Quite a good read. Hope it's of interest to some. For those fanciers who haven’t thought about it (or are maybe too tied up with other aspects of their life) the “all pigeons need is clean water, good corn and grit†days have long gone – they just slipped quietly by over the years, almost without notice - and they aren’t coming back! Let me run a reality check past you on what I’ve just written. An endless list, of opposites if you like, of amateurism versus professionalism, tradition versus progress, ignorance versus knowledge, poverty versus wealth, fixedness versus mobility, drudgery versus leisure, illness versus health. There is only one certainty. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same forever. The sport has moved on. Not enough in some respects and maybe in directions not to everyone’s liking in other respects, but move it has and it is still moving. Move with it or better still, stay ahead of it because if you don’t move you won’t win. It’s as simple as that. Clean water? Good corn? And grit? Don’t make me laugh. It’s a different ball game now. And how! Allow me to go back to my youth. To Tommy Burke, John Shemmings, Geordie Woodward, the Clarke Brothers and John Lloyd, names to conjure with, men ahead of their time, all of them, and many others. None of them were educated men or scientists but all of them were brilliant fanciers! Potent forces in any age. Comparisons between then and now are useless! They were champions in their time and would probably be so today. What did they do? In a nutshell they got out of their own backyards and then they listened. They looked. Digested the information gleaned, and obtained the best birds they could afford. And then they went back into their own backyard and became champions. Not big fishes in little ponds but champion’s first then legends, not leg-ends! So what is new? Well - really very little. It’s just natural progression. Here is a scientific rule for you. If at first glance a thing seems easy to do, a closer inspection will show that it has either been done before or it isn’t easy! Think. What did these men do that made them different and earned the respect of their peers? They got better pigeons. They trained harder. They sent more birds to the races. They gained knowledge; they kept their own counsel and then won even more races. So, what is new? Transport, both private and public for starters. Metro services, rail, bus, car ownership, ferries and cheap air travel. Push bikes are out and Shank’s Pony long gone! And what about money, well there is more of it about. You can buy. I can buy. We can buy. They can buy. There is the Welfare State. More free time, 9 am to 5 pm jobs, shift working. Redundancy packages, early retirement and acquired knowledge, now widely available in books, videos, newspapers and periodicals. All over the country there are now pockets of proficiency, and areas of excellence. Success in pigeon racing is not to be associated with wealth, nor academic qualifications with common sense or education with skill. Stock sense will carry the day. Here is a quote from Heroditus, 5th Century BC. “Much learning does not teach understanding.†There are plenty of new methods of racing pigeons. The widowhood system is now universal and in full flow plus other systems of racing both cocks and hens. For example, the roundabout method, the darkness and light systems, celibacy and more refined traditional systems. Not so natural “natural†methods, and then there is much more specialisation in the sport. In young bird racing, in sprinting or distance racing, one-loft and futurity racing; you name it and it is there. We now have new loft designs based on scientific principles. Not on cost or tradition but on new materials, control of temperature, humidity, ventilation, numbers of birds kept and food requirements. The pigeon fancier’s Holy Trinity. Metabolism, Nutrition, and Diet. Most importantly of all consider ease of communication, between fanciers these days, between areas, and the widespread availability of modern mobile phones, computers, fax machines and other methods of exchanging ideas. Word is spreading. Knowledge is spreading. Good pigeons are spreading. Recognition of disease is better. Treatment of diseases is better. Prevention of diseases is better. Knowledge is disseminated via the written word and via the spoken word, via moots, and the quizzes. The methods of the top fanciers are nearly all available on videos. And then there are the drugs, the use of and the abuse of. I have another quote for you, a warning, Voltaire’s definition of medicine - “The art of pouring drugs of which one knew nothing into a patient of whom one knows less.â€A dangerous business, it always was. Knowledge of the immune system, the natural defences of the body against bacteria viruses and fungi, is now widespread where once there was very little. Feedback systems are in operation. Top men (deliberately as well as unintentionally) are upgrading vital areas. Consider the pigeon man’s choices, all four of them. 1) Quit. If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. 2) Legislate the top men out of the sport using limits, petty rules and unjust enforcement. It stinks, but it also happens. 3) Be a pigeon keeper. There is nothing wrong with that and lots of pleasure to be had that way. But why keep racing pigeons if not to race them? Why race if not to win or as part of a plan to win later. The world is full of lovely fancy pigeons but not my world nor the world of the dyed in the wool, competitive racing pigeon man. Lastly and best of all number 4) Get better pigeons. Get better yourself. Be the top man, fairly. It can be done and is done in all areas and fairly regularly too. There is always someone better than you, younger, stronger, fitter, more ambitious looking over your shoulder, whoever you are. Good thing too - if money alone guaranteed success then we wouldn’t have a sport at all! Look at the improvements in your own area. Think back to the great fanciers of yesteryear, their performances, their birds, their methods. And think. Think hard! This is not to belittle them or what they did or how they did it. The same men would be at the top today or near to it. Think of numbers sent, distances flown, velocities recorded, total numbers of wins. The numbers sent/numbers home ratio. Think farm corn, beans, wheat and barley being shovelled into empty fertilizer bags. Think push bikes, wheelbarrows, British Rail as it then was and unnecessary time spent in baskets. Think sick birds, primitive remedies, hygiene. Canker as a major scourge. And remember Belloc’s words. “Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried/ the doctors gave them physic. And they died!†Think sand, lime, whitewash, the scraper, corn and water, training, virtually everything the hard way, a life of hard work. It was nothing less than the basic foundation for the successful fanciers of today. I learned my pigeon racing from a local legend called Tommy Burke, and no, he didn’t formally teach me. I watched him. How he fed, how he trained and when, the times he was at the loft, where he went, what he raced and then got some of the same birds that he had and won myself. He always paired winners to winners, 80 mile pigeons to 80 mile pigeons and so on down the line, a simple, hard once original system, but not an unbeatable method. His family of Vandeveldes (Vandervelde, Van de Velde, whatever - the name means “from the fieldâ€) were Silvers, Yellows, Mealy Pieds, Blue Pieds, and Red Pieds. It was an education for free. He hadn’t a car. None of the top old-timers had cars, just buses and push bikes, pedalling for miles, tracking down good pigeons and training good pigeons on the back or the front of the bike, down the road or pedalling to the nearest railway station. Old Geordie Woodward was a hard man. I remember him cycling down from Jarrow to see me with a sick pigeon. I diagnosed Salmonella. He contradicted me “Wing droop son†he said nonchalantly “Had it for ages.†A man of 60 or so still wanting to know why and not too proud to ask someone many years his junior! Pigeon racing the hard way! Mob fliers sent 20/25 not the three figure teams of today! Severe trainers sent their birds 30 miles -once a week! Most fanciers “bagged†their birds around the loft twice a day, full stop! Channel birds went to races on a Tuesday; TV was in its infancy with no videos or video recorders. I didn’t know anyone in my street that had a telephone; they were all dockers, miners and shipyard workers. Working 12 hour shifts, and forced to sell off some of their birds to feed and race the others! I can still picture John Shemmings calmly picking birds up at random, from off his garden, to show to me (water channelled, in a herringbone pattern, under his loft and down to the river) and winning a young bird average with the mere handful of disease-free survivors he had left. Good pigeons killed for want of treatment. Still he won, the hard way. Little John Lloyd sitting in his dug-out on race days, facing the loft. Old “Dowsey†a cock with a hatful of Federation wins to his credit, looking back at John from out of the stock loft. The Clarke brothers with and their quite terrifying guard dog! “Duck†Bryant’s big Blue and Mealy cocks dropping in like knots on a ball of string, on the second day out of Bourges. In every area there were one or two such men. There were Working Men’s Clubs and Miner’s Welfare’s. Pit Villages were islands really, with the same names at the top, year after year. The Tommy Burkes of my youth were pioneers who broke the mould, got out and about and got better. Look at the sport now. The breeding studs, the specialist feeds of guaranteed quality. Freedom of movement within the Common Market not simply to the next village, visits to the continent commonplace. The world is now a hugely extended backyard. We have selective breeding programmes, artificial insemination, DNA testing, genetics on demand together with extended race programmes and laptop computers, I-Pads and apps galore, electronic timing systems, weather programmes and satellite phones, Google Earth and a hugely improved infrastructure within the sport with its Unions and Combines and transporter training and stray centres with motorways running into almost all areas and economically fuelled cars! How many homes are now without TV, Video/ DVD recorder, telephone and a car or access to one? A shrinking sport for sure but a more professional one, not yet on the same level as horse racing and probably not on the same level as officially organised greyhound racing but closing fast on both. Diseases are today much less of a problem due to veterinary help and diagnostic laboratories Much better treatments are now readily available, still not enough perhaps, but getting there; streets and streets in front of the old days. A double-edged sword this though perhaps because of too much choice and too many products being used wrongly or without enough thought. Not a problem that the fanciers of old had! Here is the other half of Belloc’s poem “On Hygiene.†“But here’s a happier age: for now we know/ both how to make men sick and keep them so!†Well, yes! The knowledge level regarding ailments and disease in pigeons is good. Fanciers now know what disease, what treatment, what prevents and what cures. If they don’t know, rest assured they know someone who does! In most areas that is, admittedly not all. Modern fanciers know about vitamins, electrolytes, antibiotics, probiotics, vaccines, fungi, bacteria and viruses, possess microscopes and can themselves check for canker, coccidiosis and worms, know when to act and when to sit tight. Not all fanciers of course but enough of them. The good ones know when to train, and when to rest, how to motivate widowhood cocks, how to “break down, how to build up, and how to “lift†birds. Know what to put in the drinker and when. Know the immune system. And it’s responses. Ask yourself this. Did you ever drop an unwrapped boiled sweet or half-eaten apple as a child? Did you leave it lying there on the ground when you didn’t know where the next one was coming from! Did eating it afterwards do you any harm? Did your dog ever drink from a drain or a pool of dirty water? Of course it did! Most fanciers know the score. No abuse of drugs. Or overuse of anything. Remedies are to hand, for use only when needed, remedies which were unavailable in the past. Pigeons can cost big money. It makes sense to cure them. When to kill and when to cure can be some predicament. The top fanciers know the answers. Know and understand weather reports. Know about inbreeding, line breeding, cross breeding, genetics, the “Bull System.†and so on. They know about all the currently successful strains of pigeons, continental or otherwise and the men that own and manage them. Know who, when, where, why and how. There were exceptions, of course to the regimes of yesteryear. Billy Kinghorn for example, he cleaned up in South Shields feeding mostly what his critics referred to as “hen corn.†It’s called widowhood mixture now! I recall a moot in a pit village, the question asked that sticks in my mind was this one “Are the continental strains of pigeons superior to those currently found in the UK?†The panel was unanimous. “Good birds, really good birds, are to be found in every country, but and a big but, the fanciers in Belgium and Holland are “more professional.†One member of the panel (and only the one) took exception to this, a man from a small pit village, an exceptional fancier he had a question to ask, a statement to make if you like “if England is so full of amateurs†he said “I would like to know where they are, because they’re certainly not in my village!†There is less amateurism about now for sure, everywhere. Clean water is not the answer. Keep the immune system in mind. Pigeons do not exist in a sterile environment. No two pigeons in the race pannier have the same degree of health. Every Friday night you are as good as the worst fancier in your club. And your birds can easily be reduced to the level of his if they have a low resistance to disease. Trouble is never far away. Pigeons must be resistant to contaminated water, to fouled feeding, to disease, and to other pigeons. There are things that can go into drinkers besides clean water, but only if and when they are needed. And things that should not go into drinkers! Water does not always have to be sparklingly fresh and certainly not sterilised. As for feeding, how long is a piece of string? From end to end is the only answer that makes any sense to me. There is corn and there is corn. There are ways and means to check its soundness. There are feeds to fit different requirements, natural racing, widowhood racing, distance racing, sprint racing, rearing young birds, racing young birds, resting, moulting, to lift your birds or run them down, with or without added enzymes and who knows what else. There are supplements, pellets and feeding to boost the immune system. The list is endless and confusing. You pay your money and you take your pick. Choose wisely. Choose well always bearing in mind that it is not so much what you are feeding that is of primary importance, it is what you are feeding it to! There is a vast range of grits available. A choice of silex, limestone, oyster shell, “health†grit, hen grit, mixed grit, calcium, iodised, blended with red clay, wood ash, charcoal, aniseed and silica. There are pecking blocks, bio blocks and pick-stones, red or white. There is rough sand, beach gravel, and red soil from garden fires, dolomite and natural magnetite. You name it. You can buy it! Is it that important? Birds waste more than they eat. Do yourself a favour. Look inside the gizzard of the next dead pigeon that comes to hand. I can guarantee that you will find plenty in there that you never fed to them! Clean water. Good corn. And grit. Were it that simple we’d all be champion fliers? To race pigeons successfully these days requires considerable skill. It is demanding. It can be a pastime, a sport or a “profession†– you decide which category suits you. “Professionalism†requires lots of time and money, large numbers of birds, extraordinary competence, knowledge, dedication, skill, transport, and help around the loft, not to mention top class modern pigeons, which effectively rules out the “ordinary†body of the fancy! Nevertheless such “professional†racing and/or breeding only lofts exist in all areas of the UK! Clean water, good corn and grit? I’m shaking my head in disbelief as I type this! Those days have gone. Forever! PS. I have been caught up in pigeon racing for well over 60 years. The sport has not stood still. It has moved with the times. The number of fanciers involved has declined drastically, for sure, but the expertise of those currently concerned has improved immensely. As have the birds themselves, by leaps and bounds. Move with the times or remain in the past? The choice is yours. You can, but don’t have to be, ultra competitive or even competitive at all. Operating within the sport at whatever level appeals to and satisfies you is all that really matters, but please don’t quit. The sport needs you. ROD ADAMS.
Sad to hear Ralston has decided to call it a day. I was down earlier in the year and can say it's one of the nicest locations I have seen to race pigeons to. I was lucky being allowed to pick six youngsters out to buy. With them being a bit later than my others they weren't darkened but managed to hold their own against the darkness birds most weeks. Ralston is a real class act and these are real doos these ones. I'm sure there won't be too many dissapointed buyers off the back of this sale.