DARKNESS SYSTEMS

[Pompey Mick]

After another seasons racing with a rag bag kit of YBs, even the early breds are moulting round the head, I have decided to give the darkness system a go next season. Any recommendations for Videos, DVDs or books on the subject?

[PIGEON_MAN]

I FOUND THE VIDEO,S BY JOHN HALSTEAD TO BE VERY GOOD.

[andyb]

find someone who has a tried and tested method then adapt it to suit you and your time

[Chris Little]

Yeah , I'll go with Pigeon Man , I watched John Halstead's video in the late 90's and things have progressed from there.

[THE FIFER]

I AM NOT ON THE DARKNESS BUT U CAN SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BIRDS ON IT AND ONES NOT, I STOPPED RACING THIS WEEK BECAUSE MY BIRDS ARE TOO FAR ON THE MOULT, I THINK THE EXTRA HOT SPELL WE HAD HAVE BROUGHT THEM ON QUICKER THAN NORMAL, BIRDS ON DARKNESS LOOK LIKE YEARLINGS, I AM NOT ON IT BUT YES I THINK IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE, BUT LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE PIGEON GAME IT'S NOT THE ANSWER TO WINNING ,I KNOW FANCIERS ON IT AND NOT WINNING AND FANCIERS WHO ARE NOT AND WINNING, SO ITS NOT JUST DARKNES, THIS IS ONLY ONE OF THE MANY POINTS U NEED TO WIN.

[morton]

I have done darkness for two seasons now, and purely for the reason that I know their feathering will be OK and it is one less thing for me to worry about, and for them, they have a good covering.If they have to miss a week you know they aren't going to fall apart. They look great but you have to keep reminding yourself that they are still only babies. Don't think it has a lot to do with winning either

[Guest Paulo]

The Dark System Explained

 

The Dark System manipulates the length of the day artificially to cause the young birds to moult their body feathers very rapidly while not moulting the flight or wing feathers. This system tricks the pigeon’s biological clock to think winter is coming.

 

When a pigeon is on a short day length it will only drop the body feathers, which includes the head, neck and shield and not the wing flight primary and secondary feathers. This gives the pigeon the best possible chance of surviving through a harsh winter with a full wing and a fully feathered mature body. The pigeon grows and matures during the body moult. This big burst in size, strength and maturity is nature’s way to best protect the pigeon. Like reptiles that grow during shedding of skin, pigeons grow very rapidly during the body moult.

 

Here are a few reasons that make the Dark System such an advantage for racing young birds.

 

1. The young birds are sexually mature.

 

2. The young are adults in every way except they do not have the adult flight feathers.

 

3. The young birds have adult pigeon immunity and are not effected as readily by respiratory, Adeno virus etc.

 

4. The young can be raced on a double widowhood system.

 

5. The young have a full wing and are not stressed by racing during the body moult.

 

6. The young pigeons are ready every week unless the race is a real disaster.

 

Here are the disadvantages to racing young birds on the Dark System.

 

1. The young will reach maturity so fast; they may be too old physically and mentally when training begins. Losses could be great.

 

2. Lack of ventilation during the darkness period could lead to many health problems.

 

3. Problems with pigeons going into the old bird season with several baby flights still on the wing.

 

4. The young tend to begin to moult the body and wing feathers six to eight weeks into the young bird season.

 

 

Here are the misconceptions about the dark system.

 

1. You do not have to mate right after Thanksgiving. The pigeons finish the moult in 9 weeks, so if a round is weaned in April and then another in May there is still time to finish the body moult before the young bird season.

 

2. The pigeons fly terrible as old birds. Some fanciers report this others have no problems. This could be due to the young being pushed too hard or not finishing the wing moult before the spring old bird season. My suggestion would be, to only race the hens as young birds on the dark system and let the cocks remain on natural light. Use the cocks as widowers during old birds.

 

3. The pigeons can suffer health problems during the darkened stage if the birds are crowded and the ventilation is poor. Install exhaust fans in the roof of the loft that run at all times to draw stale air out. Cut some openings in the floor for the airflow to come from the bottom of the loft without light coming in.

 

4. The loft does not have to be totally dark. As long as it gets dark at the same time every day the birds will moult fine. My pigeons can still go down and drink when the loft is closed up.

I will explain how the system works followed by how to prevent the problems that may come about.

 

Dark System Procedures

 

Wean the young into a section that has been designed to allow ventilation but can be darkened to somewhat darker than dusk.

 

1. Let the sun come up in the morning and darken the loft 9.5 hours later. By doing this the pigeons have the sunrise to adjust their biological clock. Remember you must open the loft at night for it to get light in the morning. If this is not possible you must adapt the system to your schedule. In this case open the loft up and close it up leaving the light for 9.5 hours. You must do this at the same time every day. The strict timing is very important for the pigeons to adjust to the dark system.

 

Letting the sunrise naturally for the babies is the best system but I have used both with success.

 

2. Feed a high protein grain and give vitamins, mineral and grit regularly. Feed very heavy because the moult will be rapid.

 

3. Use garlic in the water four or five days per week as a natural antibiotic.

 

4. Let the pigeons out as much as possible and start them flying young.

 

5. Start short tosses as soon as they are flocking. Begin across the yard and down the street and go in very short increments. The young must be trained very young for them to be able to learn. Once they are trained out to 25 miles you do not have to worry but losing them very easily. The dark system pushes the young bird through its learning phase very quickly. On the dark the young become adults at 13 weeks of age instead of five to six months when not darkened.

 

6. Once the young are trained out to 25 miles several times, stop them until training restarts again for young bird racing.

 

7. Two weeks before you begin the second phase of training for the young bird season, put the pigeons on natural day length. After two weeks start your training the same as you start for every young bird season. The pigeons were already trained out 25 miles earlier in the year, but start slow again unless the pigeons are routing real well.

 

8. If possible separate the sexes. You must determine if you want to excel early or late. Leave the sexes together for the first couple weeks of racing if there are many young bird specials at the end of the season. If you want to dominate early separate the sexes two weeks before the first race.

 

9. If you do not have the space leave the sexes together the entire season.

 

What to do during the Race Season?

 

1. If the sexes are separated allow them to spend 30 minutes together before shipping.

 

2. After returning from the race leave the sexes together for two hours.

 

3. The separated sexes must be trained and exercised separately during the week.

 

 

4. After week two of the race season add three hours of day length (by turning on the lights) everyday for the rest of the season. This causes the young to believe it is mid summer when the wing moult is so very slow. The young will begin to drop the first few flights but the season will be over before the young reach the third or fourth flight.

 

5. Race and win!

 

What to do After the Race season?

 

1. After the race season return to normal day length for one month. This will cause the pigeons to begin the moult really fast. The pigeons will start another body moult followed by the completion of the wing moult.

 

2. When the month is complete run the lights 24 hours per day until the wing moult is finished.

 

3. If you did not race the young cocks on the system there is no need to run lights after the month. The young hens will finish the moult the following year. This does not matter if they are not raced as old birds.

 

4. Feed high protein with plenty of vitamins and minerals until the body moult is finished.

 

Anyone is welcome to use this article to help improve his or her young bird racing.

[Guest Paulo]

The darkness system has become very fashionable for youngbird racing. It has been widely practiced on the continent for some time, and now it is being used more frequently over here in the UK. The system works to retard the moult by limiting the hours of daylight. Youngbird lofts are given extended periods of darkness from early in the year, up to, at most, June 21st, to limit the amount of daylight entering the loft. Lofts are darkened, for example, up to 9:00 am and after 4:00pm, but the absolute times can vary, usually to suit the fancier. Darkening the loft prevents the natural rays of the sun from stimulating the production of moulting hormone, and the feathers are held.

 

Under normal circumstances, when the exposure to sunlight is not reduced, moulting hormone is released into the blood stream, and the feathers are shed. Darkness management involves the creation of an artificial loft environment. This can be achieved by using a dark curtain, or by housing the youngbirds in a totally enclosed youngbird loft with no windows. It is essential, that additional ventilation is provided, often by the use of electric fans, to prevent the build up of stale air and airborne pathogens. The logic of using the darkness system relies on its ability to produce youngbirds with a full wing. This is thought to be especially useful in the longer youngbird races at the end of the youngbird season. It has also been suggested that youngbirds kept under darkness mature faster, presumably because protein, designated for growing feathers, becomes available for other uses.

However, the darkness system is not the magical solution to winning youngbird races as it was first thought. In fact it can have detrimental effects, and when compared to youngbirds prepared properly on the natural light system, it can be disadvantageous in many ways. Sometimes variations on the darkness system are devised to suite individual fliers, but this can cause problems. In their quest to stay ahead by using modern fashionable management techniques, they lose sight of what the darkness system is actually trying to achieve.

 

They think that as long as they go through the motions and put the loft into darkness, that this is all that is needed. This situation arises partly because some fanciers are simply not around to close and open the youngbird loft at the appropriate times.

 

They have to leave for work early, and perhaps return late, so they close up the loft when they leave, and open it up again when they come home in the evening. The loft is left predominantly in darkness for most of the day. This can drastically affect the pigeons.

 

The pigeons, and loft, get little or no sun at all. This creates a good environment for bacteria and fungi to thrive and the pigeon's feathers fail to hold any condition. Also the circadian cycles that regulate the pigeon's metabolism and normal behavior, particularly its sleep/wake cycle, gets completely thrown out, and the pigeons simply do not know whether they are coming or going. It is essential that the daylight hours be centered around midday.

 

The point of the darkness system is for the pigeons metabolism and hormonal cycles to be tricked into thinking that it is earlier in the year than it really is, and not just for them to get hopelessly disturbed. One problem with the darkness system, whether it's carried out properly or not, is that it prevents the replacement of feathers that are flawed or damaged.

 

When the youngbird first makes it's way from the cramped nest, which it usually shares with a nest-mate and an attentive mother, it has to master the power of flight. As the youngbird learns to fly, it has to learn to take off and land in confined spaces, it has to learn not to collide with others from the same loft, and it has to negotiate obstacles like wires and trees.

 

During this learning period the young pigeon will make mistakes and the feathers take a bit of a battering, especially those on the wings. In addition, basket training will also take its toll on feather integrity. Nature has allowed for this early battering. It is thought that these early nest feathers are more flexible and not quite as rigid as the ones that replace them. They are thought to be the pigeons equivalent of the milk teeth of a human baby compared to the stronger secondary teeth of the older juvenile.

 

The purpose of the youngbird moult is to replace these damaged weakened feathers so that the birds can fly more efficiently over greater distances throughout the coming months, and in addition, be well insulated against the cold during the winter. Darkness birds do not achieve this state of feather quality in good time, they can carry flawed and damaged feathering right throughout the full racing program. These feathers might not be fully replaced until next spring.

 

 

 

 

Let's consider the natural or light system.

During the systematic shedding of the feathers, you can imagine that the efficiency in flight is dramatically reduced. In nature, you would have thought that this loss of feathering would be detrimental to the survival of the youngbird, but this reduction in flying efficiency is compensated by an increase in metabolism, prompted by the release of hormones, that bring the youngbirds to a peak of fitness. (In old birds this phenomenon can be seen in a sudden increase in form, once for example, a widowhood cock drops his first flight).

 

Darkness pigeons do not get this hormone-stimulated up regulation in metabolism. Furthermore, youngbirds that are kept in a normal loft environment, lose feathers throughout the moult. Now if they are flagged to fly regularly, trained hard, and are fed well, their muscles and cardiovascular system will compensate, and build up, to cope with the increased workload of the less efficient wings. It's a bit like an aero plane with a hole in it's wing the engines have to work harder to maintain height and speed.

 

The benefits from these bodybuilding exercises are reaped when the peak of the moult is over, or when regrowing feathers are up to, or over, three-quarters grown, just before the next flight is dropped. For suddenly you have a pigeon with muscles and heart built to cope with inadequately feathered wings, now working with an almost full wing. Race results can improve dramatically when this condition occurs, and can explain why youngsters can suddenly pull a spectacular race result out of the bag.

 

Another disadvantage with the darkness system is that it denies the pigeons access to a full days exposure to the sun's rays. Sunlight is a great sexual stimulator. So birds that are denied the full days exposure to the sun, can have a reduced sexual drive. This will have a detrimental effect on the racing performance of some of the older youngbirds, in particular those youngbird cocks that are raced on a semi widowhood system, in which they are allowed to mix with the hens prior to sending. Their sexual drive and homing motivation will not have fully reached it's peak.

 

In addition to all this, when fliers change to the darkness system they frequently just darken their existing loft, with little or no modifications, except for a curtain or shutter. Little regard is paid to the sudden change in airflow, in and out of the loft. Lofts become stuffy, the oxygen levels inside can drop and exhaled carbon dioxide will increase. In addition, the humidity within the loft will go up, and stale air from the droppings will hang around.

 

This damp still air is ideal for the growth of bacteria and fungi and as a consequence airborne pathogens will increase. This environment will compromise the health of the pigeons and they won't perform at their best.

Another drawback to limiting the amount of natural sunlight in the loft, is that the it reduces the amount of ultraviolet rays and these are a great antibacterial. The ultraviolet quickly destroys any bacteria that are lying dormant in the loft or carried in the air. Furthermore, lofts that are kept darkened in the morning, miss the early sun, which usually warms and dries out the loft.

 

Pathogens therefore have an ideal environment in which to breed. It is interesting to speculate that the rise in youngbird sickness appears to correlate with a rise in the use of the darkness system for youngbirds. Another function that the sun provides for youngbirds, is to stimulate the production of vitamins, and growth hormone.

 

In a normal youngbird loft you will see youngbirds taking advantage of the suns rays. They will often be seen sitting in the sun with a wing outstretched to catch the most sun they can. Lofts that are darkened during early morning, or during part of the day, miss a large proportion of this important stimulus.

 

Another disadvantage of darkness lofts is that they are often cooler than open lofts, or lofts with glass or clear perspex windows, that have full access to the sun's rays. They especially miss the warming effect of the sun, first thing in the morning. A cool loft causes the youngbirds to have to burn more fuel to maintain a stable body temperature. Form and condition is harder to maintain, because fats and glucose are used up, to maintain body temperature, which depletes the energy reserves.

 

This fuel is needed for those important training sessions, particularly when training distances are increased. Another important function of the sun to youngbirds, is to help them maintain a fix on the location of their home. Youngbirds watch the sun climb from the East and correlate this arc with an internal biological clock. This helps them maintain a fix on their loft location.

 

Experiments have been done comparing youngbird teams that could view the sun from sunrise up to midday with youngbirds kept in the dark for this period. Youngbird losses were much greater with the pigeons held in the darkened environment. Again it is tempting to correlate increasing youngbird losses with an increase in the use of the darkness system.

 

Another aspect of darkness that can be detrimental to the youngbirds is the way darkness lofts are reopened in the afternoon usually so the youngbirds can exercise. Under normal circumstances changes in lighting experienced by the youngbirds is gradual, for example sunrise and sunset occurs slowly. But many darkness fliers come home from work and suddenly pull back the curtain or open up the shutters, before letting the youngbirds out. Can you imagine the effects on the youngbird's eyes. It's like how we feel when we emerge from a darkened cinema, after having seen a film in the afternoon. For a while we are temporarily blinded. Imagine how the youngbirds feel when they experience this every day for three months.

 

Similarly, fanciers often darken the loft up to and around mid June. They then suddenly open up the loft to the full effect of the sun. The birds are suddenly plunged from experiencing only 7-8 hours of daylight during the darkness regime, to over 14 hours, under the now natural conditions. For about one week their bodies think it's still early spring rather than summer. They end up experiencing the human equivalent of jet-lag. Their circadian cycles require time to catch up. It takes at least a week for their circadian rhythms to reset, however darkness fliers continue to train their youngsters during this resettling period. It would be interesting to know whether youngbird losses sustained by darkness fliers become greater at this critical time, or if the stress produced by this sudden change in the loft environment can lead to a susceptibility to disease.

 

One direct way to assess the effectiveness of the darkness system on the racing performance of youngbirds is to look at the results. If darkness was as effective as it has been claimed you would have thought that the first 100 places, in the longer youngbird races, particularly the Combines, would all be taken up by darkness youngsters. This is far from the reality. Pigeons raised under normal lighting conditions still fare extremely well regarding race positions. In fact top Combine positions are more frequently taken by youngbirds raised under normal light. Only time will tell if this ratio will change with the increased use of darkness, but in absolute terms, the use of darkness certainly does not guarantee success.

So in summary, the darkness system can have it's drawbacks. Increased youngbird losses and increased prevalence of youngbird disease may be the result of this relatively new system, but this remains to be proven.

 

The unnatural environment of the darkened loft can have immediate detrimental effects on the development and health of the youngbirds, and perhaps more worrying, is the potential long term effects on their performance as yearlings and old birds. Controlled experiments to assess the full effects of the darkness system on youngbird performances, or on these pigeons as yearlings, have not been carried out.

 

Fanciers who claim that their pigeons fly well using the darkness system have no way of telling if these pigeons would have flown better, or indeed been less prone to illness, using the system of natural lighting. There are many examples of youngbirds that win races, even the longer youngbird races, without having to resort to using darkness.

[Guest Paulo]

Just two articles I found on the net when I was looking for info on darknessess. Opposing points of view but interesting reading after all every system has its good sides and bad sides

[Guest ukseanuk]

Paulo

 

Very nice bit of right up mate! must av took some righting but very useful.

its nice to see people such as you that is willing to help other in the sport.

[Guest Paulo]

thats what cut and paste is for mate lol. They seem like decent articles always interesting to read new material as even if you don't agree with what the author is thinking gets you thinking and encourages debate.

 

Can't remember the website I got them from otherwise I would credit the author.

[Guest ukseanuk]

So u cheated then lol anyway where about in durham are u with mate im just up rd from you.

[Guest Paulo]

Ushaw Moor mate, going to fly in Bearpark HS in West Durham Amalg

[ACE LOFTS]

get your self a DECADE OF DARKNESS by john halstead dvd very very good its like an idiots guid to darkness.

[Pompey Mick]

That's just up my street Ace, and I would like to thank everybody for their help and advice on this subject, I'm glad I asked the question.

[Guest ukseanuk]

paulo

 

sorry for late reply!

im just starting up with young birds next year again just bought 24ft x 10ft loft

just finish puting 3 compartment inside which are 8x8 with 2ft coridor. then will be putting 8ft x 4ft loft up with avary on for stock.

 

already been and bought 3 pairs of stock, plus others to try and settle.

god knows what club im going to fly in.

 

i was thinking about breading some late bread off these stock

whats your veiw of this dont know if its worth it ?????

 

 

ukseanuk

[Guest Paulo]

wouldn't bother now sean its a bit late I am in the same boat as you next year. My dad used to race but I am starting up for the first time on my own. Where abouts do you live? If you contact the NEHU they should be able to help you find a local club mate.