Sarajevo roller

DOMICILE: Sarajevo, but they arised from Asian oriental rollers. These pigeons are developed in the first half of 20-th century.

STANDARD APPERANCE: elegant and temperamental pigeon, vigurous and harmonious apperance. Medium size, proud figured with a bit raised tail and wings inclined above tail. The size of pigeon from the top of the break to the bootom of the tail is between 32 and 36 cm.

HEAD: elongated (length bigger than width), smooth (without crest), oval without angles or flat surfaces, medium sized, inclined, with beak line in soft transition. Concerning the whole figure the head size had to be adjusted with bigness of the pigeon and has not to be significantly big.

BEAK: of medium size and thickness, a bit stronger in the base, top gentle swaddled and has not to be very thin. The colour of the beak is white-fleshy with black dot on the top probably.Nostrils are moderately developed. The junction line of the upper and lower part of the beak in extension has to go under the eye pupil or under rim of the iris.

EYE: iris is bluishly-white (colour of the pearls). The pupil is small with diameter which is approx. Equal to the width of iris. Eye is medium sized and has not to be goggled. Eye lid is slim, narrow, white-fleshy coloured (must not be thick, wrinkled, red, pinky or yellow). Sprinkled pigeons very often iris interweaved with dark violet colour. This iris colour not desirable but tolerated.

NECK: extended, almost vertical, midly incorporated in the goiter and chest line, neck or medium lenght adjusted to the body, sligthly bent backwards so the proud pouse is visible.

BACK: short, inclined and curved, back with tail and neck gives saddled line without angles or hunch backs.

STOMACH: flat, drown in and wide.

WINGS: Wings: long, 1-2 cm shorter than the tail, with long and wide feathers kept under tail. Looked from the lateral side wings are strong and wide and towards the end of the tail they form sharp angle. The length of the wings has not to be longer than the tail. When the pigeon is in movement he must touch the ground.

TAIL: consisted of 14-18 wide feathers set in two rows, when widen form broad fan. When joined the tail is arched in the base and must has uppertail with normally grown up feathers. Lower side of the tail is flat with feathered undertail in the same colour as a tail. The top tail width and chest are of the same size. A very often appearance is doubled feather ("vilo") so called "zunfikarli" which is a bit longer than the others. This is a chacteristics of good race purity. At the tail tissue, the rump gland has not to be gutterlike (like in Gdanjsk highflyer).

LEGS: short, up to midlle size, harmonized with the pigeon length, lower half of the lower leg and fingers must not have feather even not in traces. Fingers are short with sharpless nails of white-fleshy colour. The leg’s colour is red-fleshy.

COLOUR: black, blue, metalic-blue, or sprinkled in mentioned colours. Black colour is deep, blue one can be with black or brown belts over wings. The basic colour of sprinkled pigeons is white, some feathers are mingled with black, blue or metalic­blue colour. It is considered as a colour mistake if sprinkled pigeon in the first year of life has some feathers completely black or blue. Basic colour could be also greyish-white. Sprinkled pigeons after first and other moultings darken, so, after few years one can see only traces of white colour. This phenomenon is called "colour closing".

FLIGHT: easy, flickery, rapid height achieving. Trained birds fly in group, but not in a very compressed formation. During flight they roll backwards over tail 2-3 times and more. Rolling is more frequent towards the end of flight which can lasts up to few hours. Any other figure in the air is considered as a mistake ("spiral", "borer", etc).

MISTAKES: big mistakes are: Existing of rump gland, dark eyes, big pupil, red and flat eye lids, angular head, short and black beak, wings carried above tail, feathers on lower legs ("traces of pants").

By the courtesy of Mr. Suad Sokolovic from Sarajevo I will show the photographs and standards for Sarajevo rollers.

Mr. Zorislav Zubic is one among a few breeders who participated in the preservation and quality correcting of this rare race. he also took a part in the fight for recognition of standard for this pigeons and he emphasized: " Sarajevo roller (smyrna roller") is the first pigeon from BIH with Europe standard which was finally recognized on the international exhibition in Brrno under number 888. The most deserving person for this recognition is Mr. Suad Sokolovic who invested a lot of his efforts and knowledge in it".

I have stress that Mr. Sokolovic has a valuable photos and written documents. Through my visits to this extraordinary breeder I assured myself that he has a real gene treasury of this race, also with supreme samples.

Following... ...more about the most important breeders of this race...