Matt D.

Hilt, California- first 500 mile of the season.

This Year's babies will be rung with the New I-com bands so there is no longer a need for the opposite leg to have an ets ring on it. So I want to start ringing my birds with address bands. For all of you out there that use address bands, Who do you use and do they have a website? Ive found someone in the states that makes them but havent gotten good reviews on their bands. I have seen Machiel Buijk put some birds up for auction that have some real nice aluminum address bands on their legs. Anyone know who He uses? Matt

Heres a few good ones from Over here in the states. Frank Mosca' site: http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/pigeongenetics/ Ron Huntley's site: http://www.angelfire.com/ga/huntleyloft/ Lots of reading there. Matt.

In the states the only difference is the protein levels.

Here is what I do with my breeders. I still feed them their twice a day ration of grains at about a tablespoon in the morning and one at night. but what you can do is put in another grit container but just fill it up with pellets. Then your breeders will eat their seeds and top off with pellets before going and feeding their young in the nest. This has worked very well for me. Ill even see my hens go down and fill up with pellets throughout the day and then pump the youngsters five times in between grain feedings. From my experiences, This is by far the best way to raise youngsters out of your breeding loft. I just mix in 20% of pellets when my racers are feeding babies during the racing season.

Just remember this. No matter who bred the bird or where you get it from, If the bird isnt good it doesnt matter what is written on a piece of paper it wont make that bird any better.

I know who Mike is. Ive met him a few times. Ive handled a lot of his birds. There are a lot of people here in America that love his birds and would buy anything the man would try and sell them. Now, Let me preface my comments with this; I have met him on a few occasions and he seems like a nice enough guy. I dont have any ganus pigeons nor have I ever had birds from him or with any of his birds in their background. Mainly because He focuses on short/middle distance in old birds and fast maturing young birds for futurity races. Which just arent my thing. Another thing he does that im not crazy about is that when he goes to Europe to buy a bird he brings it back here and doesnt tell people the ring number or who bred/raced the bird. Not to mention the whole 'Golden Mattens' ordeal that went on and is still going on. There are so many other sources for great pigeons, That are a lot more open and (to put it bluntly) a lot more trustworthy. I just prefer to go to other sources for my pigeons. Like I said I dont have any personal experiences with his birds so I cant say if his birds are good or not. Remember this. A pedigree is only as trustworthy as the man who wrote it.

7 pairs of Old birds raced on the nest. I also have 12 June/July Hatches which have been trained to 100 miles so I'll be sending those to 350 miles. In my experiences, if you ask anyone that has a 50-80 old bird team which are their very best birds they will show you exactly which birds are the birds who they can count on. The birds they will pool every week. Those birds might not win every race but you can almost always count on them to win a decent prize. So if the mob flyers know which are their best, why fly the rest?

Sorry about that post that didnt quite come out right. I meant to ask him if he knew if that bird was just a regular bar or if there was some gene in it that was affecting the color? The other two he posted looked really interesting but I wasnt sure what was special about the third bird. Matt.

That bird there look to be just a regular blue bar. It might have a little lightening in it from pale or something of that sort. But to be totally honest, looks like a plain old blue bar to me.

Well my best guess is this. They both show some lightening of the entire body so theres something like dilute or milky lightening everything up. I dont think (genetically) either are recessive blue phase opal. They are for sure not dom opal or recessive red phase opal. If you could take pictures of their tails fanned out we could see this for sure. All recessive opals (red and blue phase) have a webbing pattern on their tail bars. They are both t-patter chequers. I suspect the top bird to be a sooty or as us racers call pencil or dapple. The bottom one seems to be just a t-pattern check with something lightening the color. If you mate these two together You will get all babies that are t-checkers like those unless they are both carrying a less dominant pattern gene (barless, bar, light check, dark check). All their babies will have a lightening of the body like that and if that top bird is split for sooty then half their babies will have sooty. If that top bird is homozygous (carrying two genes) for sooty, all there babies will be sooty.

Thank You Everyone for your warm welcome. I hope I have a thing or two to say worth enough to type it on here. I am a nest flier that really flys for the 400-700's. Though Id be lying if I said that I didnt enjoy every race. I usually fly 7 or 8 pairs of old birds every year. Im not one to mob fly. I usually raise anywhere from 15-25 young birds a year. Its a whole lot more gratifying in my opinion to send three birds to the 600 mile race and get all three of those home, in the clock, and in the prizes. Here in the states it is hard to find another person any where that has the same ideas about racing as I do. Most people in my combine send 80-120 old birds to the first race and atleast that on the first young bird race. matt

Hello Everyone Ive been a member of this forum for over a year now and read It on a nearly daily basis for the last 6 months or so. Ive enjoyed reading and learning a lot of interesting things here. I live in the states but it is refreshing to hear how other fanciers do things across the ocean. Ive been flying birds most of my life, My grandpa got me into birds. Being a distance man I can only dream of flying out of France like you all get to do. You all have a really nice forum here and Ive really enjoyed reading it over the past year or so. Matt