Flagging widowhood cocks.

[North road racer]

Hi all,

         going to try something diffrent with wodowhood cocks this coming season, what are you views on flagging the cocks and when would you start this process?

 

 

Thanks

[fletch]

i always watch my dads widdowod cocks and they never need flagging when they are right they must fly 59mins out of 60 mins and they are never flagged only locked out of the loft they may drop on loft or floor but are only there for seconds

[Guest Owen]

Why would you need to flag them? Is there something wrong with them?

[North road racer]

Just asking the question. will they fly for an hour without forcing to fly? How do you get them to fly for an hour?

[Guest]

if you were in my club id tell you to flag em all day long . youre not ,so dont unless you want them to be jumpy ,regards.       andy.

[Guest pigeon.joe]

hi i train for the first 4 races then i start to flag, 3/4 of hour am 1/2 hour pm, the birds will be out 1 hour each fly.joe

[slatey]

if you were in my club id tell you to flag em all day long . youre not ,so dont unless you want them to be jumpy ,regards.       andy.

 

 

jumpy your having a laugh

[slatey]

flag them mate

learn them when the flag is up they have to fly as soon as you take it down they get down

 

start to flag them  gradually building up to an hour am and pm give 4 training tossers before the first race thats it

[Pompey Mick]

Is it the usual  tendency for widowhood cocks to fly for 1hr plus, are they looking for their hens?  Can you expect 'Natural' pigeons to readily become widowhoods and fly accordingly, or is it  an inherited trait.

When I first raced pigeons in the '60's I was into YB racing and in the early years I used to have to stand on top of my loft with an old football rattle to make my YBs fly for an hour. As the years passed the need for flagging decreased and it become the norm to exercise for an hour+.  Was this an inherited trait ? Did the pigeons pass this knowledge down through their genes. Is it the same for widowhood cocks, do teams, that readily fly now, pass through a learning period when they had to be encouraged to keep flying and then pass this down to newer members of the team as the norm.

[North road racer]

All of my cocks will be yearlings so it will be new to them aswell, i have been told by a few fanciers they must fly for an hour atleast a day. maybe once they get into a routine they will fly regardless of the flag? A fancier nearby who wins alot of races puts a flag ontop of his loft when he lets them out and takes down just before they come in so it must work for some people?

 

thanks for the replies.

[Guest Owen]

I am not a great expert on young bird flying. I think it is all a question of selection, feeding and management.

Young birds fly best on light feed so beans and peas are not good for getting them to exercise. Maize will get them going but if you give it to them too early in the season you can have a problem with flyaways.

Selection will have a big influence. Just look at the Americans in Florida. They love their young bird racing and select from the best young birds year after year. They now have very early maturing birds that exercise well and trap like darts. Some of the best Belguim sprint racers have had a similar result, because they select from young bird performances, often.

Management, because the darkness system will bring the birds into sexual maturity much quicker than the traditional non-darkness method. The birds then become reluctant to exercise because they are more interested in nesting. Some like this and seek to exploit it by flying the youngsters to youngsters or eggs. You will find that the down side of this method is that you will have to give them plenty of road training to compensate. The method I prefer is to keep the sexes separate after being on the dark. I have found that they recover better after racing and they will fly really well at exercise.

[leighton1984]

its not the time that they fly but the speed around loft 30 mins going like nuts better than 1hr flopping round any day.

if you watch the cocks you see things what they do when right. lol  

if you do not no what to look for go watch best flyers in your area birds round there lofts fly   ;) 8)

[jakjak]

No need to 'flag' widowhood cks mate

they will fly around home.......often out of sight

[leighton1984]

its nice to see cocks coming back in a line to check loft then of back in the sky gone for 15-20mins then same again back to check things again.

when loft doors open you have to watch your self as they will attack loft to get to boxes.

[K J Young]

I get my young birds used with the flag but not to scare them, just so they no what it is for . my widowhood cocks no when the flags up they fly and when that flag comes down there in before i have the flag put away. build them up slowly 20mins up to the hour.

[cemetary]

I dont think the widohhod cocks need flagged when they are doing there buisness around the areas, JMO.  

[Tony C]

I personly dont flag my w/h cocks, watching how they behave during their exercise period can tell you a lot.

[blaz]

its nice to see cocks coming back in a line to check loft then of back in the sky gone for 15-20mins then same again back to check things again.

when loft doors open you have to watch your self as they will attack loft to get to boxes.

 

this is what your are looking for in widowhood cocks.it is when the birds are like this is when the winning starts. just my view on this post

[kev43]

Young birds fly best on light feed so beans and peas are not good for getting them to exercise<<<<<<<<< i flew mine on beansd and barley season just gone and the exercised well 1 hour mornin and night WITHOUT FLAGS

[Guest kev d]

when i flew in yorkshire in the 90s i flew on the allotments with 6-7 lofts

and every one flew W/H and no one flaged there birds they just got shut out for one

hour most of the time they went of in one direction and 10 mins later

they would come back racing to the loft from the another direction land on the loft

and a couple of mins later do the same thing again they dont have to fly for the full hour

and one thing i would say is stay out of there sight if they see you round the loft they seem to hang about

[Guest TAMMY_1]

I am not a great expert on young bird flying. I think it is all a question of selection, feeding and management.

Young birds fly best on light feed so beans and peas are not good for getting them to exercise. Maize will get them going but if you give it to them too early in the season you can have a problem with flyaways.

Selection will have a big influence. Just look at the Americans in Florida. They love their young bird racing and select from the best young birds year after year. They now have very early maturing birds that exercise well and trap like darts. Some of the best Belguim sprint racers have had a similar result, because they select from young bird performances, often.

Management, because the darkness system will bring the birds into sexual maturity much quicker than the traditional non-darkness method. The birds then become reluctant to exercise because they are more interested in nesting. Some like this and seek to exploit it by flying the youngsters to youngsters or eggs. You will find that the down side of this method is that you will have to give them plenty of road training to compensate. The method I prefer is to keep the sexes separate after being on the dark. I have found that they recover better after racing and they will fly really well at exercise.

 

have to disagree with you here Owen, our young birds are predominantly fed beans and have never had any trouble getting them to fly for over an hour, but also thought one of the advantages of flying widowhood cocks was because they exercised on their own without flagging

[Guest Owen]

TAMMY-1

it took me several years to learn to fly widowhood. In fact I am still learning. One of the reasons I like widowhood is because they exercise so well. My routine is to lock them out and go to the house to have my breakfast and shower for work. The birds will fly the whole while.

The one problem I have sometimes, is on a Thursday morning. I have to allow plenty of time to see to them, because they can sometimes be a pain to come back to the loft. It is never all of them, it will be just one or two. I would'nt dare let them out on Friday morning.

One of my favorite things is, to sit on my patio eating my breakfast and watching them at exercise. It is second only to the actual racing.