Jimmy one conversation i bring up for major losses is that most people train there young birds too late. Nowdays most people breed in December-January, but they dont train till 3 weeks before the first young bird race. Now a pigeon i do not know its ageing but they grow at an unbelieveable rate, if they say a dog is 8 years to a year i believe a pigeon would be double or even triple that. Now those later bred youngster bred in April, these ybs are pushed up in the air, and are forced to go through the paces, so by end of July they can get into the first young bird races at around 12 -14 weeks old, while those bred in decemeber are now 6 months old before they are being trained, when in fact they should have been trained around march time, but because everyone concentrates on there ob racing the early bred young birds are given the backseat, untill the old bird racing comes to a close. just my personal opinion and have personally found that through the years ive kept onto my later rounds then the 1st round, its just like a 40 yr old man with no education, being chucked into school, the saying old dog dnt learn new tricks is a fallicy, but old dogs find it harder to learn new tricks is absolutely TRUE!