September 2010 BLOG
The first race is Saturday, September 11. There are 11 females and about 15 males on the young bird race team. The females are spread over 4 sections of the loft. There are 6 nest boxes per section; so there are 24 nest boxes in the 4 loft sections. The females are utilizing less then half of the total nest boxes in the 4 sections. In America, most fanciers would fill every nest box in each of the 4 sections plus an extra 10 pigeons for good luck. In Belgium, most fanciers seldom if ever use every nest box in each section of the racing loft. Often, there are as many unused boxes as used boxes in the racingloft.
You might ask why have the nest boxes if they are not going to be used? The answer to this question lies in a Belgian fancier's passion to only race the very best pigeons is his or her loft. If there are not 24 excellent females to race; then 24 nest boxes can't be filled. In 2010, there are 11 females that were mature enough to couple with older widowhood males, intelligent enough to learn our intense racing system, and strong enough to make it through our rigorous training schedule. Which reminds me, it is not possible to win a prize with each pigeon that is entered in a race if a race team has only experienced a few tosses several weeks before the race season begins. There are many fanciers who train their young birds this way. I wonder why they bother to train at all. Their losses are usually 50 to 75% when they train their young birds this way. Why not just send them to the first race without any road training. At least their birds might be able to follow the other race birds within a few miles of their home. By contrast, our young birds first began their educational experience as potential race birds while in their nest bowl some eight months ago. Even with all of this training, I still wish I had another few weeks to train them when the daily temperature was less than 90 degrees and 70% humidity.
The females were coupled, settled into a nest box, learn to eat grain, grit and pickstone in the nest box, settled into a nest bowl, built a nest of pine needles, laid eggs, incubated the eggs, and then were placed on widowhood since the middle of June. This process has taken several months to complete. It did not happen over night or in a few weeks before the race season began. It always amazes me how fanciers can look at their racing pigeons and see chickens or turkeys. Racing pigeons that consistently perform at the top of the race sheet cannot be fed, watered, housed or trained like chickens or turkeys. They are not fowl and shouldn't be treated like fowl.
Our young birds have been road trained over 50 times from every direction around the loft. They have been group tossed, tossed in small groups, tossed in twos, single tossed and tossed with the birds of other fanciers. Why do we have such a rigorous training schedule? Because I believe that it is cruel and inhumane not to give young birds every single advantage that we can provide in order for them to race in as pristine a mental and physical form and condition as possible. Those fanciers who say they use the races to train their pigeons are just kidding themselves. Races are not training tosses - races are races. Training tosses are training tosses. They are not the same events.
To be continued.........................................................................Thank you................................Dr. John Lamberton