jimmy white

happy birthday ash, have a good day :) :)

no 7 looks in good order, and really deserves some votes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY , BART,,ENJOY YOUR BEER :)

an aviary is a great thing to let the birds see the surroundings, before you try them

if you want to give away rubbish , all you are doing is belittleing yourself, how nice it is to give birds away, receive a phone call now and again, to say , either that birds won or that bird has bred a winner and agree entirely with james mcglauchlin, most distance birds dont really mature till their 3 years old, and as spelbin says,it takes very special birds to be able to fly, and score, in 400 to 550 miles, i would stretch that to over 600 miles, it takes patience,breeding , and time, to achive this . and to young westy, you can actually get good well bred birds, that have been possibly injured in some way, free, from decent fanciers,who maybe dont have the room for them, they may still help breed you a good foundation team.

clean water clean grub, and clean loft, are the main things, dont go spending a fortune on all the adverts :) hope your doing well westy

ive had it from my local agricultural vet, without any problems.

one of the main causes of salmonella salmonelosis, paratyphoid ,pararatyphus,call it what you want, is mice, its one of the worst deseases you can have in the loft. it can rear its ugly head, genarations after the so called infected bird, it can cause the cocks to become sterile, and dead in the shell ybs etc one of the first noticable things are the drooped wing, fanciers will swear blind the bird has injured itself, its not. its paratyphoid, theyll nurse this bird on , it will improve [they think] it will allways have a faulty wing ,flying slightly lop sided, one wing going faster than the other, this bird is deadly to have in the loft.allthough it may look well enough, its a carrier and should not be in the loft, paratyphoid can have the same symtoms as paromyxovirus, personally i would not treat these birds as it would be too dangerous to the rest.

i had to smile at my young friend keith, keith has had quite a rough life, 3 brothers no father, he first knocked at my door when he was 11 years old," can i help you with your pigeons mr"well that young lad would do anything for me, clean lofts etc etc, then say," what can i do now"go to the shops etc, off course he allways got his few bob,for his work, i actually made him a partner the following year, since then ive moved away, but he allways visits me every now and again ,with his girl freind now. hes 18 or19 . his girl freind alice is very good to me too, he said to me in front of his girl freind I WOULD LIKE TO GET MARRIED ,,,, SO THAT I CAN GET A GARDEN TO KEEP PIGEONS ,well if you could have seen the look on alices face,,, hes just lucky she has a lovely nature. :)

the pigeons wll eat ,[ and need] plenty good grub whilst moulting, but after the moult is finished [the big moult i mean, as birds moult all year] they will have naturally stored enough fats to do them , even when the weather gets cold, so in my opinion they dont need quite as much then... the wild" feral" pigeons have to fly and search for their grub, most racers are sitting in the loft, down for a feed then back on their perches, so their not really spending much energy, at this time of the year.[light at 9 dark at 3 ,30] unless you let them out every day,then you can feed them more. i also think pellets can be good as they can contain many vits etc, but would never feed on pellets, alone, as with pellets they dont really need to use their gizard, thereforthe gizard would eventually become redundant, so i would allways feed "grain" along with the pellets. only my opinion

i used to race two teams one darkness and one natural , the natural ones were stopped at 130 miles, they were for national races later. my darkness ones were seperated , cocks and hens, and let together on a friday , with 2 bricks 12 inches apart right along the sides and back , on the floor of the loft with a board running along the top , each wee box ,i put a nest pan, and some straw, and just let them get on with it, it was easy cleared up after the race , and the birds separated again. replaced it all the following friday, and boy, did these birds race.. kept the natural s in case of disasters.

e mail back to mr lakin, thank you kindly for replying to my e,mail, on the question of eagle owls. i am still wondering what is" native to brittain". i note that the b.o.u. dont recognise these birds as" wild birds", but my question now is, surely the offspring of these birds, whether from escapees or not, if they are born in the wild in brittain, i would have thought that they would become brittish wild birds, and treated so. i also cannot understand why defra dont have a policy for these birds, and what negligible impact they would have on the local or countryside environment, as they seem to feed mainly on rabits, which are plentyfull. as far as i can see, they dont seem to pose a danger to other birds. i must admit to being fairly shocked at what steve dudley said about them, allthough thankfully you have corrected that, in your e.mail,. i wonder if you could enlighten me as to what danger they pose to other birds or environment. and when you say they are "not wild,"surely the youngsters born here are" wild ". meanwhile i thank you for the information you sent, but would just like these points clarified. yours faithfully james white

p.s. i would say, the best eyes in your loft, ARE YOUR EYES. :)

PERSONALLY, I HAVE NEVER BEEN INTO" EYSIGN".. IN MY OWN EXPERIENCE, IN A SUPER FIT PIGEON, I SEE A DIFFERANCE IN THEIR EYE, A DIFFERANCE IN THEIR COLOUR, A DIFFERANT FEEL TO THEIR BODY,A DIFFERANT WAY THEY ACT, I FIND THEY ARE ACTUALY A DIFFERANT TEMPERATURE, THESE ARE THE PIGEONS THAT WIN. ALBEIT A VERY INTERESTING SUBJECT, I HAVE FOUND MANY SO CALLED EYESIGN EXPERTS, COULD NOT FLY A PIGEON. I SAY THIS BECAUSE I RACED AGAINST THEM , AND THRASHED THEM ON A REGULAR BASIS.MAYBE PRETTY HARSH WORDS,BUT NEVER THE LESS TRUE,. ONE OF THESE FANCIERS HAD A PIGEON THAT HAD WON MANY,MANY BEST IN SHOWS FOR EYSIGN,IT NEVER WON AT ALL IN RACING, AND NEVER BRED ANY WINNERS. ONLY MY FINDINGS AND MY OPINION

just before pairing, i usualy mix wheatgerm oil in their feed, thats packed with vit E,or buy a bag of groats, and mix the wheatgerm with that,as its more absorbant, than most grains

MERRY XMAS TO ALL,, ,ALL GREAT FRIENDS, INCLUDING ADMIN,I CAN HONESTLY SAY, IVE HAD MORE HELP AND FREINDSHIP, THAN I COULD EVER IMAGINE, TRULLY GREAT STUFF, , I WISH ALL THE FORUM MEMBERS A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR, WHEN IT COMES, JIMMY WHITE

WILL DEFINATELY HAVE A LOOK AT THAT, IM SURE THAT WILL BE VERY INTERESTING

not bad at all westy :) ,soldiering on ;D ;D ;D bit embarrasing though, when i went to see my old mother[ 84] in hospital, the nurse said, and heres a chair for your HUSBAND:) :) it made my mothers day, but didnt do a lot for me, ;D ;D ;D true ;D

i often wonder how many 4 yearold birds are in anyones lofts nowadays

:)i had a bird called mudlark, came home one day with mud on his feet, and the name stuck [so did the mud :)]it is amazing how names just crop up. ive had broken leg, wee heed,whitey[a jet black] last in, moneyspinner,taeless, jocky, young co co, barny[born in a barn, and topped the fed]houdini,broken flight and many more, all names that just cropped up,some for obviuos reasons. :)

quite a big question really, everyone allways says i show them the hens this amount of time or i dont show them before they go, i would say that every cock is an individual, and has to be treated accordingly, some cocks will race better seeing their hens, some get too exited , some even race better with another cock in their box ,with their hen,,, all are individual, and i think really its finding out what they race best to, ive even found some birds that when seen the hen on the thursdayfor 10 mins, then just lifted out the loft on the friday, do better that way, whats the old saying,,,,,theres many ways to skin a cat :)

same instinct with time,,,,they have their time to lay their first egg same again with their second egg near enough like clockwork,same again with their changing shift on eggs,again like clockwork, and their memory is second to none,marvelous thing nature :)

going back to the age of pigeons, to find out if their any good,and as i said before that bird was 15th national at 6 y old, but remember, this bird was bred for, and treated for 5 to 600 mile races, it was never expected or treated to score in any other races, it only had about 3 inland races a year, went 500 mile for the first time at 3 yearold, so when you think of it .it only had one 550 mile race a year, [sorry one was 604 miles] so he really only had 4 chances to prove himself, the 4th time he was sent 550 miles i didnt show the hen , i just put two 3 day old ybs under it, something differant, well it worked. the bird was never ever far away from the national results, and each time i timed him in , i thought he was going to make the result, he was allways just out of it. but i new the bird tried.......so when you say a bird is no good, i say its far quicker to find out if a sprint pigeon is no good, but it takes a long time to find out about a distance bird

great to see sporsman ship like that, and it takes guts for ray to post that apologie. alls well that ends well

just feel it westy ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D