The purposeful strange matings of house pigeons involved pairing 24 female and 24 male racing pigeons in special nesting cells which prevented purposeless matings. However, only 4 of the males (elites) were allowed to mate (service) with the 24 female pigeons- a mating ratio of 1:6. There were altogether 277 attempted matings in four laying periods. Out of this number 151 resulted in successful copulations (matings) whereas 126 resulted in unsuccessful matings (copulations). Successful matings (N=151) occurred between one to 35 minutes whereas the unsuccessful matings (N=126) were observed between 5 to 58 minutes. It was specifically found that over 90% of all successful copulations came within 5 minutes of introduction of female pigeons to strange elite male pigeons. 5 minutes appeared then to be the optimum time of stimulation among pigeons under purposeful strange matings
