Wiley

I will be starting to train very soon, and they will get as many tosses as possibly, before and during racing

I topped the federation on the 22nd May with a Jean Pierre Gevaert Van Schorrise which was bred by my uncle Ron Hales, which came from his Alan Pollard pigeons. There very good smart pigeons, but there defiantly aint lookers. Both my Uncle and i also believe Alan Pollard are now out of the sport, however i believe there is some tasty Gevaerts down in sunny scunny with Terry McGeechan, i purchased 6 to race from him this year, and i will tell you how they go at the end of the season. Hope you find success in your quest

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/blogs/mirror-football-blog/Paul-Scholes-dark-side-Fouls-two-footed-challenges-and-red-cards-from-Manchester-United-genius-who-never-learned-to-tackle-article725309.html

Great Player, But also one of the dirtiest, he learnt his tackling from the school of Hard Knocks

4th July

why show hens before a training or racing, only winds cocks up especially yearlings and they fight like hell in the basket. Send them calm and relaxed. Personally like all animals why give an animal a treat before it has done its work, you don't teach a dog to sit by giving it a treat first telling it to sit and then giving it a treat afterwards, it don't work like that, the dog or bird hasn't learnt anything. The idea of widowhood, is getting the birds to race home with them knowing there hen is going to be there, and with pre season training is where you have to drum in the birds heads that when they go in the basket for training, on return they will see there hen. All roads lead to rome but this is my opinion.

cracking loft

hens in good nick will always fly the skies out, all week and in tight knit circles.

but talking about them is the biggest form of advertisement anyhow, word of mouth? so basically its a catch 22

Archie, i do not think this is fair tbh, we could be talking about a number of things regarding products from Gem take for example, its basically saying we cannot mention anything that isnt paying for the rights to advertise here.

cock looks a typical Janssen Van Den Bosche always loved the look of those pencil blue pieds

you are correct, thanks for the replies, had a brief discussion with a top flyer who reckons he never does basket train his young birds, says they get used to the basket, and to drink from when he trains them, just wanted to find out other peoples thoughts.

How important do you value basket training? What are the benefits?

good luck in your quest

best flyer in the east london fed races 8 widowhood cocks, he topped the federation 6 times and won the amal 5 times, real good pigeon flyer

Deeply saddened to hear this, met Carlo on a few occasions and we spoke often about two of our main loves Boxing and Pigeons over the telephone. Very sad he was a great man a real shame, Rest in Peace my friend.

if my young birds were ranging for half an hour at a time they'd be put in the basket, no matter what age! It doesn't have to be far, it can be little miles(say 12 miles) but often. You can win in certain federations training no further than 12 miles. However dependent on how far your first race is i would like to get them to that race point at least 4 times before the first young bird race. School them and school them hard. For a while id keep them tokey, they need to know they depend on you, so when you call they listen, this would be done on the first few tosses until there smashing the back of the shed. Youngsters that are schooled when there not to old are much better then 5 month old babies who just have the first toss.

how can you improve the ventilation on an open front loft??

Red Barcelona was an Imbrecht you are right but where did imbrecht get his pigeons some of this famous names comes into play; Desmet-Matthijs,Bricoux, Sion, Vandervelde, Van Der Espt, Stichelbaut, and Catrysse. Forget the names get the good pigeons.

what you have to remember on those systems and racing from noyon and quiverain the birds never fly more then 90 minutes from quiverain and a steady noyon they will only be in the air for 180 minutes roughly. Quiet different to an inland programme or sprint programme in the UK, feeding to those tight measures the birds in the uk will not last the full season if they hit a couple of bad races. I feel it is a good system and a good base however things will need to be tweaked from week to week. Myself i would use this system but change it once got to 170 mile stage, maybe even before if there was nose winds

If you was to do it again i would do it 14 days before the first young bird race. However i only ever do them the once.

they will need to go on straight away as the levels of light are more then darkness now,

How old would your young bird be? If they havent just been weaned i feel you'd have missed the boat so to speak.

cheers

Baking powder??