Tony C

A clue!

Evening Andy & all

can you hear a gnat?

http://zanylol.com/dyson.html

Nothing stopping clubs/feds holding young bird scrambles Jim, they just wont be part of the race programme. My stance on this is I believe to much emphasis is put on young bird racing and if were not careful we'll end up like the American racing scene where old bird racing is dying a slow death.

Yearlings would have to be eligible for all old bird races because if this don't happen fanciers could/would ring up their youngsters with year old rings making them eligible for old bird competition come the following year. Off course none of this will ever happen........... pigeon unions don't do radical

I personally believe the numbers of youngsters bred in most lofts would fall, maybe not dramatically but fall nonetheless. Adding to this they'd be no advantage in breeding early, youngsters would be bred at ones leisure and more important when the weather becomes more favourable for breeding. IMO summer bred youngsters are far superior to those bred during the winter months, quality over quantity springs to mind.

The way I read Walter's first post was doing away with youngbird racing which would in turn open up an old bird season of some 20 weeks or thereabouts. I can see many benefits in this.

It would get my vote. Could start old bird racing a month later too.

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We should do the same, randomly collect samples from a race basket after pigeons have been liberated and get them tested. The conta argument to this though is if the results come back positive they'll be a lot of finger pointing going on. Do we open the can of worms or not?

Warms ya cockles, so it does.

A pea-souper this morning which took its time to clear.

Me, 25 years come January.

A few years back a fancier suggested to me that he's (and others) pigeons had picked up a different line due to a severe hawk problem in a certain place in the country. It was he's thought that he's pigeons rather than fly from A to B in a straight line now dog-leg adding 10's of miles to their journey to avoid the hawks. At the time I thought how would the youngsters know how to avoid this area, surely they would track for home by the quickest route possible! but no, the youngsters picked up the same line as the old birds. Having just read this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25156510 what the fanciers thoughts were could hold water.

when you take them of the dark you can start cutting the protein in their feed back by adding barley or depurative. 5 parts w/h mix to 3 parts barley or 5 parts w/h mix to 4 parts depurative.

Fleetwood Mac

Mott the Hoople http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfwVfEXJhQQ

Evening all.

Flick through the channels whilst this is playing, tis clever http://video.bobdylan.com/desktop.html

Your long walk to freedom hasn't been in vain. RIP

In my experience a loft finds its own happy medium, by that I mean if you overfill it you'll lose some until it hits the right number or thereabouts. My y/bird loft is 16x6 and I always seem to end up housing around 35 come racing no matter how many I start of with.

Just read about it Andy http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25203209

Another pitfall is haulier company's will willingly hire you a cab/driver for the weekend but invariably will want their cab back for the Monday for business as usual. This of course can lead to pigeons being liberated in unfavourable conditions.

Enjoy the day folks.