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Welcome to Papi's Loft St Robert, MO |
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My name is Randall Duvall. I live in south central Missouri surrounded by the beautiful Ozark mountains. I am retired Army Captain and presently a full-time gospel preacher for the St. Robert church of Christ. I grew up in Madera, California, which is located in the San Joaquin Valley. My first memory of life was of pigeons. My dad held me up to view some baby pigeons in the nest box which was in an old converted outhouse. I must have only been three or four years old. Since then, pigeons have been a constant in my life. As with most people, I started out with just some barn pigeons. As a teenager, I graduated to rollers, racing homers, and just about one pair of every pigeon I came across. I never showed them. All of my pigeons free lofted and interbred which did not make a difference to me. At that time, a pigeon was a pigeon. I eventually got rid of all of my miscellaneous birds and focused on racing homers. I would clean lofts in return for young birds and had a great young bird team. I was too poor to actually race. I could not afford a clock and all of the entry fees, but would send my birds as trainers to some of the race locations. My dad always told me stories about these big-wattled pigeons he bought at a swap meet before I was born. In the late 80’s, we were looking through an old pigeon magazine and he recognized the birds he once owned as English Carriers. We looked in the back of the old APJ and found a man named John Heppner who had Carriers for sale. John became a life long friend and mentor to me. John got us started with several pairs of wonderful black and blue Carriers and one pure white cock. We also acquired some reds from Robin Neil of Montana. The moment I saw them, I was hooked. My dad and I were partners and began raising carriers for fun. We joined the National English Carrier Club around 1989 and always enjoyed receiving the quarterly bulletins. My Dad has an eye for breeding carriers and we raised many quality birds over the few years we had them. Sadly, with my departure from my duty station in California to another in Missouri, I had to give up my carriers. However, three years ago upon my retirement from the Army I once again started looking for Carriers. It was very hard to find any of the quality I remembered from almost 20 years prior. I bought over 200 Carriers the first two years only to keep maybe 20. Once again, I appealed to John Heppner for some quality birds. John catapulted my breeding program ahead by years. In 2007, I had several Carriers imported from Germany. This group of birds also helped in establishing my own family of Carriers. Other people who helped in the development of my family of birds are Pete Dempsey, Derek DeBoer, Ron Wilson and Kevin Heppner. To all of these men I owe a great deal of gratitude. I now have enough quality birds to focus inward for a while and concentrate on fine-tuning my family of birds. I will always be grateful to my dad for the love that I have for pigeons. He is my hero. Sincerely, Randall Duvall
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