Hogni

I select the pairs myself but i´ve heard about many fanciers who let the birds pick themselfs and have had great success with it.

Well it is getting warmer in Iceland and like i said it was only this week that the water in the drinkers froze for the first time, but in december until end of february we can expect periods where the temperature goes down to -10° celsius

Try this site Paul, i´m sure you´ll find something you like http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/categories/graphics_and_photo/ And while we are at it, all sorts of free programs for all purposes. http://www.snapfiles.com/

As cold as outside, don´t use any heating or any light during the winter.The first day the water froze in my drinkers this winter was just this week 20.11´07

CONGRATULATIONS I wish you all the best

Yes i think so, for an example a friend of mine bought a bird from Holland and it looked great on the picture and had a very good record listed on the picture too and it was the main reason he bought the bird but what a dissapointment the bird was when it got here, it looked nothing like on the pic and has never produced a decent young bird which goes to show that things are not always as they seem.

It´s an owl

Funny how things are, i was just about to ask if anyone had tried something similar to what you describe. The cocks in my family of birds are unusually aggressive towards the hens when first put together and that sometimes puts the hens off or they get injured. So how do you work this out? How long before pairing day do you put them first together and how often before finally pairing them up?

A couple more disaster races >

Yes they probably want it unique but i thought you could make it a litlle different and they would go for it, they are very nice guys i can tell you.

i have no trouble transporting eggs that i can keep with me when i go abroad but to send by mail might need some more thinking because we don´t know what treatment they are getting

because of old bird disaster races no old bird racers existed and then when we tried again disaser struck again, by then the number of fanciers had diclined so much and it is only now we are getting back on track

Ok so i guess i won´t be beating you guys in the pigeon races anytime soon cause it´s obviously not a good idea to move to the U.K.

yes basically, and only the strongest survive

We go from 100 km. up to 360- 380 km. but those race points have not been used for years because of the danger of a disaster race. On the map you can see a red circle, thats where all the lofts are, the black circles are racepoints that we use now from 100 km. up to 320 km. and the white circles are racepoints we do not use because of past disaster races, in certain wind directions the birds would have to go through Icelands biggest falcon colony. We can garantee that the birds never take the straight line home because of high mountains and the weather changes are so rapid here that we have liberated in sunny warm weather but 15 mins. later it has started to rain so it is very unpredictable.

Ok, and the long answer?

The city needed the space for something else, where the smaller house was there is now a training course for golfers and where the bigger house was nothing has been built yet so i don´t know, maybe they just wanted to get rid of the pigeons.

There is not much info to give as the number of racers have been declining rapidly over the last few years but we are now starting to see more people join the sport again both old fanciers starting again and new ones.For some years we only have had young bird races but thats about to change again. After 2000 there were some disaster old bird races and after a few disaster races many fanciers lost interest and many fanciers also lost thier housing, there were two houses one with 4-5 fanciers and one with 6-8 fanciers that got torn down by the city and most of those men had nowhere to go and ultimately quit. But just ask away and i´ll try to answer.

Yes i know Mr. Omar Runolfsson, he doesn´t race anymore but he came to visit my loft in the spring to get rings for a friend and to look at the birds and i will invite him again when i´ll get the 2008 rings.

Explain the toilet roll thing please

Have you tried that Hjaltland, to send or get eggs by mail?

My family of birds are pure sprinters and fast ones they sure are, i´ve seen them cut away from the group as soon as the release and they never seem to need to circle around the release point but head straight for home, this kind of behavior was unknown here in Iceland before the arrival of these birds in 1998. Among thier achivements are National Ace in 2001, a cock born mid summer 2000 did not race in the youngbird races and not in first 3 old bird races 2001 but still managed to become the Ace pigeon. A brother of him won a 330 km. race 65 mins ahead of the next bird. A daughter of the National ace won 2 youngbird races in 2006 from 100 km. 11 mins ahead and from 160 km. 21 mins ahead. Here are pictures of the National Ace first and then his father BELG-98-3251922 which is the father of my family, he was brought in from Robert Venus in Belgium.

Take a look at M&C Hansen website in Denmark, nice artwork, you could maybe ask them for permission to download it and manipulate. http://www.hansen023.dk/uk/

Yes it is Ed, You just have to turn them twice a day, you can even keep them for much longer, i have heard up to 28 days. About at what tempreture they must be kept at i don´t know but i have kept eggs at everything from 5-15° celsius and they have hatched fine.

When in trouble i sometimes look to what old champions have said and done in the past, Gerard Vanhee once said that sometimes quality jumps a generation and what he meant by that is that if a bird doesn´t handle very good it might not be a bad bird at all and its youngsters might be the next champions, i guess he was speaking from experience. And another one said, try throwing your birds in a room and let them pair themselfs, the result will not be worse then if you spend all winter thinking about what hen to pair to what cock, the result might even get better.