THE FIFER Posted June 12, 2020 Report Share Posted June 12, 2020 The Joe Murphy Column Received an email from Keith from Cheshire who wrote ‘Hi Joe, just an old ex-fancier that enjoys keeping up with the sport via Elimar etc.: what a joy to read your articles on these amazing pigeons in your Eight of the Best. In these days of 'champion' this and 'mighty' that, your details of these truly exceptional birds are a breath of fresh air. Good honest pigeons of the highest quality, but you know what strikes me most? The owners of these birds had the good judgement to keep sending them instead of hiding them away in the stock loft after one decent performance! A true story for each bird and fancier’s dedication, care, faith and attention to detail: wonderful so, Thank You Joe, a great read and more power to your pen, yours Keith’ My Mistake regarding ‘Mr Consistent’ In my story of my ‘Eight of the Best’ I wrote about the above pigeon; however I was informed that I had made a mistake in his breeding. So I contacted Malcolm Taylor of Newbigging by the Sea who supplied the parents to Sinclair Thomson & Son. His sire is a dark chequer Marcel Aelbrecht who was a son of the ‘Pencil Cock’ who was down from the ‘super breeder’ 548. Dam of the dark cock was a daughter of the ‘Falcon’ and the ‘Fed Hen’ The dam of ‘Mr Consistent’ is ‘3499’a double granddaughter of the 035 hen. Her sire was a red cock being a double grandson of ‘Marcel Star’, when paired to the Red Rising Sun hen 035. The dam of ‘3499’ was a dark chequer hen ‘999’ whose sire won 2nd UNC Clermont flying 436 miles: he was bred from a daughter of the Red Rising Sun hen 035. The dam of 999 was the Red Rising Sun hen 035. Malcom told me that the Red Rising Sun hen was one of the best pigeons they have ever owned. My apologies to both parties and I can assure them this was a genuine mistake (which we are all capable of doing including ME) Mr Consistent (1) Jock and Nancy Traill Two Gold Cup Winners SHU The SHU office was closed and the staff furloughed for the following reasons: The Government stated that all offices should be closed and staff should work from home if possible. The SHU does not have the capability to have staff working from home and had no option but to furlough. The office is within the grounds of a care home and one member of staff is in a vulnerable category. The office is not set up whereby the minimum of distancing could be applied even if we were able to open. Now that the first stage of the lockdown has been lifted we are intending to reopen the office on Wednesday June 3rd 2020 for emails and telephone calls only. The office is able to re-open due to the fact that training has resumed and as such, if a young bird is lost, members, and members of the public especially, need to have somewhere they can report a bird. We can therefore justify why we need to open the office during this lockdown period. The office will be open for emails and telephone calls between the hours of 9-00 and 4.30pm Monday to Friday. Please try to keep telephone calls brief to allow staff to catch up on the backlog of work which has accumulated during the period of furlough. If you wish to hand in paperwork, please place it in the box just outside the entrance gate. The office staff would like to thank all members for not visiting the office prior to the shut down and hope you will continue to avoid personal visits for the time being until the restrictions are lifted. No questions regarding the Coronavirus should be made to the office staff. All questions on this subject should be directed to me or another member of the management committee Gordon Turnbull, B.E.M. President Scottish Homing Union. Canada Update Received some more information on the above loft from my good friend Brad Foster who wrote; ‘Hi Joe please find the following update; I would like to start off by thanking Dr Kazmierczak and Dr Paul Miller for helping us get a new vaccine for PMV 1 into Canada. Mr Bruce Greenly sells this new PMV 1 vaccine it is a 100 dose bottle and Bruce charges $180.00 CAD and you must have a vet in your area order the vaccine from Bruce as he can only sell the vaccine to a vet the sad thing is that the cost goes up again but with this outbreak of PMV 1 and Circo virus fanciers need to be responsible and vaccinate there birds. What has always bothered me is fanciers pay thousands for birds but won’t pay money for a vaccine for their pigeons. Bruce Greenly can be contacted at 1-905-379-4424. I would like to say I hope fanciers with these problems are not shipping to one loft races or, if when racing starts you have a problem that you contact a vet in your area for help. As sending birds when you have sickness in your loft just gives the sickness to someone else it is just like a revolving door. These outbreaks will not go away by themselves as our birds are in the race baskets together and one loft races they are in the same lofts. The pigeon sport world-wide needs to be responsible the last thing we need is another black eye or for the governments to get involved and shut us down and that includes across the borders. Until next time Brad Foster. Selem Special One Loft Race In the past, we had crosses to bear. Last season, a new loft and trailer sent us on our way up ending us on as high a note as you could want. Great races with great returns ending with birds in such excellent condition we could have done the whole series again. This year we were sure the stars had aligned and so did you. The number that signed up and sent birds was staggering. We turned folks away. After the lockdown we still had some show up and we were forced to return them. We felt that with Dr Rubin’s help, nothing would go wrong. Then Mother Nature showed up and said ‘here, hold my beer. I am going to show you what a disaster really looks like.’ and she did. Let me tell you what 700 pigeons dying in a matter of days does to your outlook on life and your enthusiasm. It makes a bottle of rum for breakfast mighty appealing. The dying has slowed to a trickle and what we have left are three distinct groups of birds. There are those who came through without as much as a scratch. There are those who took a turn for the worse but quickly bounced back. There are those alive but with nervous disorders or so thin they may not come back. As I do inventory, the healthy ones will be done first. From good to not so good; the good may reach 400, the bad are the last 100. We will do inventory starting today. On win companion, under the tab 'Birds' you will find a green dot behind your birds info that shows it is eligible to race. That dot will be behind all birds that are alive. This will take me until the weekend to update. Please have patience. I will post when I have completed my job. As birds die, we will remove their dot. All is not conclusive yet. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has stated that it will not have results till the 1st June. Worse case, if the virus is aggressive all birds will be euthanized. Best, if chickens will not suffer, the birds will be allowed to race. CFIA hopes the latter will win out. So do we!!!!!. Linda and I, with the help of a lawyer and accountant have come up with a plan to move forward. All race fees will be returned. Those who paid but did not send the birds will get some perch and taxes back. All adjustments will be worked out for each team and sent out shortly. Those whose birds arrived after we found out about the virus will have all their money refunded. Those who haven't paid owe us perch fees and taxes. Perch fees and taxes will stay with us. When the birds are given the green light, we will train and hold the race program with of course, the needed adjustments re time, etc. We hope that all races can be flown. You will be flying for bragging rights only. There will not be any prize money this year. We will have pools and we will be creative end try to find something to please you all. We hope to have the tent and hope we will be able to provide a meal. Linda and I are overwhelmed by the phone calls and emails wishing us the best and telling us to not lose faith and continue on. You have no idea how important these messages have been to our mental health and wellbeing. We thank you for your kindness. The disease is slowing down. The birds in sick bay are almost all back on perches. Yes there are still birds that succumb to the disease but a lot are improving day by day. Four hundred and fifty are in good health. Sixty more become more active every day and now fly to the top perch. The rest have a way to go. We have 560 birds left in the loft. CFIA has established a probable time line of when the disease entered the loft and began to spread. They will now begin to try and trace back to the source. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency {CFIA} is in contact every day and was here this week. Things are still in limbo as two more tests need to be completed. These will determine how dangerous our situation is to the poultry industry in our area, in Ontario and to the rest of Canada. One question that I had has been answered. When the birds recover and are healthy, they do not shed the virus and will not do harm. It will be June 10th or so when all the results are published, so until then, we wait. Today, Linda took a video of the birds from the outside of the loft. You'll have some idea of the shape the birds are in. Check her Salem Face book page. There are still the last group that are fighting the infection and loosing but more and more are bouncing back. Yours Rick. Anniversary My good friend Keith Traill was telling me that on the 1st June 19th years ago his dad Jock died, I was quite taken by surprise at this news. Isn’t quite staggering how the years seem to fly pass. Jock was a wonderful pigeon man and his bloodlines are still winning up to the present time; let us hope they continue to do so if and when the 2020 begins. Obituary Received an email from Nichola Adams who wrote; ‘Hi Joe, I was wondering if you could put a notification in your column for me, on behalf of dad Jim Honeyman of Kennoway who has sadly passed away. It would be very much appreciated; I have added a wee story below regards Nichola Adams’. I would like to let the pigeon fanciers know that Jim Honeyman a long time member of Kennoway Homing Society lost his fight to Pancreas Cancer and sadly passed away on the 7th May 2020. Dad was a great pigeon man, he was a member of Kennoway Boys Club and flew on his own in 1968 back then they had to run to the post office with the rubber ring to put in the clock. ‘Pooch’ Allan’s clock, he was once 8th open Fife Fed but he was not at home and his mum timed the bird in. In 1970 Dad joined the big club doing very well winning the ‘Rennes Trophy’ 3 times flying 563 miles. He then went on to fly the birds with his brother John as Honeyman’s Brothers for 12 years. Winning races in the club and federation with diplomas also from France races, Dad then continued to fly his pigeons with his cousin ‘Mook’ Honeyman and they were top prize winners in the 1980/1981 season in Kennoway club winning cups and races. Dad then flew on his own again winning races and also achieved a SNFC Diploma, he was going for a Bronze award this year with one of his old birds; however with dad sadly passing away he won’t be able to try and make this achievement. When dad became unwell I and my sister Kelly and our mum Linda took care of the pigeons. He called Kelly his loft manager who has been hands on with dad’s birds during his illness and also after him passing. He was fine for so long and became unwell very quickly, which was so sad, I don’t think we’ll ever get over it. In honour of our dad we are going to fly his young birds for him and hope we can make him proud and wear his ‘Hat’. My uncle John was saying that your dad and my dad’s dad were the best of friends when they were younger.’ I wrote back to Nichola saying how sorry I was to hear her news about your Dad, as you will already know we grew up together in Kennoway and even lived the same street Kingsdale Gardens. We all played together and it is strange that the 3 of us continued with the pigeons after our dads’ passed away. I will put you request into my next column. May I wish your mum and sisters my heartfelt condolences at the passing of your dad. Joe’s Joke A young couple is on their honeymoon. The husband is sitting in the bathroom on the edge of the bathtub saying to himself; "Now how can I tell my wife that I've got really smelly feet and that my socks absolutely stink? I've managed to keep it from her while we were dating, but she's bound to find out sooner or later that my feet stink. Now how do I tell her?" Meanwhile, the wife is sitting in the bed saying to herself, "Now how do I tell my husband that I've got really bad breath? I've been very lucky to keep it from him while we were courting, but as soon as he's lived with me for a week, he's bound to find out. Now how do I tell him gently?" The husband finally plucks up enough courage to tell his wife and walks into the bedroom. He walks over to the bed, climbs over to his wife, puts his arm around her neck, moves his face very close to hers and says, "Darling, I've got a confession to make." She says, "So have I, love." To which he replies, "Don't tell me, you've eaten my socks." Please continue to keep the news flowing; to Joe Murphy Mystical Rose Cottage 2 Flutorum Avenue Thornton by Kirkcaldy KY1 4BD or phone 01592 770331 or Email to joejmurphy1@gmail.com REMEMBER THE J IN THE MIDDLE or you can also view online editions on: www.elimarpigeons.com www.fancierchat.co.uk www.pigeon-chat.co.uk - www.Pigeonbasics.com - Pigeon Racing the Basics! - thecanadianpigeoninternational.com www.internationalracingpigeon.com or https://sites.google...alracingpigeon/ Who wish my weekly contribution portfolio on pigeon topics from Scotland © Compiled by Joe Murphy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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