Darkness youngsters

[David Swain]

Anyone else discovered that they fly well as YBs - and then prove to be a huge disappointment as yearlings despite coming through the moult well ?

We tried them in 2005 for the first time and had excellent results, but now we've hardly got any of them left and quite a few went down in the early training tosses from ridiculously short distances considering how much racing they had under their belts last year.

From asking around it seems a few other fanciers have found the same and have now given up on the system because it just isn't natural. Any thoughts ?

[Tony C]

When did you pair them up as old birds David?

[David Swain]

They were mostly paired around mid-February. Do you think they would have been better kept back until later ?

[Tony C]

I think mid-Feb would've been fine.

[Guest]

We pair our old birds 70 days before the first race and have never had any trouble wahtsoever with yearling who have been on the darkness the year before.

[peterpau]

Lots of people do well with darkness yearlings but we didn't

[jimmy white]

as i stated b4 on a post, in the past  raced both darkness ybs and natural ybs ,the darkness ones were raced out to the yb nat. and the natural were well trained and given about 3 races,as yearlings and older birds i found no differance whatsoever, both raced just as well  [off course i had more of the natural ones left,as they only had 3 races]

[peterpau]

Jimmy did you have more or less natural YEARLINGS is more to the point

[jimmy white]

obviously had more natural as they only had 3 races, ,but the darkness ybs scored just as well, i,e,racing as yearlings ,you wouldnt have known what the darkness ones were or what the natural were,there were no marked differances