pigeonscout

If you want to win races under 300 mile then race the widowhood system. If you want to win at 500 mile + fly the luck system with the right birds.

Nice one Sammy.

The flat roof is covered with one single piece or rubber and guaranteed for 20 years.

My loft had a tiled roof and I changed it to flat roof and I find it much better. Under the tiles gets very dusty and not easy to clean.

Like this

The detection of infected corn or feed is also a problem. Since we are talking about mycotoxin here, the inability to isolate the causal agent, F. graminearum, is not evidence that the mycotoxin is absent. Long after a fungus has died off, mycotoxin secreted into the substrate, will still be present. you can read the full report here http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/lect11.htm

It is not how the food is grown that would bother me it is what it is spayed with to keep insects etc off it. I know the stuff they spray apples with can only be removed with warm water that is so the rain does not wash it off. I watched a TV program where a guy washed one apple and put a caterpillar on the side of it and it went up and over. The same caterpillar was put on the side of the apple that was not washed the caterpillar fell dead before getting to the top it took about 5 sec's to kill it.

The point I was making is you don't kill a bird just because it gets sick. You say the young bird inherits its immune system from its parent that is right but as you know it does not inherit one that will protect it against everything. Most healthy adults can fight of an infection and do so without even showing signs of having it, but that same infection can make the young sick so they may need a little help until they are strong enough to fight it. If a young bird is sick because of infection then I see no harm in helping it beat that infection. I agree that to many fanciers reach for the antibiotics just because the birds are of form. I would not agree that you should kill a bird just because it gets sick, if someone does not believe in the use of antibiotics then they should give the birds immune system a chance to fight it. Bruno I find your posted very good reading and a lot of what you have said I have taken on board. I am one of those's men that has to get to the bottom of things and try to understand how and why. So I don't always agree with other people point of view unless it is made clear to me how and why something works. I don't have to tell someone like you that this sport has more opinions that fact. Can you imagine how a new start would feel if his young birds got sick and he was lead to believe the only thing to do was to kill them?

before or after he killed it

If a child was sick would you put it to under the dirt. If you had and infection would it be fair to say you will never be any good and therefor put you down. Did you ever think that maybe the birds get the infections because we keep them in lofts?

Hinge a board to one of the walls so after feeding it can fold up tight to wall. If you have floor space you should have room for a table at feed time then take it out. when I say table it can be a board on top of a 2 beer crates.

Ronnie the best tip I can give you is to make yourself a table or shelf about 12 ins of the floor. This will be use to feed the young birds. Put the feed on the table and gently lift each young bird hold it for 5 to 10 seconds and put it on the table to feed. You are learning them that your hands and getting lifted means something nice. My young birds run to me as soon as I enter the loft and they never have fear of me the rest of their lives. It can be a bit time consuming but when it comes to basket time for training and racing you will be lifting a tame bird with one hand with no stress on the bird. I do not see the point of motivating a bird on a Friday if the last thing it remembers before leaving the loft is the fear of you chasing it round the loft to catch it. You only have to do this until they can fly up unto the table themselves.

Here is the top 10 form a UK one loft race and it shows that good birds no matter where they are from can fly to any loft no matter where it is. You will also see it was not a local bird that won but the best bird on the day. 1 BELGE 06 6005363 17:51:06.50 2 GB 06 Z 79503 17:51:50.35 3 IF 06 FCON 003 18:05:34.15 4 IHU 06 S 106798 18:13:29.50 5 GB 06 C 84454 18:41:52.55 6 GB 06 B 30008 18:50:27.80 7 NWHU 06 N 4832 19:05:46.30 8 WHU 06 S 13928 19:32:00.65 9 GB 06 B 11023 19:36:26.65 10 BELGE 06 6007561 19:36:49.55

Because someone gives his opinion does not make it true no matter how good he was or is racing pigeons. You have to look at the facts and the fact is most of the winning strains in the UK came from outside the UK. The household names in the sport went to far of fields to bring in new birds and it was these same birds that helped make them household names. Read some loft reports on top flyers and where their family of pigeons came from. I'm not saying you have to go to far of fields to get good birds as I believe the birds in the UK are as good as any in the world. I'm saying you don't need to buy local to win.

Could it have been that the north road had more danger? or was harder racing because of wind direction? The next time a top local flyer tells you to get birds form a top local flyer ask him what strain he keeps. Can anyone tell me the name of one top ten UK flyer that races a strain of birds that were made local to him. Could it be that theses birds do not do well anywhere else because they are no longer flying into the golden mile? or a loft that is manages to prefection. Some times loft location plays a big part in a lofts results and when the same birds are ask to fly into a bad loft location then they are not so good. I have known fanciers that got a full round of young birds from the top local flyer and they never even got on the race result and that same top flyer won every thing there was to win with the brothers and sisters of theses same birds. There are a number of things that make a winning loft the birds are only one of them.

Very few top flyers if any fly with local strains.

But when Jim needed new blood he did not buy it local he got the best no matter where it was from. Two crosses he used was the Stichelbauts and the Super Crack lines. If you buy birds from the best local fancier your birds can only ever be as good as his. Better to get birds from a top fancier that is racing in stronger competition. If you want better pigeons than the best flyer in town then you will have to look outside town.

I was thinking the same way as Jimmy and all I could think of was the food but that would not explain why only some of the young birds get sick and die. I agree with him when he says there is no such thing as yb sickness, or to put it another way, no one thing that causes yb sickness. There are a number of viruses that cause young birds to get sick and also a number of bacterial infections. It could be a virus that is making your birds sick, and a bacterial infections making my birds sick. So that brings me back to the question why do all the young in the same loft not die ? Very few lofts that breed small young bird teams ever get YB sickness I have never had it. What has numbers got to do with fighting off virus or bacterial infections? All I can think of is the less stress there is the stronger the birds health will be. Could it be that when the numbers drop the stress levels drop?

I have noticed when young bird sickness hits a loft not all the young birds die so that has me thinking some young birds have a better immune system than others. I would like to know if the line bred or in bred have a higher death rate than the cross bred. Do the young from certain pairs die from it while the young form other pairs are not affected.

Well if that is how it got into uk then that is good news now at least we know it did not come in on wild birds and they are not still flying all over the uk.

All of the top strains have raced well in every corner of the world.

I think if it had been the pea nuts you would have seen a change for the worse in the first two days of feeding. Did you feed theses same pea nuts to any other birds in the loft?

It does not take long for a bird to be come sick if infected by eating the corn a sick bird has just brought up onto the floor of the basket.

Vic did your birds share a basket with other birds if so the problem may lay there.

Why not just soak some seed in nutmeg / peanut oil. they will get all the fat they need from that.