigeons do not have a problem, then why do we use these drugs on our pigeons? If they do have a problem, what is the cause? Is it genetics, hygiene, or loft management?

Nature has provided for many things for thousands of years and for the system that could not remain healthy, then soon that entire specie would eventually eliminate their self so there would ultimately be no future generations. This is the law of survival of the fittest but yet we insist on putting our noses into creating a system with so many preventative approaches. There is also the law of adaptability so over many generations some species can switch from day time creatures to night time creatures or vice versa. It depends solely on how the enemies of various species have modified their normal code to one that allows them to remain.

Now back to our pigeons as the above statements or thoughts will be applied to this article.

When a young pigeon is initially conceived, which is the moment when the sperm and the egg connect, the DNA is established for everything that the baby will be. This DNA formula does not change from this point forward. What connected is what you will get and some of these formulas will have a strong resistance to certain disease or bacteria while other formulas can be very prone to having problems. This is all determined by the genes the parents carry which were given to them by their parents and then which one of each gene is given to each baby from each parent.

If the baby was given a genetic formula for slow speed when flying, then soon the hawks eliminate many of this type and soon all the slow pigeons have been eliminated. Remember that evolution is a constant so the hawks must become faster or they starve or the pigeons must become faster or they are eaten. Somewhere there is a balance or too many of the fast hawks will soon not have enough food supply so they must either adapt to another food source or reduce their numbers to match the food supply allotments.

So we know that some things are a natural given through the genetics but then how about the diet of the parents while this egg and future young one is being created. Chickens stop giving eggs when they are in a heavy moult as this requires most of what they can eat to give them good feathers so if they can not give to the future babies what is required during the conception process, that baby would start life with a handicap.

Nature has been playing this game for thousands and thousands of years but then in we step and we decide we can make things better. We begin by medicating before we begin breeding so now the natural antibodies or transfer factors are perhaps not present because we have told the hen she does not need to develop them as our meds have tricked her system into thinking they have plenty to fight any bacteria that could be present. These antibodies would be given to the baby for its initial consumption while still in the egg and during the hatching process but now it may not have them so the egg may not even hatch. However, if the mother had a problem and did not have the ability to naturally remain healthy, then giving her drugs to clean her up may have allowed you to get some young ones from her but have we done this at the expense of creating a drug dependent line of pigeons?