Roland

What strain doesn't, and / or hasn't raced well!! ? It is often asked what strains do race well etc.... so Alf Baker's seemed to have a reputation that is birds only flew well for him ... Of course Louella bred international winner for a Belguim etc. with his stock! Jim Biss was a name very widely pouted to stay clear off... Only birds apparently that did well was when he exchanged, or let friends have them.... Though there must be a few somewhere that had a winner or too from out of his stock! Any and all strains must have, especially today, hampios, or at least blumming good birds in the breeding close to the! I put it to you surely, it is the Manager, and system required to be at the top. Yes and of course, as Mike Lycet says, you must have - mostly at least - good birds!

Only reason that I use Air Vnts as such is for shelter from the rain and elements. Likewise Cladding. Cladding can quickly be replaced by air vents... have about a spare dozen that I have had to use, but on a hot day .... My loft is also under trees, so it needs the false roof as insoulation. But on real hot days, I've place sacks on the roof and hosed down. Best and quickest way to cool it down and keep it cool I find.

Aye, and nigh impossible to over crowd if ever there was such a thing ... which of course there isn't, it just a crutch for a lame excuse. The air flow is moving and circulating all the time, this is a big bonus, none becomes stagnent. ... No draughts, and if one wants can always put a 'Sliding Roof' under the wire to shut of in any real adverse weather. BUT have never had to yet. Indeed I took my sliding roof off as it was never needed.

Good boy mucker, and well done and said, a man after me own heart.

http://www.equineiridology.com/

Yep rest it up... a few weeks down the line a couple of gentle chucks to gret confidence back. Then WHEN sunny let it a a race or two from about 100 miles or so. Then rest it up till what it was bred for.... NEXT season! JMO

That would do most of us for a few seasons lol. Great flying mucker, well done.

Most wouldn't want the 'Aye but I still had another ten I could have clocked in if allowed before your first one'! ET will see just that. All in and counting. Saw a fancier clock in 69 of 70 odd and say... 'I long for the day when I can clock all 70 odd in before anyone else gets one in... soon will I reckon. Know another that sent 200 odd every week... Love him in our club, bring the cost of birdage down no end. And as ET is here, then one will have to buy in also, or pay the price every other race... Still enough on that lol!

Yes always built my own. Sometime paid for new stuf... mostly from Demolition sites... Now if I ever built a new one, I'd just hae a good framework built up off the ground. Cover with a small mesh, Includiding the roof. Wire possibly wrapped or fixed both sides. Then Perspex window frames. Plastic air vents mostly all round if possible. Plastic Cladding on removable batons else where, which can be swapped for air vents if need be at any time. A false roof a foot or so above that over laps by a foot or so. Well wired mesh between the false roof and real over lapping roof. A car fan wired to a transformer each side. About what I've got now... no car fans, but will install soon... thought that was a great idea.

Got turffed out of Yately ... too smart and well dressed lol.

That I believe you will find has been recinded. He has since inform many that under certain Lab tests - agreed many believe excessive - that pigeon can / could cary the virus.

Golly the rattle has followd the covers out of the pram now lol ... as

My mum was born in Tooting & Mitchem as it was more popularly known then

Answer to No 24. Name three families that were recognizable by their eye colours. Sions. Janssens. Bricoux. Jan Ardens. Hansseines. Gurnays. Jurions. Beckearts. Devrendts. Puttries. Question. let see if I'm getting you right. What you're saying is that when the homing pigeon was created, via the original breeds, that these originals posessed violets and greens, but thru breeding were deteriorated to lesser quality eyes? Answer: … there is no better breeder than Mother Nature. She sorts out the weak and the inferior and eliminates them by all kind's of what appears to us as cruel, but they go on regardless. Where there Violet and Greens came from to begin with???? This we will never know but, when you get the time or chance, have a look at any assortment of wild pigeons especially the Smerls and the old English carrier etc, and you'll see what I'm what I'm talking about. Perfection, each and everyone of them. And the same applies to ANY wild bird. These are the real thoroughbreds. They all look alike to a greater degree of perfection than you and I will ever reach with our systems. But, of course she has much longer to perfect her progeny and, is not controlled by a need to win races. Did we through being incorrect in and line breeding eliminate the Violets and the Greens Question: Which colour is recessive to the other (VIOLET, GREEN)? If you cannot produce one without the other, then one must carry the other??? Answer: To Pete. That's an eye-sign question for sure. The answer is that. They both will produce each other direct. In other words. The Green will produce offspring which are Violet and visa versa. And this goes on right down to the great, great, great stage. So you tell me????? It isn't easy to do but, the Violet can be bred back in if it was not too far back in the ancestry. This is why you must keep accurate records of such things.

Answer to No 23. I am throwing this answer in because it is so quick and easy that and any real eye-sign man would have known it in a heart beat. What do the Greens and Violets have in common. There are in fact two answers to this question both of which are correct. The first of these is that they both share a common ancestor. The second being that, you cannot breed one without the use of the other. In other words. It's like the words of the old Sinatra song. Love and Marriage. You can't have one without the......other. And if you think you can, your only fooling yourself. The third thing they have in common is that they are both at the "TOP" of the ladder when it comes to breeding better pigeons. BECAUSE THEY ARE IN COMPLETE "CONTRAST" TO ALL THE OTHER COLOURS OF EYE'S FOUND IN OUR BIRDS. More to follow.

Answer to question No 22. Does light enter the eye through the iris proper. Who cares????ha ha ha But in all truth. NO IT DOESN'T. It isn't known if the cilliary body (that's the brown base you see in the bull eye which is completely without pigment covering it) is responsible for the constant changing size of the aperture of the pupil, or the retina at the back of the eye. However, which ever it is, it most certainly isn't the pigment in the iris that causes the changes. Perhaps the light sensitive cells that do cause it are to be found on the surface of cilliary body itself, It certainly looks that way when you watch it under a scope as light is played onto it? I DON'T KNOW AND WILL NOT GUESS OR SPECULATE but, neither does anyone else in the scientific comunity. Fortunately, it isn't of much importance to the eye-sign exponent so don't be overly concerned. There is one thing for sure though. If you could scrape away the pigment from within an eye, you would find as did and have many times, that as soon as the pigment is removed, the eye then changes to being nothing more than a plain old every day BULL EYE??? And that's the "only" difference between them and the ordinary pigmented eye or coloured eye. The presence of pigment. Please, don't let anyone try to tell you that the bull eye is faulty or that the birds with them cannot see properly. They can see just as well as any other eye. Either In the dark or the brightest day. I have had them come in the dark throughout the night many times, and won blow homes and hard races with bull eyed birds, not to mention that one of the best stock birds I ever owned also had a bull eye. I have reached a point now that pictures are a must from here on out so. When the new kind of scanner arrives this week, hopefully I will be able to post some interesting pictures which demonstrate all the things I have talked about perfectly, and also the pictures of the eye of a double 500 mile L/A Combine winner owned by Lawrence Bauber of the Disneyland Llofts, which shows very clearly the TWO LAYERS of blood veins and capilliaries that make up the iris proper. Unfortunately this picture also Blows away Bill Richardsons theory of the eye heart cooling thing which it wasn't intended to do but, O Well??? The truth will prevail. Those at the seminar saw these pictures for the first time but, now you will all see them as promissed together with the single tubed eye's.

Answer to question No 19 and 20. How many proven way's are there to select a mate for a Cluster. What are they To answer this question I will relate a little story about a friend of mine Called Dennis Shaw. Dennis was a dedicated flyer who would stop at nothing to win and his success which was quite good was due to this competative nature and attitude which was also a characteristic of his own families personalities. His farther was a Champion cyclist of Olympic caliber and also a very good pigeon flyer in his day. Dennis flew in my club in Sth Australia, and after the release of my book in which I revealed for the first time ever the facts about the Cluster eye's. He set off on a mission to buy beg steal or borrow every Cluster eye'd bird he could get his hands on, and he did. Exactly howmany he actually ended up with I never found out but, he was the happiest guy you ever met now that he had this information and was going to set the world on fire because of it. Needless to say. It didn't take long for him to start telling me of the successes of some of them BUT, he also pointed out that there were also many failures??? This of course gave me cause for concern until after examining some of his matings and this was when I discovered that he had made a fatal error in his pairings. You see dear reader, what Dennis had over looked in his eagerness to be an ace, was the one and only rule you cannot ever break when mating birds by eye-sign. The method was discovered originally back over 500 years earlier than Giggot by a man called Abdule Fassule, in the land of Persia.(Turkey today) And was used as per his recommendations by Giggot back long before 1848 during HIS developement of the long distance racing pigeon which, when he tried them out for the very first time at the 1848 worlds fair in London held at the Chrystal Palace. Were the first long distance racing pigeons ever seen and, later because of their success, were called approprietly, The Antwerps. Named after the city from whence they came and subsiquently flew back home to. There are very few rules in the breeding of racing pigeons which are cast in bronze as it were. Some one out there in pigeon land will be able to show where they had just as much success by doing the exact opposite to what the rules say you should. Except THE RULE OF MATING. If I had to, I could condense the technique down into one word, and that would be "CONTRAST" If you look it up in a dictionary, you will find that it is the "visible difference" between say two colours. EG. BLACK and WHITE. YELLOW and PEARL?? Gray circles and yellow ones etc etc. Therefore, the rule is that you MUST use a Contrast, of the many colours as it is possible to find in the eye's of your breeders and even SOME of the other eye features. If there ever was a secret to anything in this subject, it was this rule of CONTRASTING the eye colours of the parents in the breeding stock, to IMPROVE the QUALITY of the off spring being bred to be over and above that of the parent birds. In my fifty years of HANDS ON breeding of pigeons, I have NEVER been able to prove this one rule wrong dispite many many thousands of pairings for myself and others around this world. The letters of agreement which I received after the release of my book were in the thousands confirming what I had recommended as being factual and many of these came from none believers in the subject of eye-sign. I would pass on that same advise to you today, Always contrast the colours of eye's of your breeders when ever possible. NEVER mate two eye's of "identicle" colours together. If you have a family of yellow eyed birds, mate the Old Gold yellow's with the pale Daffodil yellow or, the butter cup yellow but, never the same colour. The dark pearls to the light pearls and if these are not different, then you may have to resort to using the eye-sign circles to find your contrast but regardless of which it is, use it, THE BETTER THE CONTRAST THE BETTER THE MATING. This will give you the desired improvements you so badly want and need I promise you AND, you will breed a "wider variety" of contrastable coloured eye's to continue on with into a never ending future. This information also explains fully why the Greens and Violet eye's are such a prolific breeders of good birds. Because they are in complete CONTRAST with ALL the other colours appearing in the eye's of our birds. A final word on this subject. Never confuse the contrasting of colours, with contrasting the eye features. A wide circle to a narrow one. THIS ADVISE IS TOTALLY WRONG. You will only decrease the overall width of eye'sign in the young produced by doing this. Retain what you have in the cock by "matching" it with a hen of equal strength and width if possible, BUT A DIFFERENT COLOUR. The single tubed eye which I have mentioned so many times on here is also explained by this word contrast. It too is in complete contrast to all the other eye's found in our birds and this is clearly why they too breed good birds so prolifically. Now I hope you have a some what deeper appreciation for my insistance that you cannot teach this subject PARROT FASHION from what you read in books, You also cannot learn it that way and anyone who say's you can, and believes you don't need hands on experience is talking out of his...... hat. And the beat goes on.

When you find a Cluster in the eye of a bird REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE EYE IS LIKE, DOMINANT VIOLET'S INCLUDED, you can CONFIDENTLY forget the rest of the signs in that eye and the same applies if it's a so called bad eye. If it has a Cluster, it can't possibly have a bad eye. The presence of the Cluster cancels out everything else. I make this rather strong comment only after having examined many many thousands of them since 1953 and as a result of asking the right questions about them. The stories from the owners are always the same. "IT'S MY BEST BIRD" And the flying and breeding records of them is often staggering. If there is something that can turn a novice into an overnight ace, it has got to be a bird with a Cluster. Large ones or small! Cock or Hen! Left or Right eye or both! It doesn't matter in the least. This is also why I say that the discovery of them was the greatest and most important BREAKTHROUGH in the history of the subject and sport and I'm proud of it. Call me a big head, call me what you like, I've heard it all before and don't care. It's true and this FACT has been PROVEN many. Many of thousands of times around the world and they are still being discovered and proven to this very day. To my critics I can only ask this. What's your contribution to the subject or sport that others HAVE benefited from?? Even Stan Bishop, (the farther of the subject) and Charlie George his assistant and scribe said that they had seen them for years but, never for one minute realized what they signified. His words were. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Answer to questions No 10 and 11. HOW MANY WAYS ARE THERE TO DETERMIN IF A BIRD REALLY DOES HAVE A DOMINANT VIOLET EYE. There are three ways to determine a Dominant Violet Eye. These are 1. Recognition by examination! (In other words, by looking at it and recognising it accordingly) No 2. By discovering the phenomenal breeding record of the suspect. It is not unusual to hear about them producing 20 and 30 individual winners. No 3. By examining the multitude of other coloured eyes produced from the suspect. Answer to questions No 12 and 13. How many different kinds of Green eye's are there? The green eye comes to us in two basic types. The DOMINANT and the RECESSIVE. But to save time space and confusion, I shall also include the answer to question No 13 at the same time by saying that they also come in the RACING. BREEDING. And DUAL PURPOSE categories are as to the afore mentioned VIOLETS. Answers to questions No 14 and 15. HOW MANY KINDS OF VIOLET EYE'S ARE THERE AND WHAT ARE THEY? As was just mentioned above. The Violet eye comes in the very same types and categories as the Greens. These being. The DOMINANT and RECESSIVE. And in the RACING, BREEDING, and DUAL PURPOSE categories. Answers to questions No's 16 17 and 18. The thing that distinguishes one kind of Cluster from another is the "PIGMENT" which forms it. If you look closely at this pigment in any eye, you will see that it resembles tiny bead like particles. These beads come in three different sizes and make up the basic colour of the eye. E G. Pearl (from the grey beads) or yellow from the yellow beads. This pigment is found throughout the whole eye commencing at the pupil and covering the eye-sign circle then extending as a "BASE" covering of the sphincter shaped Cilliary muscle, from the edge of the pupil to the outer edge of the eye. The entire iris is built on this base which in coloured eye's, is covered with this same pigment which is also responsible for the formation of almost all the other features we see in the eyes. If you look closely you will also notice that the pigmented beads are positioned on the base in a deliberate order of three individual layers, one atop of the other. This order being, the smallest of the beads are at the bottom of the laters, followed by the next or middle sized beads, and finally the larger of them being on the top or, the outer surface of the coloured areas. To the lay person this information may seem boring and insignificant however, rest assured, as your knowledge of the subject grows, you will soon realize that it is of paramount importance to know these things and especially when selecting a mate for the bird in question????????????? Therefore, to answer the original question which was? How many different kinds of Clusters are there? Let's look at a breakdown of the possibilities. NO 1 Being. The Cluster which is comprised of all and only LARGE beads, which resemble small grains of sand or salt in the pupil. No 2 Comprised of all small beads. (Appearing like fine powder and even a misty effect in the pupil) No 3 Comprised of only the middle sized beads. (Talcum powder size beads) but still quite visible. No 4 The Cluster which is comprised of beads of all three sizes. No 5 finally, the one made up of only two sizes of beads of which there are 3 possibilities? The percentages of each in the makeup do not seem to be of any importance. So the answer to the original question is. There are basically 7 different kinds of Clusters depending on their makeup. Finally on this same question. Which is the most proponents Cluster as a breeder or flyer. The simple truth is that they are all as proponent as each other. There is no such thing as a dominant Cluster or a positive or negative Cluster or even a male and female Cluster. But not all Clusters succeed as promised, and these are the ones which have been mated INCORRECTLY. There is a right and wrong way to do this which has been covered before and can be found in the archives on this subject.

' ... you have a head start because if you compare them to the also rans and you are observant and have an open mind then you will learn a lot....' I also believe Albear that that is indeed 70% of everything in regards pigeons. Some will see - observe - in 10 minutes what many will neve in a life time.

Lol ... why you thinking the so -called yeast in beer would be a better way put to the birds!

Well tell us something Jack! Explain some things Jack! Actually put something up tangible to be of use, interest to the readers on here.

"No studies have yet found that people benefit from taking multivitamin and mineral supplements. Some studies have found that vitamins like A and iron are toxic at high levels. Beta-carotene has been found to increase the risk of lung cancer in smokers’. Research was done on thousands of people and the ones who took the vitamins etc "over the dosage" had 30% more prostrate cancer. Another note. Pigs in the European countries have always been at a disadvantage (in respect to North America) because the use of antibiotics is severely restricted. However, a group has studied Herbal alternatives. 300 plants/herbs were studied as to the efficiency of natural alternatives as opposed to antibiotics. 3 were picked as very promising in the control of E. Coli, Diarrhea, and immunity to many bacterial/virus infections. Apparently traditional human cures. More study has to be done but unfortunately the three prime plants were not named. On going study. Did a Google search but no results. let alone any evidence in regards, animals, birds etc.

I personally believe jacks posts are offensive barrage is belittling and of no value, let alone use, to any one, and certainly not at in the interest of the Eye Theory in any way shape or form. Why is it, unfortunately, always the same when one asks for a clarifaction, or explaination of any fundemental, any realistic thought put to an Eye theorist that it ends ups with the belittling, insulting barra!? Yes I understand that when one is dealing with a theory, at best, with obviously no roof ever being available, but the insults etc.! No need, and it puts down every other 'Eye Debate' as just not worth the hassle. Why don't I believe? more like why haven't I ever tried to understand! Precisely because of the above. Secondarily, whenever a debate is raised on nigh ANY subject, the eye theorists take over the debate, saying simple 'Ah, if only you knew what I knew....' Nodd nodd wink wink. No wonder the art - if there is indeed any - of Eye Theory - is being given a wide, an every growing wider berth.

G8 mate... and our birds were doing over the 1900's. 1920 the actually winner. likewise the next 13... Mine was just under.

Cool, but just about out of my radious, mores the pity.