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Jeff Lamberton & Dr. John Lamberton BLOG About the Global Sport of Racing Pigeons
"Competing At The Top
Of The Race Sheet Is Simply A Matter Of Faith . . .
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| WHY BLOG? | ARCHIVED BLOGS | VLOGS | HOME | |
FEBRUARY 2011
For those fanciers who coupled their breeders around December 1st of last year, the first round of young birds are now ready to wean. Tulsa Oklahoma USA experienced a record snowfall several days ago. The lofts are now covered with deep drifts of snow. The landing area and trapping portal have about three feet of snow piled over them. That area of the loft must be thoroughly cleaned before the youngsters can be placed in a "settling cage" on the landing board so that they can learn both the outside structure of the loft and how to enter the loft through the entry portal or "trap" as we say in the USA. Although the temperature is bitterly cold now (minus 7 degrees F this morning) and forecasted to be very cold over the next week or ten days, the first round of youngsters still must receive the proper training each day after weaning. A significant problem with breeding youngsters in the winter months is inclement weather – which can be a reason for fanciers to postpone or put off the proper training of the youngsters until the weather is less cruel and more temperate. Regardless of the weather and environmental conditions, however, the first round of young birds must be taught the expectations of the game on a rigid daily schedule.
Our youngsters were "creep" fed in their breeding box prior to weaning; so they know how to eat on their own after weaning. Weaning is not as stressful if the youngsters already know how to eat and drink prior to weaning. (Creep feeding is a supplemental feeding process that is used with young calves and foals on the ranch.) When the young birds are weaned, they are placed in a young bird loft that is thoroughly cleaned. They are never overcrowded. They are fed a high quality fresh grain mixture once or twice per day. They have access to fresh clean water. Youngsters also have access to a high quality brand of pickstone; especially when they are forced to stay inside the loft because of inclement weather. They are wormed when they are first placed in the young bird loft at weaning. They receive vitamins and minerals on the grain on a regular basis; several times a week. Pigeon Vitality is a fascinating Norwegian company that has developed a new product over the past year in addition to their other fine products. OXY-B which a very good supplement for all of the pigeons in the loft; but especially for young birds at weaning. It is an excellent product. We have used these products at our lofts in Belgium and the US. Several fanciers from all over the world have emailed because their pigeons are not holding and/or gaining proper weight. We recommended the Pigeon Vitality products to them. A fancier from Malta recently wrote,
"hi dr john. i really thank you about the pigeon vitality products because i try the improver and already i see more improvement in the racers. i check them in a microscope and i only see a few canker in them. thank you."
The youngsters are vaccinated for PMV (Paramyxovirus) and Paratyphoid at about 8 to 10 weeks of age which can be repeated before the young bird race series begins in August or September in the USA. This vaccination schedule tends to allow the maximum development of the youngsters’ immune systems. This regiment at weaning can correspond with vaccinating the old birds a month or so prior to the training schedule before the old bird race series begins in early April in Oklahoma USA.
With
all of these important feeding and vaccinating procedures at the time of
weaning, no procedure is more important than "gentling" and "calming" the
youngsters and teaching them to respond and quickly move towards you and
come to you when they are signaled or asked to do so. We use a signal
which was learned in the racing loft of Antoine Jacops. We use the
word "come" which we repeat over and over…..come…..come…..come…..come.
Obviously the usage of the English word "come" can be substituted for
similar words in other languages. Antoine always stressed that the
learning process - particularly during the first weeks of weaning - must be
extremely strict and absolute. That is, only those youngsters that
respond relatively quickly to our signal receive food. After missing a meal,
most youngsters will race towards us ready to eat and respond when we enter
their loft. This training process is complicated, however, when
"feeders" or "grain boxes or hoppers" are used to administer the grain.
When a box feeder is used to administer the daily ration of grain,
youngsters learn to focus on the grain in the feeder rather than the grain
in your hands. We thoroughly scrape our floors and feed our young
birds by hand as we sit with them on the floor. We sprinkle grain on our
clothes and on the floor around us so that the youngsters are required to
climb on us as well as climb around us to find their grains. (The picture to
the right is a picture of Jeff with his yearlings.) We want our
youngsters to touch us frequently during feeding. This is one way that young
birds can be quickly and easily gentled and calmed and lose their fear of
us. When we enter the loft, the young birds raise their wings, squeak,
and run towards us as if we were their parents. Feeding time is a
"special" time for us. It represents a time when we can relax in the
loft and thoroughly enjoy our new youngsters. During this time, we
build deep bonds of trust with most of the young birds. It is during
this time when we see which young birds respond quickly to our training
system and which ones don't. We take notes on the youngsters' behavior
and record our observations.
Many of our future
champions will reveal themselves during the first several weeks of weaning
as we build bonds of trust and affection with them during feeding time.
WEANING SQUEAKERS
Probably the most important period of a young racing pigeon's life is during the 5th and 6th weeks of age. These two weeks can be characterized as a period of intense bonding and learning that is similar to the "imprinting" phase of development that is most often associated with baby ducks. The behaviors of young birds that become most prevalent and repeated during this time period become somewhat fixed and dominate during later life. Young pigeons develop a special affinity and preference for their actions and reactions to everything that they experience during the 5th and 6th weeks of age. During these weeks, young birds learn very quickly. They "soak up" everything in their environment like a sponge and tend to set the behaviors that they develop during this period as long term guides and parameters. In other words, especially during these two weeks of time, young birds develop intense preferences that stay with them for life. These preferences and behaviors can be both good and bad for long-term success in the racing pigeon game. If young birds learn behaviors and develop preferences that support the parameters of the game, then these behaviors and preferences are positive. If young birds learn behaviors and develop preferences that do not support or actually inhibit the parameters of the game, then these behaviors and preferences are negative. It takes far longer and is much more difficult to re-teach a bad behavior than it takes to teach the same behavior correctly in the first place.
Young birds are constantly learning from the day they are hatched. Before they open their eyes, they experience and remember sounds, sensations and smells. They develop biorhythms based upon the habits of their parents. If their parents feed them early or late in the day or at both times, the biorhythms of young birds are set in motion and become dominant. (The time of the day that parents feed their young birds is significantly determined by when they are fed themselves by their loft manager.) After the eyes of young birds are open and they can stand and move around, young birds expand their world from the nest bowl to the nest box. When young birds are fed in the nest box, they will quickly exit the nest bowl and begin to eat at the time of feeding. At the time of weaning, young birds will leave the nest box for the loft floor. When they are weaned and placed in a young bird loft, their environment is expanded again. Each time young birds develop more independence, their world is redeveloped and expanded. It is extremely helpful if youngsters are moved from lofts that look exactly like the one they just left. If breeding, young bird and old bird lofts are built similarly, the process of adapting to a new environment is much less than if the lofts are significantly different in shape, size and structure.
Squabs tend to reflect or imitate the behaviors of their parents. Calm parents often mean calm young birds. Tame parents often mean tame young birds. Inquisitive parents often mean inquisitive young birds. Intelligent parents often mean intelligent young birds. Young birds can be understood in terms of tendencies. Young birds tend to imitate and reflect the characteristics and habits of their parents; but not always. In our breeding loft, a “hit” pair of breeders is a pair of pigeons that “tend” to breed youngsters that favor the parents. “Tendency” may mean 50% of the time. It may mean 60% of the time. It may mean 90% of the time. The greater the tendency, the more consistent the breeding results of the parents. Poor parents tend to breed poor youngsters. Good parents tend to breed good youngsters. Super parents tend to breed super youngsters; but not always. Tendency can be expressed in terms of a percentage. The higher the percentage, the greater the tendency to produce youngsters like themselves. We attempt to fill our breeding loft with excellent parents whose tendency to breed excellent youngsters is more than 60% to 75% of the time. Sometimes breeders will breed one good pigeon out of every ten or more youngsters that they raise. Consequently, these breeders need to breed a lot of youngsters to find one good pigeon. Other breeders will breed good youngsters 50% of the time. It is easier and more cost efficient to breed from breeders whose tendency to breed good youngsters is 50% or higher.
It
is much easier to teach squeakers a few basic aspects of the training
program while they are still in the nest box.
Squeakers can be hand fed in the nest box.
They can be handled in the nest box.
They can become accustomed to the size of the nest boxes that are
also used for racing old birds and for breeders within the first 30 days of
their lives while still in their nest box.
They can learn to “come” to you when signaled while they are still in
the nest box. For racing pigeons
and for fanciers, a critical part of the
Journey to the Top
of the race sheet
(our new
management and training program featured on the front page of the website)
begins with squeakers in a nest bowl in a nest box that mirrors the nest
boxes from which they will race as an old bird.
Our young bird team races from a smaller version of the breeding
boxes and the nest boxes for the old birds.
Our youngsters experience very little stress when they are weaned
because they already know how to eat and to positively respond to our signal
to come when they are called.
DE BELGISCHE REISDUIF
We received the current email newsletter from DE BELGISCHE REISDUIF. We use GOOGLE TRANSLATOR to translate the newsletter and other documents that are not written in English. If you haven't used this internet service before, it is very easy and opens a world of information written in languages other than English. To use the service, simply copy and paste items in the text box provided on the page and then click Translate. GOOGLE will automatically detect the language of origin and translate the text or the webpage into English. Or, you can select languages from the drop down menus. GOOGLE TRANSLATOR will translate a word or a phrase or an entire document or webpage if you type in or copy and paste a URL in the text box. We are currently adding a GOOGLE translating application to our web pages.
There was an interesting article in the newsletter on the fantastic accomplishments of the partnership of Oliviers-Devos (READ ARTICLE). Rudi Oliviers and Willy Devos (HISTORY OF PARTNERSHIP) specialize in the long distance races and are two of the finest long distance specialists in Belgium. They are friends of ours and we have purchased many of their pigeons over the past five years to breed and race in Belgium and to breed in the USA. Currently, we have two daughters of their foundation male, the 603 STEKETEE, and one grandson, RUDI, breeding in the USA (CLICK HERE to view our Oliviers-Devos pigeons in the USA). Several years ago, we gave Oliviers-Devos partnership a super from our excellent Roger Florizoone pigeons in Belgium to add to their breeding loft.
TRAINING EARLY YOUNGSTERS
The past several weeks, we have been weaning our first round of young birds and teaching them the first few principles of our training system. Since we couple our breeders on December 1st of every year and breed an early winter round of youngsters, the first two weeks of February are always extremely important. It is during this time of the year that we begin to train the first round of youngsters - our future champions. Jeff and I divided about ninety youngsters from the first round for our young bird race teams. We graded the first round and removed a few youngsters that had obvious physical weaknesses. Consequently, we each have about forty-five youngsters that we are training in our respective lofts. Since Jeff's loft is smaller than mine, he cannot handle any more youngsters. However, I will add a number of youngsters from the second round. While his loft can only accommodate about fifty young birds, my loft can handle well over one hundred youngsters. The very first task in weaning youngsters is to make sure that they wean well and without incident. As we have written in the past, we maximize this transitional problem by feeding our youngsters in the nest with their parents. We also place them on the floor of the breeding lofts for several days so that they will learn to drink from a two-liter fountain. Consequently, when they are weaned, they already know how to eat and drink.
The second most important task is to teach them to come quickly when called or signaled. We always feed the young birds on the floor after it has been thoroughly scraped and cleaned. When youngsters are first weaned, they are usually fed about all they can eat. However, after several days in the young bird loft, we begin to cut back on the feed and require the young birds to run to us when we call and then eat around our bodies as we sit on the floor and crawl on our feet, legs, and stomach to get grains that we have placed there. It helps to have them just a little hungry in order for them to overcome their natural hesitancy. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of working intensely with the youngsters when they are five and six weeks of age. A few weeks of training will lead to a lifetime of reward.
The third most important training task is to teach the young birds the outside of the loft, i.e., the landing board and trapping area. In order to accomplish this task, a "settling" cage is used. We use a shipping crate (a crate that is used to ship the youngsters to races) as s settling cage. Youngsters fly up to a board in the internal "foyer" or entry room of the racing loft in order to go out into a shipping crate on the landing area. Youngsters can spend time as much time as they wish in the settling crate to enjoy the sunshine outside and they can re-enter the loft whenever they desire. By using a shipping crate as a settling cage, we can accomplish two tasks at the same time. First, the youngsters will learn the outside of the loft and how to get into the loft from the outside. Second, the youngsters become familiar with a shipping crate and can learn to be comfortable in it and will even learn to eat and drink out of it. We do not have the luxury of allowing youngsters that cannot fly well to discover the landing area outside of the loft strictly by themselves without a settling cage over a period of days or weeks because of the many Coopers Hawks that try to raid our lofts every single day. When we eventually let our youngsters outside of the loft without a settling cage, I am forced to stand outside of the loft with a twelve-gauge shotgun the entire time the youngsters are outside in order to scare away the hawks that will either kill the youngsters or permanently scare them away from the loft. Occasionally, we will lose a significant number of youngsters if the hawks scare them before they are strong enough to fly away from the hawks and then return - sometimes after flying for hours many miles away. Fortunately, we live on a Ranch where I can fire a shotgun without alerting the neighbors and the police. Because of the hawks, it is absolutely critical that youngsters learn to re-enter the loft when we call so that we can accomplish other tasks around the loft other than protecting them from danger when they are outside. When the youngsters have been out for about a month, they are much more able to protect themselves. After the youngsters are about two months old, although we are always vigilant when they are outside of the loft, we do not need to constantly "stand guard" over the youngsters the way we do when they are very young. Even so, the shotgun is never far away. Having said this, we seldom actually try to kill a predator unless they have perfected their trade by killing a number of our youngsters. By scaring the hawks away and by rotating the times we let out the young birds to exercise, we stay ahead of most of the hawks. But there is always the exceptional one that makes raising and racing pigeons very difficult. We are conservationists and preservationists and do not hunt on the Ranch; nor do we allow others to do so. We try to encourage the natural world to grow and develop and remain on the Ranch. That is one the of joys and privileges of living in a rural area. Losing a few pigeons to hawks is part of the price that we pay in order to enjoy the Sport on the Ranch.
If you have bred early youngsters, now is the time to develop a lifelong relationship with them. Next month will be too late. Next month they will begin to become much more mature and they will have already formed the critical impressions that will define the rest of their lives. Now is the time to find your future champions. As you feed and train your youngsters, take notes on which ones respond the fastest to your commands and tasks and which ones learn and remember the best. Assuming your youngsters meet a minimum standard of physical form, that is, they are all very well-built with strong backs, tight vents, long thin flights, wide-chests, etc., the smartest of these pigeons will usually be your future champions.