Training old birds

[NeilA]

If the weather is right I would like to give them 2 or 3 tosses pre season. Last year the weather was rubbish so they didn’t get any.
Nothing after first race. Cocks loft flown morning and evening.

Are you going to do a bit more pre season Andy
With the width of your fed and 5 yearlings ( I think you said ) to train on your line to learn the reward

If the weather is ok then yes. The trouble is with our combine is that there isn’t a line of flight. If I was to draw a line from any race point to other members lofts none of the lines would be that close, not even in the club we have a 14 mile North to South & 20 miles East to West. We virtually know on a Friday evening who the winners of the race are going to be depending on the wind in both the club and combine. There are a lot of top lofts in the combine. Of course this year I am also going to be flying with the 3 counties and they will go along nearer the coast, 30 miles south of me, as they race into Devon, (Exeter, Plymouth) and Cornwall.

That’s bloody hard
here in 12 miles width we know the wind will favour top lofts to east or west the others on the other side the top lofts get in but are beat by the top fliers with the wind
Is it worth trying to get a straight line to the race point and ignoring the wind and try to get 10-15 trainers in from 25 miles

[MIL]

It's not easy Neil, but you know what i'm gonna say

"Trust your instincts"

I've been in this game since I was knee high to a grasshopper and if you're a decent pigeon man your instincts are the best thing you have. I never ever go against my instincts

Some young cocks were not taken forward to the OB team and they'd even won as YB's

In a way though, that's the perfect scenario. The bar was set high and I could literally pick and choose what to take forward

[NeilA]

Yep I need to learn that way I tend to move old ones on even fed winners that haven’t hit the same heights as they did the year before to find room for a yearling . I need to be stronger with yearling selection

[MIL]

It's true that most of my best old cocks were good as youngsters too

A YB didn't "have" to be good as a YB for me to get into the OB team, but it did need to show me promise

By that I mean that it needed to be knocking about there or thereabouts with the early pigeons on several occasions - and it needed to give me the feel/impression that it was a pigeon that I could win with as a yearling. If either of those gave me concern then it never went forward - regardless of how it was bred

[Murray]

Did you have the yearlings in another section ?
What would be the latest you would train day wise

No Neil

In that BHW Write Up Dad would've tried to keep his yearlings on their own where possible because he probably brought them on a bit slower.

At my loft the typical scenario was this

36 YB were reared and at the end of the YB season I'd be left with 28+ as a rule

I had 2 Sections of cocks housing normally 16-18 cocks in total

So, looking at my OB Widowers I probably had 10 old cocks retain their boxes, so from a YB team of 28 to choose from I was probably only ever looking for about half a dozen or so young cocks to supplement into them. Plus, the way I preferred to operate I was confident I could get yearling widowers banging on the door right from race 1.

I tried to feed no later than 6pm. Around 5:30 as a rule

So; whether they'd loft flew, stayed in, or trained down the road they were always in and ready to be fed around 5:30pm

That reminds me of racing pigeons back in New Zealand.

"36 YB were reared and at the end of the YB season I'd be left with 28+ as a rule."

It's different in Oz. Hell, a couple of years ago I raised and trained 35 youngsters, sent 20 to the first race, about 65 miles and didn't get one home. They've come tearing down to the Murray River and been smashed to pieces by the falcons. I had them reported 100 miles north and 100 miles south of me. Got 3 back from 20. Lost the big Grizzle's nest brother and the White fight Thone's nest brother. That was the day they were put aside for stock. Never saw a basket again. It's not selecting from an abundance here. It's being grateful to have any left to select from.

[MIL]

I realise that I packed up racing my own birds in 2007 and BoP has become a significantly bigger problem now than it was then

I'd still like to think that I could hold on to the majority - but you know, that'll never really be proven one way or t'other ever again really

[NeilA]

I realise that I packed up racing my own birds in 2007 and BoP has become a significantly bigger problem now than it was then

I'd still like to think that I could hold on to the majority - but you know, that'll never really be proven one way or t'other ever again really

Goose would know more than me on the subject and I can only base it on what’s going on here
Peregrine wise here and on route I had 52 babies weaned and ended with 41 after 5 races now I had 5 injuries through wires from one race we had but only one with missing flights
The ybs must have had 40 training flights
So I can’t moan

The old cocks 20 cocks plus them 6 hens had about 10-12 training flights 2 returned with missing tails but from the 6 races I sent to 8 were back without tails or flights or they had side puncture holes plus 5 cocks lost
So in my area and my area flying line we seem to be lucky with ybs and April to May seems to be when the Peregrine is killing more
Its still allowing a selection process with ybs and with old birds I am still selecting to the 2/3 per cent level in fed results but that doesn’t leave you much so you need a lot of ybs really to fill the box next year i kept 3 cocks this year gave 4 good ones away and lost 5 the 4 I gave away had all been hit so where I would be sat with 11 old cocks and needing 9 young cocks
I am sat with 3 old cocks needing 17 young cocks
it’s very easy to end up keeping mediocre pigeons to fill the box so I’m trying to still avoid that but if the Peregrine hunt all summer into the tv training I am not sure if I can keep to that process or just be glad of what I have left

[Trev]

I confess to have not read all the posts on this topic yet, so I apologise if I repeat/or contradict anything already posted.
Personally I don't usually bother too much with training old birds. My birds are kept on an open loft from the end of March, and my main interest is the distance races. So the early, shorter races are my training for the long ones.
However, last year I did introduce some sprint pigeons with the view to being a little more competitive in the shorter races. So weather permitting, these birds will get some training up to around 30 miles. I'm Hoping to start training 3 or 4 weeks before the first race, I will probably still only go a couple of times a week and only up until the 2nd or 3rd race. I still wouldn't expect to beat the out and out sprint fanciers but hopefully will be a little closer to them
My biggest issue, as with many others these days, is that I daren't let my birds out until early March, due to the Sparrow hawk. Even then they will have to run the Gauntlet for a few weeks but I just can't leave it any later than that as they will be starting to breed so need exercising.

[worm]

Dave - I always liked to feed AM and PM around the same time; so any work that the birds did/didn't do was factored around that

Sposing you had a week of bad weather Mike, would you still send at the w.end?

everyone else had same weather that week and they would be sending

[NeilA]

Good point Stephen