Young Birds - the Way forward?

[sportagraphs]

Hello all, I am an ex-fancier who still keeps an active interest in all things pigeons (and fortunately still has a dad who races). For the last two years I have been watching with interest at the amount of YB's lost racing etc. What I am about to write is purely my own thoughts on the subject so please go easy on me.

 

Back in the 70's and 80's a fancier would breed up to 20 YB's and race the entire programme with minimal losses, this in a time when there was a lot more fanciers sending each week, therefore more birds going in different directions and more possibilities of clashing. I am not saying that we had them all dropping in within 5 minutes BUT with each race 90% of YB's returned and made there way home on the day of the race or early morning the day after. Nowadays if they are not home 4 hours after the first then thats usually it never seen again. Why did they always make it home?? because they where homing pigeons bred from homing pigeons bred fron homing pigeons etc etc. Now my dear friends this I believe is where the problem lies.

 

Let me explain, from the 80's onwards 2 major changes happened in pigeon racing 1) Pigeon Studs became big news and 2) nearly everyone moved from natural to widowhood. What has this got to do with anything, well as i said earlier they are homing pigeons and where bred from homing pigeons. Any fancier who for years has been racing widowhood cocks only will invariably be breeding their YB's from unraced hens generation after generation. Yes these hens will have been raced as YB's but probably only for 5/6 races then no more. So for each generation the homing instinct is getting weaker and weaker. The studs also came into play and started selling their wares. And again any grand children bought would be from 4 parents that had never even flown around a house, but they where bred from champions so they must be good. These grandchildren in turn would be brought home and put in the fanciers stock loft to breed and again would not fly out. So here we would have YB's who are bred from 2 generations of unflown stock and again the homing instinct is getting weaker. I have seen a certain stud selling Great grand children of champions for upwards of £100 these purchases would again go straight into thes tock loft.

 

Now I here you say but they still breed winners now and again and yes if we sent 40 of the worst racing pigeons to a race there would still be a winner!!!

 

The Solution

 

More and more fanciers are going back to natural so as not to waste there hens but i would say thatb 2/3rds are still on widowhood. Now I believe that if there was a Hens only season running parallel to the YB season liberated at the same time this would serve a number of purposes

 

1) Hens would be raced again therefore the homing instinct would improve

 

2) YB's being raced with older hens would ensure that they learnt how to break from the site and the breaking point at home

 

3) More pigeons on the transporter coming in the same direction would lessen the chance of clashing.

 

4) Two races one clock double the fun

 

What do you think, the way forward or not

 

[jimmy white]

hi sportographs,,,,,very interesting post, and certainly food for thought, but my thoughts on the homing ability of young pigeons go a bit further than that, i agree what your saying that many birds raced nowadays are in fact bred off , exactly what you say, but on the other side of the coin , i know many top class fanciers that have raced and won, with generations of well tried stock, flying natural, but still suffering the same losses as the rest, which leads me to beleive theres something in the air , or atmosphere, which was not there 20 or so years ago, even 50 years ago, we still had the big team men, but didnt suffer the losses which are happening today. you may be quite right what you say, and i agree with you, but my thoughts are that its not just down to the one thing, my thoughts are that it is a combination of many things, however an exellant post and would be ,interested to see what feed back comes from it, anyway thanks for your post and may i say youve explained your veiws very well.

[sportagraphs]

Thanks Jimmy, I agree that there are other valid reasons to the losses these days, but I just hope that the fanciers of today can put contingencies in place so that when the time comes again for me to join the ranks of the worlds greatest working man sport it is still around.

 

I agree also that years ago there was still the big team men (who topped up the prize money for the rest of us) but I rememeber back in 1984 I had 12 YB's and at the end of the season I had 10. in one race I sent 5 and was first 3 in the club 1st 4th 5th Wigan Amal and 2nd 12th 13th South Lancs Combine.

 

The big advantage we have now is the internet whcih can tell us when solar waves are heading towards earth etc etc. I think in time the rings should have GSP sensors in them so that by using the internet we could be able to track our pigeons when they have left the transporter. We are at much more advanatge now then ever before.

 

Good luck racing

[westburylofts]

 

I do think that the mobile phone masks

have a part to play in the losses of birds

50 yrs ago they where not around,

 

have seen birds heading home that have flown around a mobile phone mask

as if they have lost there way all of a sudden.

 

 

Just a thought

 

ray

[Guest]

They blamed radio in the late 20's they blamed TV in the 50"s, now it's the mobile phones, makes me think !!!!!!!!

[swilcox]

Thats a good post and you do raise some interesting points! I would certainly agree that many more pigeons are kept these days without seeing a race basket which in term will result in a deminished  homing ability but i believe you need to add, changing weather patterns, mobile phones and most all hawks to the arguement and to be honest they all add to it being alot harder for our young pigeons these days.

 

On another point i started racing pigeon as a 6 year old in 1979 and the first race was from Worcester when 70% of the youngbirds were lost! In 1980 we flow south and from the 2nd race which was from Portsmouth on a lovely sunny day only 30 pigeons from 550 made it home on the day in the club so to me young bird racing hasnt changed that much and you can sometimes forget what happened in the past.

 

The one big difference is that once birds are lost they rarely work in and thats down to 2 things 1) Traffic as many young pigeons are ran over just look at the sides of the motorway 2) Peregrines and Hawks, there is nothing easier to catch than a tired young bird.

 

Regards

Stuart Wilcox

[Matthew]

i cant believe the amount of dead pigeons on the roads at this time of the year, ive also jus seen many walking on the side of roads in places where you wouldnt expect them to be. Wen i woke up this morning i looked out of the window and saw 3 pigeons sat on the shed roof, i thought yes 3 wrked ther way bak, but wen i got down to the shed only 1 was myn, the others strays.

[jimmy white]

in 1958 i have an old loft record book, started off with 9 ybs, finished up with 7 from the first toss to the last race , sent two to yb national which was cheltenham then [allmost 300miles] and got two back , no where on result, but the two back, if i tried that today , i dont think that would be possible, we still had the big team men sending 60 ,  70, they still didnt get the losses as of recent years, we still had bad races then, but at least they got home,,,,,so it does really makes you wonder,,,,a very interesting topic,,,it would make a great study for some of the top scientists at some university,   just as a post script, i remember the worcestor disaster [about  280 miles] where they were liberated in mist and rain, only a handfull of birds back,[ ididnt get any] but got them all home the next day, like most of the fanciers,that just doesnt seem to happen nowadays,,,if their not home on the day you see very few of them back, could it be the constitution of the birds now, could it be hawks, or what could it be, really find it hard to answer ,,it wasnt just lanarshire that coped it , midlothian ,pentland, fife, e of scot, and other organisations, all liberated at differant times, from 7 am to 11am,allthough lanarkshire seemed to get the biggest bang,,, i really feel for all you lads, who have put so much in to it

[Diamond dave]

Hi Sportagraphs,

Nice post mate. I would also like to add another angle in that a lot of young birds get lost off the loft or from short chucks and I know for a fact (have suffered for the last 4 years) that this is due to them getting carried away with other birds that are training when they are still learning the lay of the land.

 

D.D.

[Guest]

It's not just happening in the UK, it's happening in the States also, just had an e-mail from a futurity race I've entered that they have dropped 123 birds from 251 from 10 miles today,the birds were let out in batches of 25 5 minutes apart.

 

[stevebelbin]

Lets not forget the increase in hawks, pretty much everywhere in the UK, I now have a resident hawk and have lost a more birds of the board this year than in my 6 years of racing. So all the possible causes of losing YBs its not surprising we are losing so many. I think when lots birds are lost on training tosses where the weather seems perfect, it has a lot to do with hawk attacks. I also think we forget that we are breeding a lot earlier and they should really be trained much earlier in life than most are doing, to install the homing instinct. I have two section of YBs, early bred and later bred YBs and in training, I lost 4 YBs out of the Older YB section that should really have been trained a few month B4. Food for thought.

[Guest]

Steve I couldn't agree with you more about training. From what I read here, most leave it far too late to train the Young Birds

[jimmy white]

i agree with the lastwo posts also,,,,,i remember breeding ybs early, putting them on darkness system, waited till they were fully body moulted, put them on normal light on the longest day, THEN trained them,,,,,,they were thick, to say the least,and took a bit of getting going,and lost a few, i would say they should be trained as soon as their separated,ie, basket trained,,often, fed and watered , then at no later than 10 weeks old start training them on the road, even short distances but keep them at it, and if its ybs you want to win with , if you could manage 50 mile every day weather permitting, youll win with ybs,,,,,but a differant kettle of fish with obs. personally i would like my ybs trained raced 120 miles and stopped,[ thats if i had any left at that stage nowadays]

[THE FIFER]

WE BREED FAR TOO MANY BIRDS AND THERE ARE FAR TOO MANY BIRDS IN THE SKY ON RACE DAYS, ALSO BIRDS ARE TRAINED IN FAR TOO BIG TEAMS, MOST JUST FOLLOWING THE BATCH UNTIL THEY ARE ON THEIR OWN TO GET HOME AND THEY GO DOWN, AND THE YOUNG BIRDS OF TODAY WILL GO DOWN TO ANY LOFT IF IT IS HUNGRY OR LOST AND ONCE INANOTHER LOFT WILL STAY THERE AND EVEN RACE TO IT.

[pender]

pigeons wen it hot see the road reflect and it looks like water so they fly down for drink. that is part of the road q answered. as for the rest well vaccination came in in the early 80s hawks came in about that time and still growing mobile phone masts bit later and i now have 6 of them less than 100 yrds from my loft, the bit about the breeding well 20 year a go there were double sometimes trble the people who kept birds, than there is now but the birdage has not dropped that amount to show that. as we are breeding 2 to 3 times the amount of birds now, yes some birdage has dropped but not to that amount. so there is 2 to 3 times amount of rubbish bred. yes birds may be faster now, but to what cause, the homing ability in pigeons has decreased. in smashes it does not count as much, but week to week racing it does. smashes there is as many good as bad lost.