DeDarren

http://www.natural-granen.com/#undefined/Breeding_Station

I bought a Janssen cock 3 years ago at Blackpool, came with a full pedigree same as Old Yellow's.

There's your pigeon! Thanks Gangster.

Not for the want of trying it would appear! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canid_hybrid

Ronnie Bigwood & Jos Thoné. Ronnie managed to secure a young bird off Jos for the club I race in a couple of seasons back. It was a direct daughet of Jos' 1st Narbonne National winner and it made £1,000 at auction which went towards club funds and a nice trophy to be raced for annually, known as the Thone/Bigwood Friendship Trophy.

A fella in our club bought 6 Janssens, and was shocked to receive all light red cheqs as he was expecting blues and cheqs and wasn't particularely fond of reds, but he did so well with them he went back there for 3-4 seasons til he packed in. They carded week after week for him. I think one of the big 1 loft winners in the UK last year was either a direct NBS Vandenabeele, or bred from 2 direct NBS youngsters from the year before? We're thinking about trying 6 this year, it's a toss up between the Janssens, Van Dyckes or Lou Wouters. Like Old Yellow says they're definitely worth a go at that price

Well Ronnie tells you so on 'Cracked It' Ryan, so anybody who has seen it would know The reason I mentioned it was more for the benefit of Grasshopper and anybody who may not have seen it yet.

I have Planet Van Loons, no grizzles though mate!

A Photoshop Wizard no less! Good Luck with your new venture.

Agreed on the Legend!

;D ;D ;D

A face only a Mother could love!

G'day Grasshopper, if you haven't got it already, make it your business to get hold of a copy of Ronnie Bigwood's 'Cracked It' volume 1 and digest, then re-digest the information contained within and just when you think you can digest it no more, have another nibble! It is the BEST 'how to' video on the successful training and racing of young pigeons in my own humble opinion. Ronnie Bigwood also formulated 'System X' for the reknowned Spence & Nicholls partnership, he knows his onions alright!

Getting ready to go to work in a minute.

That's part of the charm and challenge of Blackpool that is kirky, to see if you can avoid the dreaded greasy-spoon lurgi! ;D

You's would be begging for more after the 1st day!

Correct Tony! So you know the Legend as well eh?! Haha! What a guy!

Top guys indeed Gangster, 'tis a small world!

I have a friend who during his formative years worked as an apprentice for the legendary Reg Barker of Chadwell Heath, who my friend tells me, was way ahead of his time and taught him a lot about racing pigeons and stockmanship. My friend is also a very close friend of the Planet Brothers and he had a family of Van Loons second to none. My friend once told me that most of the best Van Loon pigeons he has owned invariably had this black / blue tipped tongue. I don't know if it is a coincidence or a family trait, but this was one of the quirks / fads he believed in very strongly.

The 'Witpen 64' was a son of the 'Lichte Moordenaar' and alongside 'De 25', he was the principal breeding cock of the Jan Loots family. As Gangster rightly says, the Jan Loots pigeons are at the base of many successful Dutch fanciers, including Bert Braspenning, Piet Valk, and the breeder of the famous 'Stoichkov' Dikkie Meermans. The remarkable thing about Jan Loots was that he used to race a handful of pigeons often no more than 7 in number on the natural system and would more than hold his own in the mighty Kring Combine, with birdages very often in excess of 10,000 against all the big widowhood players of the day, who would be sending upwards of 40 cocks. I had a hen from Mick McMurchie through 'De 25' and she bred 1st North Liverpool Federation as well as umpteen gold ring winners and a couple of friends of mine who fly in a local club had a direct son of 'Witpen 64' from Mick and they absolutely annihilated their club with children of this cock. Most of the cocks they raced had in excess of 5 x 1st prizes each and they would win from the first race to the last. Quality racing pigeons.

The Janssen type, my pigeon Nirvana!

My mate and I travelled up to John Crowder's during our mis-spent youth and the old master told us that periodically throughout the year, he refrained from feeding or watering his charges for a period of 3 days and it really sorted his birds out. We did try the feeding bit, but gave them water and apart from the bright green droppings, the birds seemed a lot brighter and more controllable afterwards, and there was also the tell-tale profusion of down feathers on the perches. It is also recommended in the Feed to Win book, where the writer states that when being forced to fast, the pigeon's metabolism will consume anything it can find lingering within the system like viral matter, which may account for the pigeons seemingly improved condition after such treatment and on the rare occasion we get the odd bird looking a bit humpy or going off it's chuck, we seperate them, refrain from feeding for a number of days, providing only fluids with electrolytes and more often than not this seems to do the trick.

Welcome Big Pete, I'm fairly new to the site myself and finding new stuff all the time, but there are many helpful folk on hand to answer any of your questions, you just gotta holler and somebody will come running, or jogging at a leisurely pace at least! Hope you enjoy your time on here, Darren.

Sacrilege! ;D ;D ;D

The Greatest Manager ever in British Football? hahahaha! As has already been mentioned, Fergie was on the brink of being sacked after almost one-too-many potless years in charge, then, very luckily for him things fell into place. There is not a single top flight club in the World that would, or could allow this to happen nowadays. He came good just as the big money was being pumped into the Premier League as well as the huge revenues generated outside of the football arena, which are all significant co-factors to the success and longevity he has achieved. Had Ferguson been around in Bob Paisley or Brian Clough's heyday, when there were no such pots of corporate money being thrown around willy nilly, I very much doubt he would have been remembered as all that special a Manager. In fact, I shudder to think what Paisley or Clough might have achieved had they been around at the peak of their powers during the last twenty years?? (And to think he was knighted after winning the Champion's League after so many, many unsuccessful attempts to make it beyond the group stages, it took him almost the whole of the 90's to master it, Rafa did it in his first year and got to the final again in his 3rd year, even Houllier did better than Fergie based on how far he took his side in his first season in charge ) Back in the 70's and 80's, it was about unearthing and nurturing true talent, convincing a player for football not reasons, that your club was best for them, not flapping a cheque book where you were always guaranteed to outbid your main rivals, until Chelski and City came whizzing past in their diamond encrusted yachts. Players came to football clubs to play football, not to kick ten types of sh*t out of fans or parade on catwalks in Milan, metrosexuality hadn't even been invented back then! And if you look at the amount of successful managers from north of the border that have become also-rans whilst plying their trade in the Premier League or the old Division 1 as opposed to the number that were successful, it gives you a renewed sense of perspective. We had more of them than anybody else anyway! Ferguson has bought and bullied his way to a lot of his success and has remained a double standardised hypocrite throughout his reign. Remember his tapping up of Jaap Stam to name but one of the many times he has been accused of this and then he has the gall to decry Real Madrid when they themselves 'do a Man U' and came a-knocking on Cristiano's front door in the dead of night. Or what about his PROMISE to sack any player who was found guilty of drug taking offences, yet Rio Ferdinand remains at the heart of the Manure defence. Yes he may have skipped the test and thus was never found guilty, but why did Manure not see fit to conduct it's own testing and punish the drug cheat as the F.A. saw fit to? And you talk of man management? Dear friends, Bill Shankly wrote the book and hand pressed the t-shirt. And finally, with regard to Liverpool's continuing quest to land the elusive Premier League crown, it just goes show you how far ahead of the rest the Mighty Reds were that even though we haven't won the title for 18 years, we are STILL the MOST SUCCESSFUL ENGLISH FOOTBALL CLUB IN HISTORY. YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE.