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Iraq's pigeon breeders get ahead in international game

Iraq's pigeon breeders, once disdained, are making a name for themselves in international competitions, as well as profiting off the sales of birds in auctions.
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Abu Mahdi al-Aboudi recently paid over $11,000 for a single pigeon at a high-profile auction in Iraq’s southern port city of Basra. “It is not even the most expensive pigeon I own,” Aboudi, who has bred racing pigeons in Basra for a decade, told Al-Monitor. He proudly added that his new acquisition came from the Janssen Bros of Belgium, who have bred renowned racing pigeons for more than a century.

Aboudi was one of the many pigeon fanciers who participated in the international mid-March auction orchestrated by Pigeon Paradise, or PIPA, which organizes online sales and auctions of pigeons. Hundreds of pigeon breeders and enthusiasts from different provinces of Iraq participated in the auction, in which dozens of birds imported from Europe fetched six-digit prices.

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