Up North Combine Loft Visit (part 1) by Keith Mott

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UP NORTH COMBINE LOFT VISITS (PART 1)

Rod Adams of South Shields.

In my near 50 years as a pigeon fancy press ‘scribe’, you can imagine how many premier lofts I have visited over the years and my visits to Rod Adams’ railway siding racing loft are some of my most memorable. I first became aware of Rod Adams in the early 1980’s when I saw him on ‘The Fancy’ television programme, which featured the Up North Combine and some of its premier members at that time. It featured several top lofts, including Ralph Iley and Bill Porritt, who’s lofts I also had the great pleasure to visit in later years. ‘The Fancy’ was one of the best things, featuring pigeon racing I’ve ever seen on TV and it remands one of my favourites until this day. I don’t think Rod races his pigeons now, but like myself, writes in the fancy press regularly and keeps a few pairs of birds in his back garden to play with.

On one of my most recent trips to the North-East of England I had the great pleasure of visiting the railway siding loft of the pigeon ‘scribe’ and one of the premier long-distance fanciers of the mighty Up North Combine, Rod Adams of South Shields. I have visited his establishment several times over the years and first visited Rod's loft with the “Many Miles with Mott' video camera in the mid-1990’s, and since then he changed his loft for a new ‘L’ shaped structure, with a pan tile and plastic roof. The smart new building is about 40ft long and has open-door trapping into a full length corridor, which Rod likes because he can stand in the dry and can observe the inmates. The best feature of the new set-up is, in my opinion, the white plastic cladding on the front, which is completely water proof and will never rot. I must say though, it was a bit sad to see his old green loft gone, as it was one of the most famous in the North-East of England, being sited on the allotment by the railway tracks.

Rod is a man of character, holding great respect in our sport. On our arrival at his lofts, he invited, 'Big' Bill Young and myself into the cabin and made us a nice cup of tea. For many years he had concentrated on the longest old bird race from Bourges, which is 570 miles to the North-East. In recent years he has been rewarded for his dedication by winning 1st open Bourges in the mighty UNC. He maintains that there is nothing better than a pigeon that flies 15 or 16 hours home on the night from this race point. His greatest performance, he feels, was his Bourges Combine win, although through the years he has had some good hens which have had dual high positions in the UNC returning on the night from Bourges. Also, the loft has recorded five times 1st Federation from Bourges in the last few years, which is a fantastic achievement.

When I asked how long he'd been in the sport, he told me, 'I have kept pigeons since I was 10 years old, but I have been racing on my own since I was about 20, having kept birds now for over 50 years. I was fortunate enough to start off in an area where we had when we were about 16 years old, what we used to call a 'Pudding Club', a boys' club where we raced each other for a pot of money. 'Gradually, after looking after other people's pigeons, I decided to fly my own in 1959 and I was fortunate enough to fly behind a man who was a living legend in South Shields, a guy called Tommy Burke. Tommy taught me how to race pigeons. At that time I couldn't win any races but I got Tommy's pigeons, acquired his methods, and in the space of about 5 years I was winning inland averages. In 1971 I was flying in partnership with a guy called Herbie Elliott. In that season we had 16 times 1st inland, but we couldn't time from the distance, so I decided there and then , to get rid of inland pigeons and concentrate on the distance’.

Rod won the UNC from Bourges with a lovely little chequer hen which he had called 'Little Miss Bourges'. I asked him a little bit about her background and about her build-up to her Combine win and he told me, 'They must be bred to do the job. She’s bred from a full brother to the two good hens that were actually given to me by Alan Hindhaugh. Now, the dam of this hen is bred through Sonny Galloway's Combine winner called' School Mistress', and down to a hen off Herbie Elliott called '2953', whose dam actually had three times 1st t federations on the Channel including 9th Open Combine Melon.

'When this little hen was a year old,' said Ron, 'I told some Scottish fanciers that I’d win the Combine from Bourges with her and in fact I called her 'Little Miss Bourges' to make the point she's small, she's female and Bourges is a long way away. When she was a yearling I simply took her to Lille, which is about 350 miles and out of there she came home on the day. As a two year old, the race that actually made this hen was the Greater Distance Club race organisation that we had in the North of England with about 50 fanciers devoted to long-distance racing and this little hen went to Sartilly. I hadn't realised how west Sartilly was, about 436 miles to me, and in fact the winning pigeon took about 12 hours. I had actually looked up and thought the race was finished. She was the sixth bird home on the day, wasn't touched and she had learned from that experience. She'd gone up the wrong side of the country, but rectified her mistake. 'I let her sit for a month, sitting on eggs 12 days and sent her back to Bourges, which is 571 miles and we got a very strange race. The birds were liberated very late. In fact, it really was a two-day race and she turned in the next morning about 08.30hrs to be 30th open Up North Combine. The following season I sent her to the equivalent of Sartilly, which is Pontorson, maybe 45 miles more (possibly 40 miles) with the Northern Classic and she was clocked at 20.00hrs. As she wasn't tired, I lined her up for Bourges. She was sitting 12 days when she went and her youngster was still following her around, being not quite full grown and still sitting in the nest box with her. I gave her about three 35 mile tosses and in that month she literally had an open hole all the time. She was sent to Bourges fully pooled and I expected her to come. It was her fastest race and I was actually putting the birds in the car for a mainland race when she came. I lost no time and she really came well, not looking distressed at all. She's a beautiful little hen, evenly marked, very calm. She has a nice temperament and she's always been a bird I've fancied'.

Rod is one of the personalities in our sport and has a great knowledge of racing pigeons and when I asked him about his management he told me, 'It's totally natural. I've never flown widowhood but I do fancy going with a small team to 600 miles. I normally pair the birds up the first week in March and keep about 40 pairs of racers which are all dedicated to 500 mile racing, sooner or later. 'I'm not a heavy trainer, giving them enough training early in the season so I don't lose them. There isn't a bird born that can't be lost at 80 miles on a bad day and I try to give them a select number of races. The older birds go to, say, 500 miles and will only get three races on the build-up, perhaps one at 80, and one at 150, then they go to Lille which is 300 miles, then Bourges, which is 570. I tend to race the yearlings on a more regular basis and they have to go to 400 miles. I'm fortunate enough to be able to get reasonable corn from the farm or fancier friends and I virtually hopper feed beans and peas from the farm, which I mix with a decent commercial mixture as I get nearer the Channel races, supplementing the feed with about 30% maize. My favourite condition for sending them to the longer races goes back to the days of Tom Kilner, who was a legend in the UNC. He always sent his birds 12 days sitting at basketing and I maintain mine at 12 days on basketing, although I've had some good results with birds on very small youngsters. There's no such thing as a system that suits the whole loft. What you have to do is pick the individuals out of the team. I've always said you can't breed a Combine winner; you have to breed the gene pool. Out of that perhaps you'll get a decent pigeon. I've always made my mind up that if anybody gave me the chance of two pigeons in the nest bowl, I would always take the smaller one. I don't think big 500 / 600 milers exist. If they do, they're one-off jobs and they never come again. My ideal pigeon for Channel racing at 600 miles is small to medium and I must say I do prefer hens.'

Rod's pigeons looked very contented in the very spacious old bird section. When I asked what families of pigeons he races, he replied, 'Just an amalgamation of a lot of birds, mainly obtained within the UNC when I first started off and decided I was going to fly the Channel. I basically went to established Channel fanciers in the area - Billy Knapp, Billy Gibbons, Sonny Galloway, Ayton Marshall, well established names and I used these birds as a base. I turned out some pretty good performances over the years, crossing with Herbie Elliotts and one or two more birds, but the turning point came when I got two hens off Alan Hindhaugh, which were cousins to the 'Mean Machine', an exceptional bird in the UNC. These two hens, which were basically Busschaerts, turned in some tremendous Bourges performances for me, flying three times on the day between them and five times in the Combine result. I can take you into my stock loft now which is behind my house. It's a small loft; maybe 12ft long with an aviary and contains nothing except birds that are either bred from Combine winners or birds that have put up exceptional performances from Bourges. Within that block I have birds from these, late breds, and these are bred from the original stock and from the present team. I've always been conscious of the fact that in every area there are good individual local people so I collect all these winners from whatever areas I can within the UNC and bring them into the stock loft. I have about 14 pairs of stock birds. I've got light available and the loft is alarmed and I have an insurance policy because of the very fact that I have birds on a local site. I asked him if there is a type of pigeon he likes and he answered, 'Well, I think if you bring birds in you have to bring in the type that you like. I could get pigeons off Tom, Dick and Harry and they won't be as good as my own. I look for birds that have got a performance history of 500 or 600 miles. There was a time when, if you got birds from Bourges by 9 o'clock on the second day, then you would have won 70% of the clubs. Now it's more a time when you see speed, so I look for birds that are the same size as mine, medium to small and birds which have an ancestry of flying distance races'.

Rod likes to have between 50 and 60 young birds each year to race but because he prefers every pair of old birds to have a pair of youngsters he sometimes has more than this number, the surplus donated to charity sales. He trains his young bird team much the same as most fanciers, training and racing them through to 200 miles, just to educate them for Bourges. In later life, he races his young birds natural to the perch and when I enquired of him what he thought of the darkness system, he told me, 'It's been in my area for about 10 years and there isn't any doubt that when watching them racing, it's very impressive. I've never flown it because I'm interested in those birds as 2ys and I have a sneaking feeling that a lot of the top fanciers in the North of England, who've been on the darkness system, are tending to come off it. I also have a sneaking feeling that there might be a price to pay which there always is, whatever you do. You can't even force rhubarb without paying a price and I think later in life something might happen with those birds'.

Rod's loft is very natural and all his young birds run with the old birds all through the season, only to be split up at the end of the year. The old bird racers are allowed to nest anywhere: if a pair wants to nest in the comer of the loft, on the floor, they are allowed to pure happiness, pure contentment, that's the name of the game. Did Rod think the sport has progressed in recent years? 'In the physical aspect of the sport, e.g. feeding, veterinary medicine and performance, I would say yes. The standards are much higher and they have progressed very much. When I was a young man, performances were put up which these days wouldn't come close. Some of the top fanciers of yesteryear would just not be in the hunt these days and training systems like widowhood and darkness for the youngsters and roundabout were all unheard of. The pigeons are more athletic as it is very, very rare now that velocities drop below 1000ypm. 'For most races, feeding has become an art. The corn available is better than it ever was and whilst vets haven't progressed very much in terms of what most of them know about pigeons, the average fancier's knowledge about diseases has certainly increased. However, I have to say that a lot of fanciers who self medicate their birds use antibiotics as if they were talcum powder and they're probably doing untold damage. 'Fanciers get into the habit of winning races and some top fanciers who don't win get quite annoyed. As far as some of them are concerned, there are only two types of pigeons- winners and sick pigeons- and can guarantee that if a top local fancier goes three or four weeks without winning a race, he thinks his pigeons are sick, but it isn't necessarily so. Timing mechanisms and clocks have all improved; quality of pigeons has improved; access to birds has improved. I must say that here in the North of England we've got a saying that you get your best pigeon for nothing and these pigeons come about through friendship. If you want friends in the sport, then you have 'to work at it'.

Whenever I judge at the NEHU South Shields Show I always try and meet up with Rod, and I must say he always looks in good form. I always derive great pleasure from meeting Rod Adams and seeing his wonderful team of long-distance racers. He is a wonderful man and a brilliant pigeon fancier! Full article to appear in the BHW soon. (November 2022)