UkPigeonRacing

Well things are moving on for you both, i hope it is how you planned it Murray. I am sure you will have it ready soon, for you both enjoy it after the wait.

Murray wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 10:23 am The home straight is finally in sight for our renovation at St Arnaud. It has been a bigger project than we anticipated, and we have to keep reminding ourselves that we paid little for it, or it would not be worth it.
I have the little loft up and painted and fitted out, it looks neat. Started on the stock shed which will have an aviary for the 'valuable' pigeons which will be prisoners, at least at first.
I have too many pigeons, and was looking to move some on, when I saw a post from a bloke starting up and wanting stock pigeons. I contacted him and quizzed him. He was obviously genuine so I said I had 6 pairs he could have. He asked how much I wanted for them? I told him I would give them to him to help him get started, on condition they come back to me if he changed his mind about the sport.
He came this morning and I had 6 cocks and 6 hens for him. He thought I might give him the cast offs, and was amazed when I showed him a mealy hen which is a sister to one that won a race last year and it's brother was second yesterday.
Then a hen off the Billion Dollar Baby, then a cock bird that had one race before Covid shut us down and would have won had I clocked him quicker...And so on.
The bloke was stunned. I asked if he had any other pigeons. He has one pair that was given to him. 2012 pigeons. The hen laid one good egg but the other was deformed. Mmm.
I gave the new starter good pigeons. Now I still have some old hens in the shed which I don't need, but giving old pigeons that are has beens, or never were, to new beginners is not good. The bloke has some good older pigeons and several pairs of young birds off my best breeders. He has a chance of getting some good youngsters straight away.

Good to see that you are approaching the finish line Muzza, I've no doubt that you will miss where you are now as it is quite beautiful, but it will be nice for you to finally be in your new home with your birds in theirs too.
It's great that you have been able to set a new starter up with some decent stock, good for you mate I hope he does well with them and that he keeps you up to date with how they are doing.

Sorry for the delay in replying - it's been a busy few days with one thing and another
Please understand when I write this reply there's nothing personal going on here
Sometimes I can be direct, but i'm not having a go. It's just the way i write.
I know what I Know and I evidence it to prove it
So, Andy, you have an initial problem in the sense that you only have 14 YB to race.
Straight away you're on the back foot a little simply in the sense that you cannot afford much of a hiccup because the numbers aren't there to support that
The programme you're flying is crap - but that cannot be changed so you have to deal with it

You'd like to be competitive but as I understand it you're not racing Darkness I think?
Straight away that gives you a "problem" in the sense that from about the 4th-5th race onwards your YB are racing at a clear disadvantage compared to Darkness YB
The advanced moult will be kicking in and the Darkness will likley to be on their 1st flight - they have every advantage over you
The plus side is that you're still racing tiny distances so I'd like to think you might be able to absorb that a little - but if you were at 200 mls you'd be screwed

You cannot race successfully in my opinion from the 4th-5th race onwards with "Natural" YB.
Not if there's a good Darkness team racing against you
In the 1990's I had 2 teams on the go. Darkness and "natural". The hens went Darkness and the cocks did not
They were brothers/sisters and treated the exact same in every regard except that
For the first 2-3 races the naturaL yb can compete - especially if the racing is reasonably quick.
After that they're toast - I've seen it at my own lofts and I've seen it for decades in club results too


Racing Darkness is not a guarantee of success with YB.
I started doing it in 1990 and by say the year 2000 probably 38 members of of a possible 40 in my club were on darkness
They can't all win. So who wins?
Well the birds in the best form and the best condition do.
But that comes from great health - and these weaknesses show themselves hugely in YB racing.
Obvious obstacles to swerve are YB sickness and "fat eye" - but plenty of lofts do not hit super form

Some say that Darkness and YB Sickness go hand in hand. Bullshit!
Every year I get msgs from guys who have YB sickness and their birds are not on the Darkness
In addition I know other lofts who rarely get YB sickness - and they are darkness
It's how the YB are managed
My own birds would come under stress - I could see it happening
What I do though is REACT. I don't "wait and see" - thats the worst thing you can do
Now I know you like to "let things run" - and that's your choice - but YB sickness can either be avoided or the impact lessened with smart management

I believe that to race a YB team successfully - especially if you are racing against other good sprint lofts, the team need to be well drilled, disciplined and well educated
Everything in life is best taught early so yes, I would relish the opportunity of racing fanciers who rarely trained their YB
If you're up against a team that are training once or twice daily and have "the line" and are in good health, well feathered, well motivated etc then it realy is men against boys
Me I would be training as regularly as I could be if I wanted to be successful with YB racing
In your case I would give them plenty of tosses (no need to go beyond 20 mls in your case) and I'd have them doing it blindfold

The nezt thing that you need to compete successfully in YB racing is quite simply a fast pigeon
You cannot and will not consistently beat a good sprint man with good sprint pigeons if you're racing distance pigeons
You don't recruit Cavendish to win you a Mountain Stage of the Tour De France - he's a different beast
You don't expect Denman to beat Frankel over 1 ml - they're a different animal
You don't ask Mo Farah to beat Usain Bolt over 200m - they're different athletes
Pigeon racing is exactly the same!

Dad flew at No.36 and I flew at No.34. He had 30 yards overfly off us
He flew the Van Hee's and I had my sprinters. In over 10 years of racing (so say 120 races inland) his Van Hee's never beat me inland ONCE.
By same token I couldn't live with him at 500 mls - they are different monsters
If a bloke is winning consistently with distance pigeons in short races then I'm sorry but there's not a good sprinter in that club
One off's "can" happen if its a shitstorm of a race - but winning consistently - not a chance

Mark Gilbert and Mark Bulled are both classy fanciers. They win short races and long ones
They don't do it with the same pigeon though
Gilbert isn't winning Inland with "Golden Barcelona" blood. He wouldn't expect to - and when Bulled went 1-2-3-4-5-6 Fed the other week it was with Bulcks not his Legacy family

It's like Trevor. He has a decent sprint man in his Club in Andy Still
That's good for Trevor because he has a target to aim at
You wanna beat him Trev?
From behind a keyboard its easy - You fight fire with fire
You have to be every bit as hard working, disciplined and well managed as he is, otherwise he'll pull your pants down every week I'm afraid

Excellent information Mike

A great reply Mike thank you. I will reply properly later when I have a bit more time. Got to go and open the shop now.

That lengthy reply from Mike, thank you!, has about a hundred points that are undeniably correct.
Young bird racing is a whole different sport to old birds racing. The blokes who are outstanding in the YB races for years, or decades, know what is required to be at the top, and do not flinch.
Often the same people then win lots with old birds. I guess their mindset and quality of pigeons means that they can continue on......

I must say, a well true reply for all to take note of some of the details. If not all

Thanks for your reply Mike. I will answer with my experience but admit that I have never been big on young bird racing. My recent experience is only really from last year as this was the first year I raced the whole program of young bird races since taking a break from the sport back in 2005. The previous years since re-starting in the sport I only raced youngsters in a couple of national races with no club racing. Some of the youngsters would get raced but most wouldn’t.
So last year was my first back club racing with the Glastonbury club. A good club with some top flyers in it.
Starting at your first point Mike.
Yes I only have a small team. I only have a fairly small set up. A total loft of 24 x 6.
I have a 8 x 6 loft that is split into 2 sections. This was used for the young birds last year.
1 section has 8 nest boxes for a few natural pairs, I don’t keep any stock birds. The other section is where I kept the widowhood hens this year.

The other loft is 16 x 6.

1 section is 8 x 6. This section did have 16 nest boxes in but I have replaced them with 12 widowhood boxes. There is a 3 x 6 part in the middle that I use for storage, feed bins, ETS, and shelves. The other section is 5 x 6 with an aviary on the front that I have the young birds in.

I don’t have room in the garden for anything bigger and to be honest I don’t mind having a small team. It just means that what I keep does need to be up to the job.

Last year I didn’t pair up until March but being on natural I did breed a bigger team than this year as I only breed from the widowhood’s. This year 10 pairs. I did breed a few from the 6 natural pairs I had. Just one round from each. I did lose the odd ones to a bit of sickness in the loft. Don’t know what it was as they weren’t being sick or losing weight. Just went very lethargic. As you know I don’t treat for anything. Some didn’t show any illness at all. A couple recovered and the odd ones died. I have also lost a couple off the loft.
I haven’t ever done darkness and am the only member in our club that doesn’t. Probably irrelevant but I was also the only member that sent to every young bird race as others had to stop for a couple of weeks during the season because they had YBS. Yes mine were falling apart and well up in the wing but I still kept them going from first to last race.
Last year I had 23 youngsters by the time I started training. I had 3 tosses at 8 miles and 2 at around 18 miles before racing. I didn’t lose any during training. Sent 23 to the first race, dropped 1. I was 2nd & 5th club from 34 miles. The second bird didn’t register on the ETS otherwise I would have been 2nd & 3rd. Sent 21 to the second race and dropped 1. We had a bad third race with many birds being lost. I sent 20 and dropped 6, 83 miles. Fourth race I sent 13. Dropped 3, one of which was reported in Holland. From the other 4 races after that I only lost 1. So ended the season with 11 from the 23.
Interesting that you mention the Van Hee’s that your dad had. I had them back in the late eighties and through the nineties and they won for me from the first race at 90 miles out to Lerwick at 650 miles. I had a cock who was the sire of my loft back then who bred a double Cornish Combine winner from Nantes when he was 14 years old.
In conclusion to your post. Yes I am now going much more for sprint racing. I probably haven’t got the right pigeons at present. I need to work harder with them. Having said all that I think I have really written off this year now due to our personal issues. I will race the youngsters through the season though if only for experience.
Thanks again for your time in writing your post Mike.

I can appreciate and totally get the small setup Andy

Below you'll see our lofts

The first 8 foot of the large loft was our YB Section. We only had 8 foot for YB

The middle 6 foot was racing hens, the next 8 foot was cocks

The loft at the top with the aviary was Stock birds



So, I get the small space. But that's not a hindrance to winning races.

It just means you have the ability to give outstanding attention to detail once you have the ability to throw more time into the birds

Looks a good set up Mike. Yes you don’t need a big team. My best ever season was when I raced 6 widowhood cocks. 3 of the 6 would be in the first 6 of the club nearly every week. I even took the first 6 one week. This was in a club of 30+ members racing these cocks from 90 miles to 348 miles.
Things are very much up in the air in our life at present. The plan is to possibly sell up and retire in the next year or two. Then hopefully I can get more time to enjoy the birds although it would mean starting again to a degree and finding a new club depending on where we move to.