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Quoted from kelly tom

I am thinking the same about the darknees as I havent lost a natural young bird training this year but have only 4 out of 20 darkies left.

racing and training as near to nature as possible is good,,,,,darkness is playing against nature and sometimes nature has a way of kicking you back in the teeth !!

I always have my young birds fly in morning before i basket for them to go training, reason being that young birds are bursting with energy and to take them for a short toss as many fanciers do is asking for trouble so best to take the steam out of them before they get in with the wrong crowd and finish many miles away from their loft.
Don't over train as fanciers seam to forget that they are homing pigeons so they are built with the ability to home this is providing that they are kept in the best of health and in a enviroment that they are happy in. Have witnessed in the past fanciers having 20-25 tosses before the first race only to drop many young birds at the first race.
Due to circumstances i have seen in the past ourselves only having 3 tosses with our young birds and win young bird average in club and fed.

All the fun has been taken out of YB racing by the greed of people who have made it too specialised i.e. darkness, lightness etc to win the YB averages

Quoted from Gareth Rankin

I always have my young birds fly in morning before i basket for them to go training, reason being that young birds are bursting with energy and to take them for a short toss as many fanciers do is asking for trouble so best to take the steam out of them before they get in with the wrong crowd and finish many miles away from their loft.
Don't over train as fanciers seam to forget that they are homing pigeons so they are built with the ability to home this is providing that they are kept in the best of health and in a enviroment that they are happy in. Have witnessed in the past fanciers having 20-25 tosses before the first race only to drop many young birds at the first race.
Due to circumstances i have seen in the past ourselves only having 3 tosses with our young birds and win young bird average in club and fed.

Good advice with the letting them out before a short toss trick. On my second and only bad toss from 8 miles they all nicked off raking because I didn't do this before hand

my method ,split them in to 2 or 3 teams ,first 5 tosses half mile ,just on dark ,and i mean just on dark ,they are very hungry and dont mess about ,trap strait away because of hunger and geting dark ,2 or 3 at 1 mile ,2 or 3 at 2 miles then each night a mile or two extra ,always hungry and just enough time to get home before dark most weather conditions as long as it is reasonable , i get them to the 15 mile mark doing this and keep them there untill the 3rd race ,i have not had any trouble with hawks or clashing with other birds because of the time of night ,i dont go any further because i will have to cross the severn bridge every time  and that is a breading groung for mr peregrin ,they then get jumped into the 3rd race 70 miles then if they got what it takes they get home, some of you will disagree with this method but it works for me ,if they dont get home on the night they are not to far away in the morning ,im not into young bird racing i just want to educate them for the future and using this method i have at least got them to their first race with out loosing 90 percent of them .ATB les ps i think that the birds race home this time of night because it is time to go to roost and they dont want to be out side the loft  all night.

Paulo, I agree, some just chase averages at all cost hence the reason they breed so many.
Young bird season for me is all about education for the rest of there racing career!

Phil

I have never tryed darkness The birds have had 10 tosses up too 40mls and only dropped 4 out of 50 After the 10ml stage the birds are put up in groups of 3 They have had 2 tosses with the club too learn them to break from the batch Everything seems to be going great 1st race on Sat 75mls

Quoted from pjc

Paulo, I agree, some just chase averages at all cost hence the reason they breed so many.
Young bird season for me is all about education for the rest of there racing career!

Phil

Well said Phil/Paulo. In the last 2 weks I have had 10 yb's in. 2 had full crops, looked like the start of YB sickness. One was still carrying the scars of a previous excursion. One was still squeaking (hadn't thrown a flight). On Friday someone tossed their birds at Stonehaven. The hills were covered in low cloud, and it was drizzling.
Disasters are usually unexpected.

Changed my methods last year, trained YBs in evening, around 7pm with the 1st around 10 miles, didn't go further than 20 miles. Noticed that they did not take long to get home, and were able to come through weather.

They go out each morning at 6am, time away ranging is starting to tail-off so starting training tonight, after work.

Quoted from pjc

Paulo, I agree, some just chase averages at all cost hence the reason they breed so many.
Young bird season for me is all about education for the rest of there racing career!

Phil

spot on

A lot of replies are pointing the finger at the darkness system but the fanciers in our club that have been hit with the heavy losses all fly natural, there are only 3 lofts in our club that use the darkness system (ourselves are 1 of them) and losses here have been minimal. The weather conditions here the last 2 days have been ideal for training, broken cloud/sunshine, light headwinds, temp. around 14-16 degrees.
A valid point by Gareth about letting them out for exercise before you toss them, we try to practise this ourselves when at all possible.
One of the reasons could be that with the poor weather up here at the weekend, everyone had been training yesterday and our fed covers a large area, so many birds heading in different directions, so there could have been some clashing.

Has anybody ever split young birds up into hens and cocks and raced this way? Before the first race of around 70-80 miles how many training tosses and at what distances would you recommend? Thanks.

Quoted from North road racer

Has anybody ever split young birds up into hens and cocks and raced this way? Before the first race of around 70-80 miles how many training tosses and at what distances would you recommend? Thanks.

I train mine up to 25 miles and then spilt into cocks and hens then give them as many chucks as I can afford until the first race then they get chucked from 25 miles 2 - 3 times a week if they are flying well from round the cree.

Important thing is they must get fed as much as they can eat. If they are working hard they need the bait without rationing or flying to the corn tin

my younsters are split hens and cocks all darkness trained up to 18 miles coming in most weathers
just wondering if right time to put them on the training wagon .

Gareth,
I know all birds are different,  but what would you class as too much yb training ?
cheers

i would just like to add about young bird training,how many fanciers take there birds training when it is overcast ours never go unless there is broken cloud there has to be sunrays getting through somewhere before our birds go training,i think there are a lot of fanciers start to panic when it gets near to the first race and they have to train at all costs.i would sooner miss the first race than train in poor conditions,i know birds will come through rain no bother as long as they get a good start and there not far from home but they cant come long distances through bad weather there is always one or two will get through but i always say better be safe as sorry,had first toss this morning only from 6 miles just to get them used coming out of the baskets.the trouble in scotland there is that much open land they can get miles out of the road,in my area in county durham all the birds come north if they get past they are only a few miles past our lofts unless they hit birds training going south which doesnt happen very often.this is only my opinion and not in anyway meant to affend anyone.

                                                                          billy

my birds coming very well only been 5 times and they are up to 40miles
been puting them up in small lots things are looking good at the mo  

ive had 3 more tosses and they seem to be getting the idea now beat me home twice and i am training old birds with them for arras but they just seem to break off and head home and the y/bds dont have the sence to follow dont think its a darkie problem but i could be wrong fair comment about the weather but it was NOT bad up here when i tossed them so it wasnt that

Quoted from micko

i dont know about homers for a start of
but just a thought
why not send an old bird or two from the same loft just for the first few tosses
this maybe a none runner if so sorry
i should have kept my mouth shut
(and not a chance of that happening its by making comments like this you learn from others so new members dont be afraid to chip in ) micko

Many fanciers already do this. Indeed I know one very successful fancier always sends his best old birds with the youngsters to teach them good habits.
I am not sure if it helps returns a great deal.

took mine today 5 mile for the first chuck missing 33