Young Bird racing begins on 9.08.07 for the Northeast Oklahoma Racing Pigeon Federation. Over the next several months, I will discuss the training and racing methods I use to race young birds 2007. These methods have been developed from over twenty years of traveling to Belgium, Holland, and Germany to learn from some of the best fanciers in history including: Mike Ganus, Antoine Jacops, Jef Cuypers, the Janssen Brothers, Raf Herbots, Joseph Van Limpt "De Klak," Karel Meulemans, Jos Thone, Michel Van Lint, Jos Deno, Piet Manders, Leo Broeckx, Jef and Luc Houben, and Ad Schaerlaeckens, to name only a few. Like I have done this past twenty-five years, each of you will need to learn from those fanciers whom you meet; and then develop and modify your own system of racing pigeons based upon your own unique individual circumstances. What works for one fancier may not be as effective for another fancier. I hope you enjoy the following BLOG.

The regiment for 2007 young bird racing began in October, 2006. Yes, you read it correctly! 2006! The regiment begins with a thorough medication of the breeders for the month of October. A basic medication regiment includes treatment for respiratory, canker, coccidiosis, and worms. There are any number of excellent products to effectively medicate the birds. During the October regiment, I prefer not to use a 4-in-one or five-in-one combination of medications. While it is probably okay to do any other time of the year, the annual October medication regiment involves a more individualized treatment for each of the four basic treatment targets previously mentioned that usually takes 5 to 7 days per treatment. I use PEGO products for Coccidiosis and Canker. The PEGOSAN individual tablets are quick and efficient for individual treatments or the powder for flock treatments. FLAGYL is also very effective for Canker. I use a combination of respiratory products like Tylan or Tylosin and Suanovil for respiratory. I use IVERMECTIN drops for worms. A treatment of BAYTRIL is usually administered to the birds to clear up any lingering gut infections. Why October? The birds are thoroughly medicated in October so that they will be fully recovered from the impact of the treatment regiment and are completely ready to couple the last week in November to breed youngsters that will hatch the first week in January. There are products that can be given to the breeders to help them recover from a medication regiment including vitamins and products that replace gut bacteria. If these products go beyond the budget or involve too much detail; Father Time is another remedy that is usually very effective because a healthy pigeon's internal system will naturally adjust on its own from the stress of medication.

It is necessary for breeders to go through a complete healthy moult in order to breed and raise high quality, robust, and healthy youngsters. A good moult involves frequent bathing (once or twice a week) with bath salts and/or medicated shampoo. I like to use Adam's Flea and Tick Shampoo. Adam's is mild enough to not harm the feathers; but strong enough to get rid of external parasites. Another bathing method is the use of European bath salts from any pigeon supplier combined with 3 cc's per gallon of Ivermectin Drench. This method takes care of external parasites in addition to worming the birds if they drink the bath water. There are other bathing methods that are effective including simply using clean water.

Early youngsters hatched the first week in January are preferable for young bird racing because the young racers will be motivated due to their sexuality beyond the limits of feed and perch. Passion is the best motivator in the world for most types of species of animals including humans. KEY POINT: Passion is the best motivator in highly competitive pigeon racing. Have you ever thought that pigeons could be passionate? Well, they can. Passion often involves sexuality. Sexuality and an interest in coupling develops in a pigeon generally starting at four to six months of age. However, there are young birds that are not sexually active or display a sincere interest in coupling for over a year. While there is nothing wrong with these birds, they have no place at LAMBERTON CUYPERS due to the tenets of our racing system. Sexually active or early maturing young birds can be effectively motivated through the passion they develop for their loft, their nest box, their nest bowl, their mate, and their fancier.

The current young bird team consists of about 10 females and 12 males. A race team has been selected from the young birds bred in early spring. Consequently, all of the young birds that are raised are not raced. A team is selected over the summer from the total pool of early youngsters based upon pedigree, physical qualities, training toss results, experience, and intuition that comes from years of trial and error. Each young bird is given a nest box and the loft only holds so many boxes. Therefore, a team is selected based upon the total number of nest boxes available for racing. Most of the race team are sexually active and currently mated; except for several third-rounders that are still too immature to initiate or respond to a mate. Coupling the young bird race team started in early June. Young females were coupled with old males and young males to old females. All animals, including people, learn from observance or copying. Animals watch the behaviors of peers and "model" those behaviors that meet their needs. Young males who fly wildly inside the loft when a fancier enters the loft will sit quietly in their boxes with 24 hours of successfully coupling them with older males who understand the race system and the role of the nest box. The same is true for young females. If two young birds are coupled together, they will act like young birds - modeling each others immature behavior. If a young bird is coupled with an old bird previously trained in the race system and who understands the rules of the race system, the young bird will quickly begin to model the behavior of the older mate. KEY POINT: Modeling is the fastest method of training young birds.

In summary, there are about 20 to 24 young birds selected from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rounds on the race team. Each young bird has a nest box and a mate. Not every nest box is used. The loft is not filled with a bird in every corner, on every perch, or in every nest box. Actually, from 1/2 of the nest boxes are used for young bird racing. Most fanciers raise far more young birds than loft space permits. KEY POINT: OVERCROWDING is probably the number one problem in young bird racing. Overcrowding creates a very stressful environment that contributes to all types of illness and management problems in young birds. Oftentimes, a fancier will begin to experience better race results after losing a significant number of young racers. The remaining birds become more healthy and robust; thereby racing much better. In this situation, it is easy to assume that the rigors of the race schedule weed out the inferior racers and allow the better racers to prove themselves. While this reasoning may have some merit, the reduction of overcrowding through young bird losses may also account for an improvement in race results later in a race season.

Today is the first day of Dove Season. The young birds were not trained on the road; but loft flown. It is also the first cool day of the fall in Oklahoma. The young bird team was released from the loft at dawn and locked out of their nest boxes for several hours. In my loft, all of the pigeons, old and young birds alike, trap into a 6 foot by 6 foot hallway in the loft. Once in the hallway, the birds are directed left, right, or straight ahead. With this loft system, race birds will always use the same trap during their lifetime for entering the loft. when the young birds trap into the hallway, all interior doors are closed and the only option for the young birds is to browse in the hallway or fly out of the loft again. The hallway has a Belgian two-liter plastic water container in it. The young birds are able to trap into the hallway and drink on demand. By locking them out for several hours, young birds learn to freely fly for one to two hours twice a day. The young bird team actually flew about 2 1/2 hours this morning and about 1 1/2 hours this evening.

The first race is next Saturday. The race regiment has been practiced for several weeks now. That is, for about 3 weeks, the same daily routine for food, water, exercise, and general loft management has been followed. Since Saturday is race day, the young birds received electrolytes in their water although they only exercised around the loft. While there are excellent Belgian electrolyte products available including Traben Zucker from PEGO, PEDIALYTE (a generic brand is the most affordable and just as effective. Check your local Wal-Mart), an American product primarily for infants was in the young birds water today. PEDIALYTE is very salty to taste. Young birds will need to learn to drink it by gradually introducing increasing concentrations of PEDIALYTE in the water. Mixtures of 25% PEDIALYTE 75% water to 50% PEDIALYTE 50% water are administered depending upon the condition of the young birds upon arrival after a race. Since the young birds were only loft flown today, they were administered a mixture of 25% PEDIALYTE and 75% water. The tougher the race, the higher the concentration of PEDIALYTE. On very hard races, pure PEDIALYTE is administered. PEDIALYTE is approved for human use; so it is a high quality product that replaces the Potassium, Sodium and Magnesium in the racers' system and allows young birds to recover quickly in only a few hours after racing.

Tonight, the young birds will receive a depurative mixture of many small seeds, safflower, and barley. The feed is proportioned 1/3 small seed mixture, 1/3 safflower, 1/3 barley. Young birds can eat all they wish until about 1/2 of the birds go to drink. then, feeding stops. There are solid floors in the race loft. Young birds are fed in the entry hallway that was mentioned earlier. The floor is carefully but quickly scraped and swept. Young birds are fed on the floor one hand full of feed at a time. With this method of feeding, racers become very tame. Also, you can observe even the smallest idiosyncrasy of each bird twice a day. KEY POINT: It is difficult to effectively race wild young birds that are unfamiliar to you.

Yesterday, Sunday, the birds received open loft twice a day. They are in excellent health so they flew a total of 2 - 3 hours during the two exercise periods. They were fed a "depurative" mixture of small seeds: safflower, barley, milo, millet, kafir corn, hemp, flax, rape, wheat, etc. - no peas - no corn. Since I have been trained by Belgian Masters, I think in Flemish terms. The Flemish and Dutch used to measure medications, additives and supplements in terms of a large spoon they call a soupspoon. Since few people had traditional measuring devices in their kitcfemales, they simply used a big spoon. If you read the label of Belgian or Dutch products from Herbots, Van Hee, Natural, etc., you will often see that the directions read to administer one or two soupspoons per liter or kilo of food or water. Don't let this confuse you. Simply use some type of measuring device that holds about the same volume of a soupspoon. I, myself, have collected about a dozen soupspoons from flea markets, antique shops, estate sales, etc. so that I have an ample supply of soupspoons to administer supplements. Note: a soupspoon is larger than a tablespoon.

Sunday, I administered a light medication regiment for canker and coccidiosis by giving each bird a PEGOSAN tablet. I also gave one or two drops of Ivermectin to each racers down the throat for worms. Monday, I gave one soupspoon of RED CELL, a horse feed supplement, to a pound or kilo of food. To use, thoroughly mix the red cell into the feed. If you are feeding it to the birds for the first time, the birds may take an adjustment period to eat it. That is because the RED CELL makes the grains "sticky" until it dries. If your birds won't eat the feed right away, simply let it dry for an hour or so. then, the birds should eat normally. Since my birds are used to sticky food, they have no problem eating their food as I give it to them. The supplement has plenty of excellent vitamins and minerals in it to help the young birds recover from the light medication regiment. (click on the following RED CELL link - then Label Information - to read the ingredients of RED CELL ) There are a number of supplement systems that are good. Mike Ganus has a very good one with VITA KING PRODUCTS. The HERBOTS also have a good system. On Monday's, the HERBOTS recommend using ZELL OXYGEN, a liquid supplement, and OPTIMIX, a powdered additive containing vitamins, amino acids, and vegetable extracts, on the feed. I rotate between using RED CELL and ZELL OXYGEN on the feed. These liquid supplements help the OPTIMIX or other powered supplements stick to the grains in order for young birds to ingest the products.

There are solid wood floors in our racing lofts. We scrape the floor twice a day. This routine is followed every day not only to keep the loft clean; but also because we believe that the droppings of our racing pigeons are critically important to an effective race management program. Droppings are an external window into internal digestive system of racing pigeons. The color and consistency of droppings can give vital information about the internal health of our pigeons. If you are not visually analyzing the droppings of your pigeons on a daily basis, you are ignoring volumes of critical data or information about your race teams collectively as well as each young bird individually. Since each young bird occupies their own nest box, we are able to examine the droppings of each young bird twice a day: once in the early morning and again during the evening feeding. If your work schedule doesn't permit you to precisely follow this cleaning routine, then simply adjust the routine to your schedule. For birds that are healthy and fit, droppings should be round and firm with a brownish or dark brownish coloring. When young birds are in "form" (which is different from simple good health), droppings should be perfectly round, dark or brown, with white on the top. Soon after sunrise, pigeons will begin to move around their box and will probably step on their droppings which changes their consistency and form. Because we want to examine droppings as naturally excreted or as uninterrupted as possible, we release the young birds for their morning exercise flight at dawn in order to keep the droppings as pristine as possible for examination. We make daily notes on what we think is the health of the race teams only noting unhealthy changes in droppings. In other words, if the droppings look healthy, we make a check mark under a column marked "healthy." If the droppings do not look healthy, we may make more extended notes about the droppings. KEY POINT: Droppings should be compared on a daily basis per bird to develop a history of droppings over time. Also, if a bird is medicated individually, we want to be able to examine the droppings in 24 hours to see if there is a positive or beneficial difference in color and consistency due to the medication.

Monday, young birds receive a racing mixture made up of 1/3 barley - 1/3 safflower - 1/3 mixed grains, i.e., milo, millet, kafir corn, hemp, flax, rape, sunflower seeds, oat groats, wheat, etc. The mixed grains are primarily small seeds. Depending upon the commercial mix, there are not many peas in the mixture, if any at all. Yellow corn (some fanciers like popcorn) can be added later in the week for the longer 200 and 300 mile races. After scraping the floor, young birds are fed on the floor one handful of grain at a time. If you wish, sit down on the floor or sit on a five-gallon bucket near the birds. Gently sprinkle the grains over their backs. Ask them to eat from your hand. If you're sitting, sprinkle grains on your pants and inside or slightly underneath your legs. If you do this consistently, in just a few days, the young racers will tame and eat freely from your hand as well as walk over your lap and legs. Observe how each bird eats. Which ones eat the most? Do some seem ravished no matter how much they eat? Are there bullies? Which ones are afraid and timid? Are there those who refuse to eat? Which grains do they eat? All of the answers to these questions give you information about your race team and signals which ones will be your future champions and which ones won't be around much longer.

On Monday, young birds receive tea in their drink water via the HERBOTS BRONCHOFIT. There any number of great tea products available. Since my partner in Belgium uses the HERBOT products, I have tended in the last few years to also use their products. For twenty years before that, however, I used VITA KING PRODUCTS exclusively. I personally believe both of these systems are good ones. If you have a tea you like for the birds, keep using it if it works. I also add a liquid supplement to the water called BIO DUIF. It is also a HERBOTS product. In summary on Mondays, young birds receive RED CELL or ZELL OXYGEN mixed with OPTIMIX on the feed and BRONCHOFIT & BIO DUIF in the water. By putting the vitamins on the feed, I can add other products to the water other than liquid vitamins. Young racers should also have fresh grit and a pickstone product available free choice or at all times. We'll discuss pick stones in tomorrow's BLOG.

It is beneficial for all racing pigeons, especially young birds, to have fresh pickstone available to them free choice. Pickstone is generally available from the pigeon supply dealers and there are any number of good products. Pickstones contain ingredients that reduce young birds desire to go to the fields and helps their digestive system function effectively.

Tuesday, the birds were loft flown twice for two hours each time. The young birds now know to fly for about an hour before they return to the loft. Once they return, some continue to fly while others rest for short intervals before joining their team in the air again. The older young males will clap their wings and display their pleasure as they glide around the loft. At feeding, young birds received the same type of feed as on Monday except different supplements were mixed in it. Tuesday, HERBOTS Brewers Yeast - Wheat Germ Flakes and 4 Oils are added to the feed at one soupspoon per kilo or pound. The 4 Oils is a mixture of garlic oil, safflower oil, wheat-germ oil, and cod liver oil and is the medium that adheres the Brewers Yeast to the grains. A HERBOTS additive, VITA DUIF, an excellent vitamin and herbal supplement, is added to the water.

It has been raining in Tulsa. If it's raining on Wednesday, the birds will be loft flown between the showers. Usually the young birds get a toss of 40 to 60 miles in the morning on Wednesday. However, that toss may not be possible if it rains. If the young birds are not tossed on Wednesday, they may get two shorter tosses on Thursday - one in the morning and one in the evening. Each toss will be about 25 miles in opposite directions.

I train the young birds in all directions: north, south, east, and west. I use many, many short tosses like wind sprints. During races, young birds often come home from all directions depending upon the location of race stations, wind, weather, number of birds, and location of race competitors. It has been my experience that racers sometimes do not home directly in a straight line from the race station; but often loop in from perpendicular directions to the loft and from the opposite direction depending upon the wind. Therefore, I like to train the birds around the loft in all directions. In addition, taking them different directions forces them to think about orientation rather than simply react to the same routine over and over. A thinking pigeon is faster than a reacting pigeon. In order to accomplish these tosses, the pigeons need to be smart. Those pigeons that are not smart enough to quickly orient to changing directions are eliminated from the team. Elimination comes from losses in training or by my removing them from the team due to multiple and consistent late arrivals. The most important KEY POINT to remember is that you will breed what you keep. If you keep slow orienting pigeons just because they come home, you will breed the same. Slow orienting pigeons will seldom, if ever, breed quick orienting pigeons. Quick orienting pigeons will breed both quick reacting and slower reacting pigeons. KEY POINT: Selection is the most important habit that you practice in your breeding program. I constantly am evaluating and eliminating young birds until I reach the maximum number of young birds for the race team. That number is about 24 young birds. If you aren't breeding quick orienting pigeons from other quick orienting pigeons, your loft will soon begin to suffer on the race sheet or never move up the race sheet from the start. I will talk more about training, selection, and breeding later.

Wednesday, the young birds will get the same type of food ration that they have been getting all week with the following supplements added: HERBOTS Zell Oxygen and Optimix on the food and Aminovit or Vita Duif in the water. If you don't have any of the products, use Red Cell on the feed and Vitamins in the water.

As I said earlier, I hand feed the young birds twice a day. I feed the young birds until about 1/2 of the birds go to drink. then I stop feeding and let the birds clean-up the remaining food on the floor. The next morning, I feed 1/3 of the amount of food that was fed the night before. That is, if the young birds ate 3 pounds of feed in the evening feeding, I feed one pound of feed the next morning. If you do this, you will find that the young birds will eat more as they week goes by and they exercise more. On Thursday night, the young birds are fed all they can eat - completely. then on Friday, I feed the young birds an amount consistent with the distance they will race on Saturday and the weather they will navigate. Saturday will be about 130 miles or 200 kilometers and the forecast calls for 50 to 60% rain. Although the distance is short, the weather requires that I feed heavily on Friday at the regular times. Never send a young bird to a race without adequate nutrition to successfully and quickly navigate the race course.

I race young birds on Widowhood. Young males are mated to Old females and Young females are mated to Old males. I will go into detail about this method at a later writing. So for now, simply let me state that the young birds will be separated from their mates on Wednesday night after feeding. Young birds cannot be separated from their mates as long as old birds. Their attention spans, patience and maturity sometimes interfere with the widowhood system. The easy way to fix the problem is to show mates twice a week every 3 days rather than once a week like old birds. KEY POINT: Race Birds - both Young and Old - race home if motivated and fly home if not properly motivated. KEY POINT: Health aside, Motivation is the most critical factor in getting young birds to race home. Using sex: mates, nests, eggs, youngsters, to motivate pigeons is far more effective than using food and a perch.

I'll let you know tomorrow how the birds exercised due to the rain and whether or not I will toss them on Thursday.

It has been drizzling off and on this morning. In spite of the weather, the birds have open loft. The loft was opened at 7 am. Depending upon the young birds exercise, I may leave the loft open much of the day. It is generally not advisable to let the young racers out in the rain. There is too much of a risk for some type of low-grade respiratory problem to begin. To combat this possibility, a respiratory medication, Tylan, is in the water. Tomorrow, the racers will receive vitamins to offset the respiratory medication. The high temperature is forecasted in the mid 80s for Tulsa. If the rain lets up later this afternoon, the birds still might get a 25 mile toss. I earlier wrote that I like to give the birds multiple short tosses from all directions. I also like to single toss the birds. Single tossing forces the birds to orient on their own and return home by themselves. Occasionally, they will find another member of the team and return in twos or threes. But if they are single tossed far enough apart, they will generally arrive home alone. So let me add another KEY POINT: If you want to empower your birds with the best training possible, give them multiple tosses from all directions by single tossing as well as group tossing your birds. I often train with Tony Smith. Tony and his grandson, Josh, are partners in TNT Titans Loft. Tony and I will find a very comfortable place to safely toss our birds. We toss one of his and one of mine together. The birds clear quickly together; but will break from each other as they begin to arrive home. KEY POINT: The more the race team toss is tossed one at a time with another fancier's race team, the more each racer learns to break from its toss partner. We have found a super hamburger joint in Beggs, Oklahoma, about 25 miles south on the line of flight from my loft - SHADE TREE BURGERS. It doesn't get any better than enjoying these burgers. Tony's loft is about 7 miles northwest of mine. We toss pigeons and dine on some of the best "old fashion" hamburgers that can be cooked.

In 1988, Bob Kinney who used to publish the THOROUBRED Racing Pigeon Magazine came to Tulsa seeking an interview on young bird training. He had heard that the birds were trained from any and all directions within about a 50 mile radius from Tulsa. when he asked why they were trained in this manner, I told him that I love to eat! There are many wonderful restaurants in small town all over Northeast Oklahoma. I frequently travel to these restaurants to eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner and I take the birds. By coincidence, the birds learn to orient quickly from all directions and are not confused when mother nature or some other factor forces them off course during a race. KEY POINT: Make pigeon racing fun! Enjoy the birds and enjoy yourself! Training can be fun and rewarding for both fancier and race bird. Don't be afraid to think outside the box and try something new or different! My only suggestion here is to innovate during the off-season and not during the race season. It takes birds a measure of time to learn. It is probably not a good idea to teach them during the races. Teach them before the races begin.

Another suggestion is when you single toss, record the time you released each bird as well as each bird's ring number. If you use an electronic timer, log the arrival time of each bird. Record the actual number of minutes it took for each racer to arrive home. After several tosses, you will have a clear record of which birds are orienting and arriving home the quickest. You will also document which birds are learning and reducing their flight time to the loft.

In Belgium, most fanciers race a small team of young birds. We are racing about 25 youngsters this year. There are about 25 young birds on the race team in Tulsa also. It is much more difficult and time consuming to follow many of the management methods I suggest if you have a large team of birds. KEY POINT: The larger your young bird team, the less you will be able to teach each bird the art of pigeon racing; whether its widowhood, the natural system, perch flying, etc. You have probably heard of many cases where a fancier - who had his young bird team trained out to 100 miles - lost a large percentage of the race team during the first two young bird races. There are many reasons for these losses. But let me start by saying that pigeons are a flock animal. Many birds follow the leaders home and never really learn to orient or come home successfully on their own. As long as they are tossed as part of the same race team homing to the same loft, they come home successfully. However, when they are released in mass with other fanciers, they often haven't learned successful race skills individually to quickly find their way home in race time. Some of these lost pigeons may eventually come home and eventually make good racers. But there may be many good racers lost because they were not forced to "home alone" early in their race life. KEY POINT: Regardless of when young birds are hatched, begin to road train young birds at 90 days of age. Basket them several times and release them in the loft or garden area. then, release them 5 to 10 miles from the loft in all directions one at a time and in groups. At 90 days of age, young birds should routinely fly around the loft 45 minutes to an hour or more at a minimum. A healthy young bird team may "route" or take a scenic adventure and disappear from the loft for 30 minutes to over an hour or more! At 90 days, young birds should be ready to begin training short distances - 2 to 10 miles. Young birds are typically single tossed the first few times they are trained on the road. KEY POINT: It is important to develop a sense of confidence and independence from the first moments of training young birds.

when young birds are initially group tossed, use a race crate to transport them if you can buy one or borrow one. Leave the young birds in the race crate for an hour or two or until they become thirsty. then, water the young birds in the race crate before they are released at the release point if possible. Young birds will quickly learn to eat and drink from the crate on race day which may give them a competitive advantage depending upon the weather and distance of the race.

As I said earlier, I like to race young birds hatched during the first two months of the year in order for them to be sexually active at race time in early September so that they can be effectively motivated on a widowhood system. KEY POINT: January 1 hatches start road training the first week in April. The second hatch starts road training the first week in May. All training is completed in June. After June, young birds are mated and begin to learn about the widowhood system. Young birds are road tossed once or twice a week after June as a maintenance routine only. Young birds are routinely loft flown twice daily.

Thursday, the young birds were fed all they could eat at the evening feeds. Friday, the day of basketing, young birds are left in the loft. No road training. No loft exercise. They are fed according to the distance and weather conditions of the race. Friday at noon, the older mates of the young birds are let into the young bird loft to spend the afternoon with their mates. In old birds, mates are often "shown" just before basketing to stimulate widowhood males. "Showing the females" and exciting the males is usually a practice for shorter races that are released the morning after basketing in old birds. Young birds do not have the attention span of old birds. Young birds have to be shown their mates more often and for longer periods of time than old birds. Therefore, the young birds would normally have spent the entire afternoon with their mates today. But today, the "normal" routine had to be changed. Due to a weather forecast of rain, the Saturday race was postponed until Sunday. Consequently, when I found this out Friday morning, Friday became Thursday and Saturday will become Friday. Instead of leaving the birds in the loft as I normally would have done, I immediately let them out and loft flew them for the entire day. There were periodic episodes of light to medium showers during the day. The birds flew all day - even during the rain. I had mixed feelings about exercising the birds today in the rain. On a positive note, if the birds encounter showers on Sunday, the postponed race day, exercising them in the rain today will help them feel comfortable flying in the rain on race day. On a negative side, getting wet may induce a light case of some type of respiratory problem in the birds. In order to combat respiratory problems, I put TYLAN in the water today. Tomorrow, Saturday, I will give the birds the routine they will normally have on Friday. They will stay in the loft all day and their mates will be "shown" at noon. If we race Sunday, I will have one less day to prepare for the second week of racing on September 15. So I will omit the normal Sunday routine and resume their normal routine on Monday. If the race is cancelled all together this weekend which will be decided tomorrow, I will take the birds on a long toss on Monday to simulate a race. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now, we are going to race Sunday instead of Saturday. I'll let you know tomorrow whether we will indeed race on Sunday or whether the race will be cancelled and pushed back to next week.

I received an email from a childhood fancier today letting me know that he was enjoying the BLOG; but he didn't begin training his young birds until 20 weeks of age or until the "eyes have turned color." There are many ways to train young birds and all types of young birds. Some mature very quickly - some mature very slowly. One of the tasks we have as fanciers is to develop a successful management system which will maximize the racing qualities of the young birds in the loft. My young birds are able to be trained early. Others may not. In Belgium, training races of about 50 kilometers start in the middle to end of May. Bourges, the first national young bird race is usually the last of July. Due to the Belgian Federation's race schedule, young birds are trained earlier than American young bird schedules that begin in late August or early September. The four National Young Bird in Belgium races are normally concluded before the young bird race series begins in Oklahoma. My young birds are trained to compete in young birds in Belgium even though they are actually raced in Oklahoma.

I have often heard that fanciers ring young birds from January 1 to May 1. when they begin training in August to prepare for races the first week of September, they lose most of their early young birds and are left with a young bird team of March, April and May hatches. I believe that this happens because young birds have a critical window of time when they are "most" susceptible to training. Based upon my experience in Belgium, I believe this window occurs from 12 to 16 weeks of age. Young birds that are not trained until they are eight months old seem to experience higher losses than young birds that are trained from 12 to 16 weeks. when I speak of training, I'm not advocating tosses of 50 to 100 miles. I'm talking about many, many short tosses of 2 to 10 or 15 miles. KEY POINT: The purpose of early training tosses is not to condition young birds. The purpose of early training is to develop the orientation process in the young birds. I generally experience fewer losses by using multiple short tosses in all directions less than 20 miles to initially train young birds. All tosses exercise the orientation response in young birds. A 2 to 5 mile training toss is just as effective as a 20 to 50 mile toss in exercising and developing the orientation skills of young birds. Longer tosses simply add physical conditioning to the training toss. However, if young birds experience trouble orienting, I prefer that they are lost within 10 to 15 miles of the loft so that they have a shorter distance to recover and find their way home. KEY POINT: Try tossing your young birds 10 to 15 miles from home into a headwind. You will exercise the orientation skills and condition the young birds at the same time.

Due to the rain, the entire race season was postponed one week. The race season will now start Saturday, September 15, from Atoka, Oklahoma. Atoka is about 120 miles for me. The weather improved gradually all day. Therefore, I let the racers have open loft today which I usually do on Sundays anyway. Since the birds didn't race, they will need at one long toss in the next several days to replace the race we didn't race. They won't go 120 miles; but they will go 60 to 80 miles at least once and maybe twice this upcoming week in addition to several short tosses. I let the mates spend the weekend with the young bird team. I will take them away in the morning and leave the young birds celibate until Wednesday morning. The following table lists the feeding and watering schedule for the week.

*HAND FEED refers to slowly feeding a handful of feed at a time to the race team on a solid floor after scraping, cleaning, and sweeping the floor.

Feed a basic mix of many small grains. Add 1/3 Safflower and 1/3 good Barley. Add corn as needed for longer races or inclement weather.

Yesterday, September 9, 2007, I was fortunate enough to take a significant part in the inaugural event of the Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden. The following link to Tulsa's daily newspaper shows the picture that appeared in today's Tulsa World. I used the 2007 young bird team to conduct the release. The dark check splash in the middle of the picture is TEAM 58 bred from a pure white son of the LAST DIAMOND and a dark check white flight daughter of the 603 STEKETEE - a male who has placed in the Top 100 NATIONAL Long Distance 6 times for the partnership of Oliviers - Devos in Belgium. TEAM 58 has trained very well and should score well in the upcoming young bird race series; especially in the longer races.

There are two magnificent daughters of the 603 STEKETEE, BELG 05 2271987 - TOTAL ECLIPSE and BELG 05 2271999 - PARTIAL ECLIPSE, and one magnificent grandson of the 603 STEKETEE, BELG 05 2091955 - LUNAR ECLIPSE that have been breeding in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the past year. There is another magnificent son of the 603 STEKETEE, SOLAR ECLIPSE, breeding in Hakendover, Belgium. These birds, in addition to additional Oliviers - Devos breeders breeding in Hakendover, Belgium, are fantastic long distance racers. Oliviers - Devos specialize in the Long Distance Races and are very successful. Watch for their partnership in the Zwarte Fond (Long Distance) Race Results from Pau - Perpignan - Marseille - St. Vincent - Dax - Brive - Cahors - Beziers posted on pipa.be each week. Simply click on this link and cursor down to the Race you wish to browse.

Currently, Monday at 8 am, it is lightly raining. when I can find a break in the showers, the birds will get a morning toss from 20 to 25 miles. The forecast for next Saturday (race day) is a north wind (headwind) since we are racing north to Tulsa from Atoka, Oklahoma which is 120 miles south of Tulsa. Although the forecast may change, the race team will be fed heavily for a 3 to 4 hour race into a headwind. In addition to the standard mix 1/3 small grains 1/3 Safflower 1/3 Barley, corn will be added starting today. In addition, the race team will have more short tosses, half of which will be into the wind. Training them into the wind in short tosses will give the race team a positive experience into headwinds that will carry over to Saturday's race.

KEY POINT: If possible, it is best to let the young birds out to loft fly for 30 minutes to an hour before you road train them. If young birds are able to release their playfulness and pent up energy around the loft, they will be more prone to orient quickly from a road toss and fly straight home. You will lose fewer young birds this way. Young birds released on road tosses may enjoy flying awhile before they return home; especially during the first tosses. During these playful flights, young birds can travel significantly off course and become lost for hours, days, weeks, months, or may never return to the loft. Frequently during these early tosses, young birds often find other lofts in which to trap. In these cases, their return becomes a function of the integrity of the fanciers who trap foreign pigeons. In Belgium, there is a telephone number that fanciers can dial to trace the ring numbers of foreign birds trapped into their lofts. By following the telephone prompt, ring numbers can be entered into the National database via the telephone and the name of the fancier who originally purchased the ring from the Belgian Federation is spoken by a recording. Wouldn't this service for quickly identifying lost pigeons be functional in the US? If you agree, please consider emailing or otherwise contacting the AU and IF to individually and/or jointly make a similar service available to their members and the general public in the USA.

Back to the young bird team, quickly remove tired, unhealthy, or injured young birds from the race team as they will constantly want to land on the loft after a short time; and may influence the team to fly significantly fewer minutes during periods of loft exercise. Rehabilitate these birds separately; and don't place them back on the race team until they are able to exercise for as long as the most healthy racers in the best form on the race team. Remember to select your race team based upon the birds on the team that are performing the best during training; rather than those you simply like for one reason or another. Leaving unhealthy young birds on the race team just because they are out of a certain pair of birds or they are very pretty will compromise the form of your entire race team. Your best young birds are ones who are very healthy, train very well, and are able to be intensely motivated to return home quickly.

It has quit drizzling now - Monday morning at 9:30 am. The race team has now been let out of the loft to exercise. After they trap in, they may be basketed for a 25 mile toss away from the rain, if possible. Based upon the local weather radar accessed online, a release point will be chosen in an area away from the localized rain showers passing through northeast Oklahoma. KEY POINT: Because the race team has been road trained in all directions from the loft since the beginning of training, they are able to be tossed from a random release point selected according to the weather on the radar. Young birds trained only on the line of flight do not have the skills necessary to constantly change the training direction based upon inclement weather.

Yesterday afternoon, there was a break in the rain. The race team was road trained from about 30 miles southwest of Tulsa. Due to the light headwind, they took about an hour to arrive home. Today, Tuesday, the race team was loft flown early this morning. The weather has changed. The clouds are leaving and it is actually chilly with the temperature about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Today is my birthday. I am now 60 years of age. I am now going to take the race team to a town about 25 miles south of Tulsa to eat lunch with several of my fancier friends at a great hamburger joint. This small hamburger stand makes the best hamburgers in this part of the country. We are going to take our birds and single toss them together. That is, we will release 3 birds at a time - one from each loft. The birds will experience breaking from two other pigeons rather than experiencing the influence of a larger flock of birds. Since the wind is out of the north today, the birds will fly about 25 miles into a headwind. This is the exact toss they need to race into a headwind on Saturday as forecasted. By turning on the Unikon, I can record the time it takes each bird to come home. This information will give me an idea about which birds are in best form and who will return first on Saturday. In other words, today's toss will be a warm up race - dividing the race into 3 bird sprints. I'll let you know how the trial race went later today.

The race team was single tossed with two other fancier's teams from Beggs, OK about 25 miles south of Tulsa. The racers had a headwind of from 5 to 10 mph. All of them beat me home except for the last bird tossed which arrived a few minutes after me. Currently, there are an extra 6 or 7 birds on the loft from one of the other fanciers that went on the toss. These other birds are sitting on the roof of the race loft looking a bit bewildered. I just forced them off the roof and they left within a few minutes. The other fancier indicated that this toss was only the second time they had tossed their race team with another fancier's birds. With the first race on Saturday, I'm afraid that a portion of the other fancier's team will not arrive home in race time. First, these birds were not able to break to their own loft and instead followed my birds home. Second, they appeared unmotivated to utilize their own orientation skills; choosing instead to follow strange birds home to a strange loft. In the long run, these birds will learn to break from the flock and travel home more directly. For now, however, these birds do not appear to be ready for a race on Saturday. I say this not to insult one of my very good friends in the Sport; but to let the reader realize how important it is to teach young birds to break from the flock and travel in more or less a straight airline home.

I have been training the young bird race team with Tony Smith, TNT TITANS Loft, off and on most of the summer months - with a particular emphasis the last 45 days. That is, an emphasis on "breaking" from the flock. KEY POINT: The optimum break point for race pigeons to break from the flock is the release crate at the release point. The second best break point is the first 10 to 20 miles of the race. KEY POINT: Breaking from the flock is a function of training and motivation. Well trained race birds - highly motivated to return home - win pigeon races. Otherwise, the race is what we call a "clocking race." A clocking race is a race in which all of the birds arrive at the same time to their individual lofts and the birds that score the best are the ones who have been trained to trap the fastest. Although trapping quickly is also a trainable skill that race birds must learn, it is better to win the race by a few minutes rather than a few seconds. Winning a fast race by a few minutes can be accomplished by teaching highly motivated racers to break as early as possible during the race. Single tossing with another fancier is the best way to develop this skill set in racing pigeons. Please don't wait until one or two weeks before the race season begins to try to teach the art of successfully breaking from the flock to your race birds. Start much earlier - with this skill as well as all of the other skills necessary to consistently win races with champion pigeons. Can you imagine your favorite college or pro football team starting practice the week before the first game? KEY POINT: It is my personal opinion that those fanciers who state that they don't start training their young birds until a few weeks before the first race are severely handicapping their race team from the joys of future success. KEY POINT: Young birds, no matter how good they are, cannot be adequately taught all the skill sets that they need to know to become future champions two to six weeks before the first race.

KEY POINT: Pigeons will orient in shipping crates waiting for release. At the point of release, try to let the race team sit in the open air to orient either in the bed of a pickup truck or outside on the ground. By consistently following this easy procedure, race birds will come out of the shipping crates and head straight home or at a minimum, circle much less at the release point trying to orient before heading home. Did you know you can teach pigeons to circle at the release point? By immediately releasing race birds when you reach the release point, race birds will learn to circle in order to orient. If you teach and encourage your race birds to circle after release, your birds will fall minutes behind racers that blast home immediately upon release. KEY POINT: Time in the crate before the release is directly proportional to circling time after release. In other words, since race birds need to orient at the point of release, they can accomplish this task while sitting in the shipping crate waiting to be released or they can learn to do it by circling until they orient after release. KEY POINT: Train your race birds to orient in the crate before release rather than develop the habit of circling to orient after release. If you are wondering how to teach your race birds to break home immediately upon release, you must teach them to orient while waiting for release in the crate.

Have you ever wondered if it is possible to get a racing pigeon's attention in a shipping crate hundreds of miles from the loft. Well, it is possible. It is possible through motivation. Highly motivated pigeons are psychologically uncomfortable in shipping crates away from the loft. The only way for them to be satisfied, and at a greater state of peace and stability, is to return home as soon as possible. Motivation refers to a psychological state of mind in race birds in which their primary focus is getting home to their loft, box, mate, and/or youngsters. KEY POINT: Feed, water, and a perch are not unique motivators. All pigeons want to eat, drink, and rest. True motivation is a focused state of mind above the threshold of basic desires to stay alive. A pigeon living under a bridge wants to eat, drink, and rest. Pigeons who are released away from home are only motivated by their natural will to live will fly home. Pigeons who are released from home truly motivated by a passion for territory, love for a mate, or parental responsibility of youngsters will race home. Yes, it is possible to keep the attention of racing homers in shipping crates miles from home. It is possible through passionate motivation.

Tomorrow I will discuss the natural ability of a racing homer to be motivated. Stay tuned.

The race team was trained about 70 miles south of this morning on the line of flight for Saturday's race. They received the additives in the feed and water detailed in Table 1 above. They were also trained about 20 miles north in the evening - the opposite direction of the line of flight for Saturday's race. Not only were they trained in opposite directions on the same day, we wanted to eat supper at Mac's Barbeque in Skiatook, OK. Remember one of the basic tenets of this training system, the birds are trained within a 60 mile radius of Tulsa based upon the restaurants to which we want to eat. Wednesday tosses total the most miles of road training for any day in the week. These tosses are designed to stimulate the race team's physical system and appetite by slightly stressing them with longer wind sprints in opposite directions. Once their system is stressed and their appetite is stimulated, the race team will eat more food. Eating more food increases their energy levels and drives them to exercise more minutes in the air. KEY POINT: Exercise is one of the basic keys to winning pigeon races. The object of the training system is to build the weekly energy levels of the race team to peak on Saturdays. If your race teams cannot freely exercise a minimum of one hour twice a day, they are not healthy and properly trained and will never win races on Saturday.

KEY POINT: Not all pigeons that you breed will make excellent racing homers. In fact, very few of them will. The Lamberton rule, as local fanciers call it, states that less than 10% of pigeons raised will make excellent racing homers. Pigeons are like people; they have different aptitudes. KEY POINT: First, you must decide upon a racing system that you enjoy and fits your life situation, i.e., work, children, health, finances, etc. Second, you must obtain and breed pigeons that have the natural aptitude and ability to perform the system you have chosen. Not all males will learn and adapt to the widowhood racing system. Not all females perform well in the natural system. Pigeons have aptitudes and will make better racers if they are raced on a system that fits their natural and psychological characteristics. This is true if you define the art of pigeon racing in terms of the Flemish and the Dutch.

If you define pigeon racing in terms of the following points, your definition of pigeon racing and mine are very different. If you:

If pigeon racing to you generally consists of the previous points, the type of pigeon racing about which I am Blogging makes little sense and may be irrelevant to your experience.

Pigeon racing based upon the major points listed above makes "training pigeons to a race system" very difficult. I spend most of my time with the birds. In spite of this, by myself, it is very difficult to "train" more than 24 young birds (approximately) the widowhood system of pigeon racing. I just don't have the time, energy, and patience to manage more than about 24 young birds. Also, a loft built large enough to adequately function in this management system would need to be huge to accommodate a young bird race team of 50 to 100 birds. KEY POINT: I am not advocating "raising" just a few birds. I am advocating "racing" just a few birds. I like to raise over 100 pigeons from which to select a race team of about 24.

If our Sport is to continue in the future, it seems to me that we must continually recruit and involve new people; especially young people in middle schools and high schools. Is it reasonable to ask parents to construct a huge loft in their back yard to accommodate 150 to 200 or more birds? This has not been my experience. Young people who enjoy the animal husbandry and competition of pigeon racing should be able to be competitive with less than a dozen young birds and a few pair of breeders and old birds. A maximum of 50 pigeons in total should be a target goal to successfully recruit new people into the Sport. Lofts should also be small, say a maximum of 4 by 8 feet, in order to successfully fit into urban or semi-rural communities. If you travel to many of the average fanciers in Belgium who are not well known outside their country and who do not sell many birds to other fanciers, you will see small lofts and small race teams.

KEY POINT: Unless we modify our Sport to fit the demands of urban lifestyles in the future, we may remain a Sport for adults over 50, primarily men, who live in more rural regions of the USA. Over time, the Sport may dwindle to a handful of fanciers scattered over many miles. Currently, the boundaries in the club in which I compete is 50 miles north and south, and 50 miles east and west. The club has no boundaries for membership. A neighboring club has a limit of 20 miles for membership and they currently enjoy 6 fliers. The Northeast Oklahoma RPC is the size of a small country.

Well, enough politicizing for now. Back to the main point about finding a good race system for your birds or finding good birds for your racing system, there are various race systems that generally range between a widowhood based upon celibacy and the natural system based upon parenting. As an example, one very successful local fancier races widowhood males to single youngsters without a female that was removed after eggs were hatched. This system is a combination of the widowhood and natural systems and seems to work quite well for this fancier. I believe that not all males are candidates for this system. However, this fancier has found a family of birds that adapt to his system nicely. KEY POINT: If you are not having the racing success you desire, consider that there may be a large gap between the requirements of your lifestyle, your race system, and your birds.

The race team was loft flown one hour this morning. They will be road trained twice today from 25 miles in opposite directions. This evening, they will be given all they can eat. Tomorrow they will be left inside the loft with no exercise. Nothing on the food - plain water to drink.

Today is Wednesday, September 19. Due to over commitments, I have not been able to BLOG since last Friday. My deepest apologies. FYI, I plan to continue Blogging for one entire year to go through an annual cycle managing the loft, including breeding, old birds, and young birds. Although I may miss a few days, my commitment is to write a little something each day; even if it's not all of what I should describe for that time period. With that said, I'll try to catch up from Friday, September 14.

The Northeast Oklahoma Racing Pigeon Federation began its 2007 Young Bird Race Series on September 15, 2007. The Series was delayed one week from September 8 due to inclement weather. The were two races: an A Race with a 5 bird maximum entry and a B Race with an approximate 40 bird entry which is often raised if crate size permits. There are those fanciers who enjoy racing very large teams of 75 to 100 birds. Both A and B races were from Atoka, Oklahoma which about 120 miles or 192 kilometers from my loft near downtown Tulsa on Lookout Mountain Ranch. Please click on this link - RACE RESULTS - to see complete race results for the Club, Combine, and Federation. My A birds were fortunate enough to win the A Race in the club, combine, and federation. The B birds were 29th through 34th in the Federation competing against 1445 birds; slightly more than two minutes behind the race winner. Although I never like to make excuses, a Coopers Hawk arrived just before the B birds causing them to circle for over 5 minutes around the loft. A particular Coopers Hawk has been wrecking havoc on the young birds lately when they exercise around the loft. I have adjusted the training system to road train them instead of loft exercise in order to decrease the amount of time the racers are in the air around the loft making an easy target for the Hawk to catch them. My experience in the past is such that if a Hawk is not able to attack the pigeons around the loft for several days - or several weeks - the Hawk may migrate away from the loft area to find an easier more regular source of food.

It is very hard to win a Federation race. The Federation represents an area more than 125 miles square making winning very difficult. (Click Here for a Map of the NEORPC) Therefore, such wins should be cherished and not ever taken for granted. Although I maintain the birds, the birds fly the races, not me. The win in the A Series is their win more than mine. I simply tried to place them in a position to be successful. At some point, however, the birds have to excel on their own merits.

Friday the birds are left in the loft. Anytime after noon, the young birds mates (old females and old males) can be let in the loft to mate with their young bird mates. KEY POINT: Young birds (less than 12 to 15 months) do not have the same attention span, patience, or memory as old birds due to their mental immaturity. Consequently, in the widowhood system, young birds must see their mates every 48 hours to remain completely faithful to their older mates and to keep from pairing with the opposite sex during training. In widowhood with old birds, the old birds see their mates only on race days unless they are teased just prior to basketing. In young birds, however, mates need to be shown not only on race days (Saturdays); but also on Sundays and Wednesdays - all day. Once the race season starts, the young birds are road trained one time per week on Wednesday mornings. Their mates are waiting for the young birds in the nest box and stay with them all day. Mates are removed after dark Wednesday nights. Young birds are completely celibate Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday. The young birds are loft trained twice a day for a minimum of an hour per outing except on Fridays when the team is left in the loft until basketing. In the evenings, I like the young birds to stay out exercising from 1 to 2 hours.

With this information as a background, the young birds remained celibate inside the loft all day Friday. I chose not to show their older mates prior to basketing. I chose not to show the mates because I had commitments that didn't allow me the time to show the mates. So simply, I didn't have time to show mates.

Saturday, race birds arrived from 10:40 to 11:30 am. They returned to a depurative mix of small seeds and safflower in their box. There was a mixture of 50& water and 50% Pedialyte to quickly replace electrolytes. Their mates were locked in 1/2 of the nest box. Upon arrival, each racer was coupled with their mate in the nest box. However, race birds are not let in with their mates for about 15 or 20 minutes after they arrive home. By waiting, the race birds have an opportunity to eat, drink, and rest for a few minutes before encountering their mate and beginning the courtship and mating process. Birds that arrive very tired wait longer to be coupled with their mates in order for them to recuperate enough to act amorously to their mates. Saturday evening, the birds were allowed to exercise with their mates for as long or as short of time as they chose.

Sunday, race birds were exercised an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. KEY POINT: If the widowhood mates are in great shape, they can exercise with the race birds. If they won't or can't fly as long as the race team, they are left in the nest box and are not allowed to exercise with the racers so that the racers will not be influenced back to the loft by out of condition mates. Sunday night, widowhood mates are removed from the race loft.

Monday, race birds were exercised twice for a minimum of an hour. Racers began to recoup from the race and showed an increased activity level and exuberance. I followed the feed, water, and medication program detailed in Table 1.

Tuesday, race birds were exercised twice. They flew very freely and stayed out about 1/2 hour more than Sunday and Monday at both exercise periods. KEY POINT: Each day the racers eat more than the previous day and exercise more than the previous day.

Wednesday morning, the racers were road trained. In the Tulsa area, there were rain showers to the east, west, and south. Can you guess where I took the birds? If you guessed north, you were right! If you remember, the race stations are straight south of Tulsa. So the racers were trained in the opposite direction from the race stations. As I indicated, one reason for this was the rain around Tulsa. However, there was another reason. The wind today was about 10 miles per hour. Therefore, race birds flew home into a headwind. As I think I've said earlier, if I wanted the birds to exercise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, I would need to take them 70 miles south with a tailwind or 35 miles north with a 10 mph headwind. Later, I will discuss the benefits of headwind trained versus tailwind or crosswind training. This evening, the race birds exercised 1 1/2 hours. Because Saturday's race is only from about 130 miles, I have not greatly changed the feed grains choosing instead to feed the same feed all week. For the longer races, I will add corn, more safflower, and reduce the barley. I used to add peanuts; but now only give peanuts as a periodic treat to interact with and tame the race birds.

Tomorrow, I expect the racers to have their best day exercising. Since the are left in the loft on Fridays, tomorrow is the last day to exercise. Tomorrow evening, the racers will eat all they can possibly eat at the evening feeding.

This morning I let the young birds out of the loft right at dawn. Northeast Oklahoma is experiencing above average temperatures. Today's high temperature is forecasted about 90 degrees F. Consequently, due to the heat, it is best to exercise the racers in the coolest time of the day. Early morning and late evening will be the coolest time periods today. The racers flew almost two hours without stopping. when they landed, they looked spectacular. No panting. No wobbling. No wings drooped. The team looked like they did when they were released this morning. They trapped immediately. Twenty pigeons in about 10 seconds. They were fed and watered and the loft was closed. This evening about 5:30 pm, I will release them for their evening exercise.

when I first entered the loft this morning, I observed the loft and the birds. The racer's droppings were dark - in small balls - in a close pile about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. The texture and color of the droppings told me the racers internal systems are balanced and that the racers are digesting and utilizing their food properly. The proximity of the droppings told me that the birds rested well during the night. They stood in one spot and didn't move around. KEY POINT: Droppings in a close area demonstrates calm birds at rest. Droppings spread all over the nest box demonstrate birds moving about and in motion and not birds at rest. Too few droppings or droppings on the floor rather than the box demonstrates that the racers did not spend the night in their next box as they are required to do. Normally, with the intense training the young birds constantly receive, it is very seldom that racers do not sleep in their boxes.

when the birds were observed, their feathers looked shiny and clean. Their wattles were snow white. There was down or body feathers in the box or on the floor. Not alot of feathers. But some. KEY POINT: Healthy pigeons moult. The racers looked alert. They were not squatting or lethargic. Nor were they flighty or scared. The racers looked attentive and ready to fly as they knew they were minutes away from the thrill of freedom in the form of their regular loft exercise release.

I take a few minutes each morning to greet each racer. (when someone is greeted by another person, the first few seconds of the greeting greatly influences each person's overall perception of the other.) So it is with animals. I want the first few seconds with each bird to be as pleasant and positive as possible. I script the first few minutes with each racer such that the team develops and sustains a confidence in their fancier and a feeling of safety inside the loft. You want your race team to look forward to your arrival rather than be frightened by you as an intruder. I also observe their looks, their behavior, their nest box and the overall loft environment, before they are released to freely soar into the uncharted skies above of Lookout Mountain. Training racing homers can be magical. One of the magical moments for me is the early morning time with the racers in which I personally pour so much thought, time, and energy. KEY POINT: If you do not see your race team as distinct, important individuals - if you do not value their incredible talent and skills - if you don't feel passionate about your race team - if you believe that your racers are easily replaceable because you own their parents - you are missing the real magic and enjoyment of the sport - in my opinion. As an analogy, the race team is a symphony and I am their conductor. Each racer is valued for what he or she can contribute to the overall race series. True champion racers are very hard to breed and to develop and should be valued for the champion athletes they are. Pigeon racing for me is about developing a champion racer; not coveting a champion trophy. In evaluating the motivation, integrity, and professionalism of a fancier, consider whether the fancier shows you their champion racers; or their wall of trophies. These two things are not the same. The first values the race bird; the second values the fancier.

It is currently mid afternoon. About 5:30 pm, the race team will be released for their evening exercise. I will go through the same evaluation process in the evening that I went through in the morning just prior to release for loft exercise. Tonight, and every Thursday night, racers are fed all the food they can possibly eat to peak their energy for the Saturday race. I'll continue later this evening.

The race team exercised well from 5:30 to 7 pm tonight without landing until the exercise period was over. After entering the loft, the birds looked fantastic!!! Their feathers were very shiny. There eyes were clear, alert, and bright. Their wattles were snow white. They were full of energy and ready to eat. They were fed all they could eat: 1/3 race mix, 1/3 small seeds, and 1/3 safflower. No barley. Although the schedule in Table 1 calls for pure water on Thursdays, the race team found Vita Duif in their water all day long. After eating, the birds went to their boxes to spend the night. Although the race team will stay in the loft all day tomorrow, I will go in the loft early in the morning to greet each bird on the team and examine their droppings. Since it is the second week of racing and the team has one week of racing experience, I may show their mates for an hour or so tomorrow afternoon before basketing. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Today, I will evaluate the race team to determine which birds will be chosen for the A Race which has a 5 bird limit. Also, both the A and B races require nomination for the first several birds entered in the race. The nomination order will come partly from what I observe today in the loft. Overall, the race team's droppings looked very good, i.e., good color (dark brown with a white top), round, good consistency, and grouped in a compact area. The racers look very good. Their feather is silky and shiny; not dull and dirty. The feathers lie smoothly against the skin. Their eyes were bright and alert. Their eye ceres are distinct and clean. Their wattles are white. There are body feathers around the loft demonstrating a healthy loft based upon a healthy moult. Their feet are clean.

Later today, I will take a closer look at the skin color of the breast. I want to see a very pink smooth skin; not white and flaky. I want to see a blood mark in the beast bone towards the front of the breast.

I also will review last weeks race results to evaluate whether or not the racers are coming into form or going out of form. If you've looked at the posted Race Results from last week, TEAM 162 and 331 won 1st and 2nd Federation in the A race more than 5 minutes ahead of the closest club mate. The B birds were also very competitive. It has been my experience that racers who score from 1 to 15 minutes behind the race leaders the week before are often in the process of coming into form. Those birds that scored well last week may not repeat the same performance; especially if the leading birds were significantly ahead of the overall race results. I would be pleased if 162 and 331 scored very well this week; but I would be surprised if they dominated the A Race again this week. Actually, I'll go out on a limb and predict that TEAM 26 will be the first A bird home tomorrow.

In the B Race, TEAM 12 and 328 were several minutes behind the first drop that scored 29th through 34th competing against 1,445 birds 2.13 seconds behind the Federation race winner. Because the first drop arrived home about 5 minutes before they clocked, they may not repeat their same outstanding performance. Again, I will go out on a limb and pick TEAM 12 and 328 as the first birds home in the B race. I also believe that one or two in the first drop in the B Race last week will repeat this week. Those birds are TEAM 24, 27, 237, 213, 461 and 32.

I have several lofts of later hatches. I released them this morning to exercise in the place of the race team. The race team cannot see outside and will not be affected by other birds exercising.

The race team will be basketed about 4 or 4:30 pm this afternoon. If I choose to "show" the mates to the race team, I should do this at least by 3 pm. Young birds need more time with their mate than old birds to become properly motivated for the race. Whereas I might show old birds their mates for 5 minutes, young birds need much more time; say at least an hour. when showing mates, watch each pair carefully to make sure they respond properly to each other. If a mate does not properly respond to and excite its race mate, the mate being shown may need to be removed from the loft. Racers can become depressed if their mates are not responsive.

Yesterday, I did show the mates to the race team. I let the old widowhood males into the loft with the young females and the old widowhood females into the loft with the young males. I basketed the race team at 5 pm - so I "showed" the mates at 3 pm. The race birds spent about 2 hours with their mates. when they were basketed, the young birds were very amorous with their mates and didn't want to be basketed. This is one of the signs of motivation. The pairs were in their nest bowls. The males were calling their mates - even the young males. The females were rushing the males in the nest bowl and laying with the males in their nest bowl. Again, these are signs of motivation. KEY POINT: By "showing" their mates to them, the race birds spent several very happy hours in the nest box in their nest bowls. The last thoughts for the race team before basketing was the passion for their mates and the happiness in the nest box and nest bowl.

I want the race team to be thinking about home while in the shipping crate. They should release from the crates with the thought that they must fly home quickly to be reunited with their mates in the nest box in their nest bowl. I have been teaching them to break from the crates straight home - to leave the flock and to race home on their own. KEY POINT: Motivation refers to "the pull of the loft being stronger than the pull of the flock." The pull of the loft is mental. The pull of the flock is physical and visual. KEY POINT: Therefore, the best racing homers are the smartest racing homers; the best racing homers are "thinking" racing homers. when I am selecting the race team from the pool of young birds that were bred for the year, I initially select the best physical specimens. After that, their behavior in the loft learning the widowhood race system and their performance in training tosses will determine which young birds are the smartest birds.

Of all the paragraphs in this BLOG, the previous paragraph is the most important.

If your motivational system has feed and a perch as the core components, you will have trouble determining which birds are the smartest birds. Birds under a bridge can learn that system.

The A race birds are due soon. I'll blog again later this evening after the race.

Well, I'm waiting to take my module to the restaurant, Ollie's Station, where we will figure our race results. In yesterday's blog, I said that I suspected that TEAM 26 would be the first A bird to the loft. (Click Here). At about 10:55 am, TEAM 26 and TEAM 461 trapped in the loft. Although they flew around the loft for about 2 minutes, it was an improvement over last week. I'm thinking about using droppers again (Satinettes) next year in the early young bird races; a practice that I stopped several years ago. It sure might have helped this year.

TEAM 26 is a beautiful Antoine Jacops female. I have been talking about the Antoine Jacops pigeons for 20 years now. In my experience, they have been the fastest, most rugged, and most dependable pigeons by since I first acquired them from Mike Ganus after meeting Antoine in Belgium in 1986.

TEAM 461 is a daughter of THE BOOGIE MAN, an outstanding son of Mike Ganus's PHANTOM. 461's mother is a TEAM 193-06 female bred from an outstanding son of Gaby Vandenabeele's BLIKSEM. THE BOOGIE MAN is a very dependable breeder. I very large number of his offspring are great breeders and racers.

The first 5 birds of 51 pigeons in the A (5 Bird Limit) race were out of LAMBERTON CUYPERS pigeons.

In the B Race, there were 253 birds flown. LAMBERTON CUYPERS scored 12th with TEAM 58 and 13th with OLLLIES STATION 27. TEAM 58 is a beautiful son of the BLIZZARD and a grandson of the LAST DIAMOND from Antoine Jacops. OLLIES STATION 27 is also a Jacops pigeon. The birds needed 4.10 minutes to win. In the Northeast Ok RPF, 4 minutes is a long time. I would not consider the B birds performance stellar. But maybe they'll do better next week.

TEAM 162 won the Federation A race last week. This week she was 30th - 1 hour and 20 minutes late. It's too early to interpret the implication of her performance

TEAM 331 who was on the drop with 162 last week and was 2nd in the Federation was 3rd Club 7.18 minutes to win. 331 is a daughter of TOTAL RECALL, a fantastic son of the GOLDEN MATTENS. TOTAL RECALL was bred to a double-bred granddaughter of the GOLDEN MATTENS purchased from Mike Ganus, GFL 1031. I am very pleased with her performance: 2nd club last week and 3rd club this week.

The race returned to their mates locked in 1/2 of the nest box. The other half of the box was open for the race bird. A large soupspoonful of depurative mix (safflower and small grains) was waiting for them in their box. The race birds returned to find a mixture of 50% water 50% Pedialyte to drink. They ate, drank and rested for 15 or 20 minutes before I let opened the door to their mate. I call this "settling." when race birds have given everything they have to a race, it is sometimes difficult for them to be amorous instantly upon arrival. So, they are refreshed and rested for a few moments before coupling. The mates will be removed at dark tonight.

Tomorrow, the race will have free exercise in the morning. Due to the recovery system including the Pedialyte, they should exercise well tomorrow morning in spite of their race today.

Tonight, the young birds looked so good that received an open loft with their mates for about an hour and thirty minutes late this evening. They had a good time outside with their mates and I enjoyed watching them as I mowed the lawn.

Tomorrow, the young birds will receive a bath. Bath salts are added along with 3 ccs per gallon if Ivermectin Drench. The Bath Salts help the feathers and clean the birds. The Ivermectin eliminates any external parasites they might have picked up in the shipping crates. The young birds will be wormed with a drop or two of Ivermectin down the throat and they will receive something for Canker and Coccidiosis. There are many products. Something with Amprol for Cocci; Flagyl or some other product for canker. You may be using a 4 in 1 or 5 in 1 powder. While that may be okay to use in general, during race season, I do not administer an all in one product. I do use these products outside of race seasons and for breeders and young birds not in training. Personally, I like to use Pego products. Pego is a German Company that makes very good products. I use Pegosan tablets for both Canker and Cocci. Not only does it work very well; but it's quick to administer and each racer gets a proper dose and an identical dose as all the other racers.

In summary, on Sunday, the racers will receive their regular two exercise periods, a bath, a treatment for worms, canker and cocci.

Sunday night, the race team's mates were removed. Monday morning, the race team was exercised for an hour. Monday evening they also were exercised an hour. Tomorrow, weather permitting, the race team will get a 25 mile training toss from the north. Compared to the race on September 15, the race this past Saturday was just a few minutes off pace. This week, they will get an extra couple of training tosses in order to speed them up just a bit. The B birds were about 5 minutes behind the Combine winner. Although many people may think the birds performed well, I am not satisfied with their performance. I believe that they can be ramped up just a little bit more to be more competitive.

Hemp will now be added to the feed, 10% to 20%; everyday. Also, they will get several more training tosses from the opposite direction than the race course. I want to be careful not to overwork the team; it is still a long race season, i.e., 6 more weeks.

The team will also get an open loft all day with their mates on Wednesday after their morning training toss. While I do not know if these changes will make a difference, the status quo needs to be adjusted slightly in order to speed up the overall team and try to be a little more competitive next Saturday.

Today, I want to discuss road training, or as Antoine Jacops puts it, "training in the car." There is a distinct lack of pickup trucks in Belgium; so fanciers train in the passenger car when they train at all. The optimum amount of loft training for young birds or old birds is one hour in the air twice daily. I say in the air because it is not enough to open your loft and let the birds outside for 1 hour. For the purposes of this writing, loft training means the amount of time the race team spends flying in the air. I was talking with a Belgian fancier several years ago that was not happy with the race results of his old birds. I asked him about training. He said that his birds were training 1 hour twice daily. Since it appeared that his training was adequate, we focused our discussion on health. He decided to take several birds from the race team to the vet. The vet checked his pigeons and found no medical reason why his race birds were late. I visited my friend and watch him release his old bird team for training. After about 10 minutes, the team landed in a field a short distance from the loft and spent the majority of the hour of release time "fielding." It was obvious that the race team was in fact not training for 1 hour as my friend had reported to me. Rather, the race team was actually flying in the air less than 10 minutes. Twenty minutes a day is not enough "training" or "air time" for old birds to score at the top of the race sheet and hardly enough time for the racers to make it home at all. when your birds are training around the loft, where are they? Do they spend time on the loft? Do they spend time on the ground? If they do, they will need to be outside until they fly at least two hours a day in the air. This is the reason open loft is sometimes an effective training methodology where appropriate. During the daylight hours, healthy race birds will spend a minimum of two hours flying. I am not, however, advocating the open loft system. There are many dangers with this system.

Pigeons must loft fly 2 minutes for every 1 minute of road training. In other words, if the race team takes 30 minutes to return from a road toss or training flight, they must fly 60 minutes around the loft to receive the same training. Using this formula, if the optimum loft training is 60 minutes in the air twice a day, a race team would need to spend 30 minutes twice a day returning home from a training flight to receive the same training. This formula is why I advocate many short tosses for training tosses in the car. Depending upon the direction and speed of the wind and how long the race team sits in the training crate before release, a training toss should be from about 20 to 25 miles to achieve 30 minutes of air time returning home. A training toss can be extended in minutes by releasing race birds from a training crate immediately upon arrival at the training toss destination. Race birds need about 10 minutes to orient from a training toss. This orientation time can occur in the training crate or in the air or both. KEY POINT: The more training tosses that you give your race team, the shorter the time the team will need to orient. For race teams that have had 20 or 25 training tosses from 20 to 25 miles in all directions, the race team will orient when released in several minutes or less.

The wind can be used to strengthen race birds. when race birds train with the wind, they tend to fly with their wings closer to their body. Their wings help guide them while the wind pushes them forward towards home. when race birds train against the wind, they tend to fly with their wings away from their body. Their wings push and propel them forward as they overcome the force of the wind as well as their own gravity. While I train the race birds with the wind and against the wind, training them with the wind takes longer. That is, if you desire 1 hour of training time on the road and the wind is blowing 30 miles an hour from the south, you must drive 60 miles south or 30 miles north to achieve 1 hour of air time. And, race birds spend more energy training into the wind than they do training with the wind. If you want to road train your birds and you only have an hour to drive, go against the wind. You'll get a better toss in less time. when athletes pull weights behind them or run up stairs doing wind sprints, they are performing the same type of energy training as race birds training into the wind.

Make sure your race birds are spending enough time in the air on a daily basis; two hours per day. Make sure your birds train with and against the wind. Give your birds many short training tosses from all directions. KEY POINT: Caution - Race birds can be over trained and underfed. Amounts of feed and air time are directly correlated. The more the training, the more food race birds need to eat to create proper form. Race birds can fly their race during the week around the loft or in the car. A fancier friend was not happy with the race results of his birds. when asked about the loft training of his birds, he reported that the racers flew two and one-half hours in the morning and one and one-half hour in the evening around the loft. His loft is in a rural area infested with Coopers Hawks. Due primarily to the traffic of hawks near the loft, his race team flew twice as much as they should have trained. In this case, limiting the training of the birds to once a day precipitated the desired two hours of loft training per day. Also, the fancier used owl decoys, flags, ropes, etc. to influence the hawks away from the loft.

As race birds recover from a race, they should exercise more freely and longer. when they train longer in the air, they should be fed more food. A combination of good pigeons, health, proper feeding, exercise, and intense motivation wins pigeon races. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the racers will have a 35mile training toss from the south. A cold front passed through northeast Oklahoma this evening changing the wind from south to north. Today, Tuesday, the racers went 25 miles north to fly south into the wind. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the racers will fly 35 miles south to fly north into the wind. KEY POINT: Use the weather to your advantage rather than becoming a victim of it.

It rained Wednesday morning. The race team stayed in the loft. The rain stopped in the early afternoon so the team was tossed about 30 miles north. My wife and I ordered barbeque from Legends Barbeque in Owasso, OK on the way home. Thursday morning the team was loft flown about an hour. Thursday afternoon the team was tossed about 20 miles north in the parking loft of Mac's Barbeque in Skiatook, OK before my wife and I ate barbeque for the second night in a row. KEY POINT: Make training your pigeons fun!!! Combine training tosses with eating and family or social times. Take your birds to a great restaurant or drive-in with a spouse, family member, or friend.

On both tosses, the race birds came home to their mates locked in one-half of the nest box. After about 30 minutes, the mates were separated from the race team. Several key points are: (1) The race team is still learning that their mates will be waiting for them when they return home. (2) Young birds need to see their mates every few days. They do not have the mental maturity to be away from their mates for a full week without courting the opposite sex during training. (3) During the week, although the race team sees their mates after returning from a training toss, the race team is never allowed to physically touch their mates. Mates are locked in one-half of the nest box and are removed shortly after the race team returns from the training toss without physical contact with the race team.

According to Figure 1 on feeding, the race team was fed all they could eat Thursday night. The Saturday race is 150 miles or 240 kilometers. The weather forecast calls for a mid-eighties temperature, clear skies, and a 10 to 15 mile tailwind. Under these forecasted weather conditions, the birds should race between 50 and 60 miles per hour. If they are released at 8 am (A race) and 8:30 am (B race) - racing 150 miles - the first birds should return from 10:30 to 11 am for the 8 o'clock release; and 30 minutes later for the 8:30 release. Under this scenario, I will again feed the young birds all they can eat between 10:30 and 11:30 am on Friday morning tomorrow. In the mid-afternoon, the race team will receive just enough food to drink before basketing.

Friday, tomorrow, the race team will be left in the loft to rest and to be motivated for the race. For instance, after the morning feeding, the door into the side of the nest box with the nest bowl will be opened and the race birds will be able to sit in their bowl. For birds that are in form, they will sit in the bowl. The males will lay down and call their mates. This excitement or passion as I call it, is one of the primary building blocks of motivation. About an hour before basketing, I may let the mates in the nest box with the race team to excite the race team even more than the excitement with the nest bowl alone. Since the team has seen their mates on Wednesday and Thursday evening, I may not show mates again on Friday. Or, I may show mates to the young females and not to the young males. It all depends on how they look tomorrow afternoon. If, for instance, I open the nest bowls to the race team and they ignore the bowls, I will probably show mates. If the nest bowls alone produce enough excitement, I may not show mates. Motivation is not an exact science. What worked one week may not be enough the next week. Young birds are immature and fickle. KEY POINT: A great young bird racer is one that understands the (widowhood) race system and is easily and regularly motivated to race quickly on Saturdays returning to their box, their bowl, and their mate.

The race team is quietly in the loft. Access to the half of the nest box containing nest bowls has been opened. The best males are inside their nest bowls anticipating their females. The females are in their nest bowls more quietly and less demonstrable than the males. The race birds will receive most of their daily feeding about 10:30 am; which is 24 hours before they should arrive home from the 150 mile or 240 kilometer race Saturday morning. They will be lightly fed again mid-afternoon before their mates are "shown," should I decide to "show" mates. Again, I won't decide whether or not to "show" mates until I observe their motivation (excitement) or lack of it.

Since I was a college and university professor for many years, let's take a pop quiz since it's Friday.

2. Do the droppings look very healthy today? Are they round and firm? Are they clustered or spread out? Are there small white body feathers on top of the droppings? Are your racers moulting?

3. Which flight feathers are the racers moulting? Are they through the moult (light system or early youngsters) or are they starting the moult (dark system)?. Are they in the middle of the moult (no system or March-April-May hatches)? KEY POINT: Birds in moult will not perform as well as birds that are through moulting or beginning the moult by a significant margin.

4. Handle your race team. Turn them upside down and gently blow or brush their body feathers away from the keel bone. Is their skin pink? Do they have white scales covering their skin? Is there a blood blister in their keel bone?

5. Observe the racers more closely. Are their feathers soft and shiny? Are their eyes bright? Is their wattle snowy white? Are they eating well? Are they standing upright or are they squatty with their feathers ruffled? Are their feet clean? Are they acting amorously. when the males fly up to their nest box from the floor, do they do it with purpose clapping their wings? Do they hesitate at the front of their box when they land and slowly walk in their box. Do the males act like they have a chip on their shoulder?

6. Are they drinking plenty of water. From mid-morning on, the race team should have plenty of fresh clean water with no additives or supplements in it.

7. Is your loft constructed to build motivation in your racers. Does every racer have a nest box? Do you race the sexes together or are they separated? How do you motivate your race team to race home rather than fly home?

9. when did you last worm the race team? when did you last medicate the race team? What were they medicated for?

10. Do you give the best feed you can afford? Not the most expensive feed; but good clean grains in the right proportions.

11. Were your birds properly exercised during the week? If you had to skip several exercise periods due to family or work considerations or ill health, did you make up for those missed exercise periods with a road toss or two?

12. Did you only train your birds on the line of flight? Did you wait for them to orient in the shipping crate before releasing them? Did you single toss?

13. Did you medicate their mates at the same time you medicated the team? Mates can pass health problems to the race team faster than any other source of contamination?

14. Do you actually expect for your race birds to excel tomorrow, or Sunday, if you have done little this week to help your birds be in a position to seriously contend for a top prize?

These questions are not all inclusive. There are fanciers who evaluate their racers in many ways I have not mentioned including looking down the throat, etc. Nevertheless, Friday is a day to reflect on the activities of the week and to select those birds that will do their best on race day. KEY POINT: To use a sports analogy, the birds will perform in the race the same way they performed in practice during the week. It is not reasonable to expect top prizes on race day if a top effort was not given each day of the previous week or weeks by fanciers and their race birds.

Becoming a good fancier is not rocket science. It only requires hard work and a keen eye for detail. If you didn't spend very much time with your birds this past week, do not expect miracles on race day. Becoming a good fancier is just the same as becoming good at anything. It starts with passion. Are you passionate about your loft and birds? If you lack passion, you will lack recognition at the end of the race season.

KEY POINT: Pigeon racing is about the birds; not the fanciers. Are you most proud of your birds or your trophies? Is the game about teaching birds to perform well; or is it about beating your club mates?

KEY POINT: Pigeon racing is a game. Why do you play it? Why do you want to be good at it? Is playing the game about having fun and self-actualization; or is it about soothing a bottomless pit of despair and a lack of self esteem? I have seen both in over 40 some years of racing pigeons.

DR. LAMBERTON'S SUGGESTIONS: Be a good fancier at Basketing. Remember, regardless of what anyone else says, pigeon racing is generally a game played by hobbyists. It is a friendly competition among associates (people with whom you are acquainted, not necessarily friends) with common interests. Play the game with integrity. Be a good sport. Congratulate the winners. Win with dignity and humility. Treat others as you want to be treated. Don't make excuses. Say thank you when appropriate. Be helpful. Accept the performance of your pigeons for that day and work to improve their performance beginning with yourself, it if that's what you desire.

CRATES: The AU has recommended a sliding scale of how many birds should be placed in a particular shipping crate size. Follow it at a minimum!!! KEY POINT: Do not overcrowd race birds in shipping crates.

DR. LAMBERTON'S SUGGESTIONS: Carefully examine each racer bird before you bring it to the club basketing. Do not ship sick pigeons. Do not ship tired pigeons. Do not ship pigeons without enough feathers to race or with broken flights. Do not ship birds with external parasites. Don't ship pigeons to lose them. If you have trouble selecting which of your racers are quality pigeons, which you should keep, and which you should eliminate, ask a seasoned club mate to help you. Don't keep shipping birds until you lose them; hoping that the basket will do what you are unwilling or unable to do. Have enough respect for the sport and your club mates to filter your race team and de-select any inappropriate racer before coming to the club house. We do not want to create public nuisances by releasing hundreds or thousands of non-race-worthy pigeons on the general public to collect under bridges, in public places, or in rural barns and buildings to name a few.

Yesterday was race day. The Federation flew a 150 mile race from Durant, OK. There was a significant wind blowing 15 to 25 mph from the southeast.

The race birds returned and flew a few minutes before trapping. They flew a little over 2 1/2 hours home and the birds were not tired or stressed when they returned. In the current weather, the races are so fast that only a few minutes separates first from 30th place in the results. While I wish the birds were trapping better, I'm glad these early races are not taxing their constitutions such that they will be able to race each week through the end of the season. If I were to feed the birds less during the week or otherwise stress them to force them to trap faster, it may affect them negatively later in the race season by breaking down their constitutions. The real meat of the race season is the fifth through eighth weeks from 200 and 300 miles. I want the race team to be seasoned during the 100 and 150 mile race stations and to really perform at the longer distances.

Yesterday, there was a mixture of 50% Pedialyte and 50% water in the drink containers. Two soupspoons of small seeds were waiting for the racers in their nest boxes along with their mates. After 15 or 20 minutes to drink, eat, and settle, the race birds were locked in their boxes with their mates. Yesterday afternoon in the evening, the nest box were opened and the race team was allowed to exercise with their mates. The mates were removed last night after dark.

Today, Sunday, the race team flew about 30 minutes in their morning exercise period. They should exercise longer this evening. The race team is currently taking a bath and relaxing.

Tonight, the race team exercised very well - about an hour and 15 minutes. They were fed a typical depurative mix of small grains, safflower, and barley; and received their regular medications in the water (See Table 1). Their droppings look good. Their feathers are clean and shiny. Their wattles are snow white. Their eyes are clear. While they exercised very well, they are calm, quiet and relaxed in their boxes. KEY POINT: Racers should sit calmly and quietly in their nest box during the week between races. Racers shouldn't be building nests, fighting, courting the opposite sex, or other activities during the day. Racers that race every week need to quietly rest when they are not exercised. If racers are housed in a large room competing with many others pigeons on perches - constantly milling around - fighting on the floor - continually flying up and down to and from the perches - fighting over food - intimidated by more dominant pigeons - drinking under duress - and many other stressful circumstances - they can't and won't rest between races and cannot be in top form on race days.

There are 18 racers on the 2007 Young Bird Race Team: 12 males and 6 females. Normally, I like a maximum of 24 high quality well-trained young bird racers: 12 males and 12 females. I personally have difficulty physically caring for a quality race team that exceeds 24 unless the race team is comprised of the same sex. These 18 racers are housed in 7 identical sections of the race loft. Each section contains 6 nest boxes 12" by 30". The nest boxes start about 3 feed off of the floor so I don't need to bend over to handle the birds or tend to the nest box. The top two boxes are also placed in a comfortable range for my size. i.e., 6 feet tall. The loft is constructed for the comfort of the birds and the fancier. Only one of the sections contains 4 birds. In this section, two boxes are closed. In the other sections, either two or three birds are housed. The remainder nest boxes are closed. The point of this discussion is that from 2 to 4 birds are housed in 5' by 6' sections which have doors are each side of the section that can be closed to separate the racers and contain them in their sections. KEY POINT: Each racer has a large amount of room in their section in which to live completely unstressed by other racers. I could comfortably squeeze 15 to 20 pigeons in each section if I used perches. But all this would do would be to ensure that the race team would place at the bottom of the race sheet or not return from a race. It would ensure that the race team would endure a plethora of health problems. It would ensure that I would need to constantly medicate to offset the level of health of the racers. Try placing a single male in a loft section alone for a week. After a week, place another male in the section. You will probably see that every place the new male tries to sit, the original male will try to remove him from each locale. That is because the original male claimed the entire loft section for his own. KEY POINT: Good racers don't like new birds violating their personal space. The greater the amount of personal space per racer, the greater the motivation of the racers to defend a larger space from strangers. In other words, the greater the space, the greater the motivation. Good race males like a large or good sized nest box in a relatively small section. females don't seem to require the larger space that males require.

If you want to motivate your birds to perform better on race day, give a smaller number of birds a larger place in the loft. It's that simple. Of course there are a number of ancillary health benefits to this practice. But space is a huge factor in motivation. KEY POINT: You don't have to fill every nest box or use every perch in the loft. Limit your team to the few birds that are extremely healthy, well built, and quickly learn your race system.

Yesterday, the race team exercised very well. Actually, they flew much more than they should have thanks to a new predator hawk that has moved onto the Ranch adjacent to the lofts. Today, the morning exercise period was about 2 hours down from the 2 1/2 hour morning exercise period. While the hawk(s) is still around, the birds did not seem to sense it this morning.

I heard an interesting story from a club member this morning. Last Saturday, the Northeast Oklahoma RPF released about 1,500 race birds at 8 and 8:30 am at Durant, OK, about 150 miles south of Tulsa. The race birds headed north. According to my friend, the Dallas Concourse released about 4,000 race birds about 50 miles north of Durant at 7:30 and 8:30 am. The race birds headed south. If this information is correct, it seems likely that these groups of birds crossed paths in opposite directions. The proof of this statement lies in the fact that a bird from a fancier 30 miles south of Dallas homed in the loft of another club member who lives Sand Springs, OK, a community next to Tulsa. The Dallas racer followed the Tulsa birds north and trapped with the birds of a local fancier. when the fancier looked in the AU Directory to locate the area of the ring number, he found that it was near Dallas. A telephone call to the Dallas fancier supplied the missing pieces as to how the Dallas bird homed near Tulsa, OK, over 200 miles north of its home.

Releases that conflict with other releases or with other training tosses may be more common than we know. Does anyone know if the AU through the various Zone Directors provides information about releases common to specified areas of the US? If they don't, why not?

Back to the race team. Since the race team has been exercising more this week, they need more food than normal. In order to keep from overfeeding, I increase the amount of barley in the feed rations. I am also using Red Cell on the grain in concert with the feeding schedule in Table 1.

The droppings look the best they have looked all season. That tells me that the race team is truly coming into form. Form is a mysterious word that refers to a state of health and motivation beyond the daily norm of well-trained birds. KEY POINT: Form refers to the highest state of readiness to perform at a maximum level. Form is required in order for the race team to compete at the top of the race sheet week after week. Visible signs of form include bright eyes, snow-white wattles, clear pink throats, smooth pink breasts completely free of scales, powdery feathers, perfect droppings covered lightly by feather powder and small white body feathers and grouped in a small area of the nest box. There should be few droppings on the floor of the loft indicating that the racers slept well in their box. The racers should exercise freely. They should be very alert and be keenly aware of their surroundings. If on the loft, they should watch the local area and explode off the loft at the slightest motion or noise. The males should clap their wings and soar. Individual birds should fly alone zigzagging through the skies above the loft. when in the loft, however, the racers should be extremely calm and quiet alone in their boxes as they rest for the next race on Saturday.

Yesterday, Wednesday, the race team was exercised twice. Due to new hawks on the Ranch, the birds have been exercising at least two hours per exercise period. Because they are exercising so much, their food has been increased a little more than usual. Yesterday, an interesting event occurred that I want to share with you. There are several males on the race team that have been too immature to mate with old females. One such racer, 354, is a very well bred nice-looking youngster. He has been timid all season. He wouldn't claim a nest box in the male section. Several times I tried closing him in a nest box trying to teach him to take a box. Every time a different male would run 354 out of the box when I finally let him out to protect his turf. I even tried the female section. Although the females left him alone, he refused to accept a box. After exercising, I would find 354 in a utility section of the loft that contains nest boxes for sick, hurt, or a holding area for new pigeons. The section also contains several brooms, a long-handle scraper, regular scrapers, dust pans, feed containers, bath salts, dust powder, etc. 354 would find a nest box that was partially open with one of the aforementioned items in it. Finally, I quit trying to point 354 to a particular nest box in the race area and let him have the box he wanted. Very quickly, 354's personality began to change. No longer was he afraid of his shadow; but he became confident and would talk to me when I came near and slap my hand with his wing if I tried to touch him or clean the nest box. One nest box below was a super Antoine Jacops import female that had mildly hurt her ankle in the female section of the loft. I kept her in the nest box to keep her from walking on the leg and reinjuring it. After about 4 or 5 days - in fact yesterday, when I walked into the utility loft, the import female began to court me. Amused, I put her in 354's box to see if he was interested. Immediately, 354 charged the female and drove her to the nest bowl where he courted her the rest of the day while she responded aggressively. 354 was the first B bird in the race last week and has consistently placed in the top 20% of the race sheet. This weekend, for the first time, 354 will race to a mate.

The point to this story is very important and is missed by many, many fanciers. Each young bird is unique and should be treated as such. Many fanciers treat a race team as a flock rather than a group of individuals. KEY POINT: What works for one young bird may not work for another. when I finally allowed 354 to seek his place and level of comfort, he completely changed his personality by defending a nest box and courting a mate. Most fanciers want a "system" that allows them to interact with a flock rather than a group of individuals . Why, because it's easier.

when I have urged fanciers to pick their young bird race team from the birds they have raised, most lament that they can't tell which ones are the good ones. Thus, they fly everything they raise. Systems require interpretation everyday. Your ability to interpret a race management system on a daily basis in terms of each bird is your key to success. Don't treat your race team as a flock. Treat them instead as a group of distinct individuals that require individual attention. KEY POINT: Only race the number of pigeons you can effectively manage individually. For me, if I race both sexes, I can only effectively manage a maximum of 24 pigeons - 12 males ad 12 females, if possible. Currently, I am racing 18 young birds - 12 males and 6 females.

Now that 354 has been managed individually, let's see how he performs on Saturday after finally investing himself in a nest box and a mate. I'll post the club race results on Sunday, October 7 and contrast them with his last three races that he flew unmated and without accepting a box.

Saturday was another very fast race. Only a few minutes separated all of the clock birds. There were 15 to 30 mph tail winds. 354 did not home like I thought he might. He scored 101st out of 217 birds, 26.26 minutes to win. He is in a pretty severe moult. Perhaps that had something to do with it. We'll see again next week. 461, a daughter of THE SHADOW, a son of Mike Ganus's PHANTOM, bred to a granddaughter of Gaby Vandenabeele's BLIKSEM, was 3rd Club in the A Race. 328, an excellent Jef Cuypers male was 11th in the B race. Had he trapped within the first minute home, he would have scored 3rd. However, he hit the loft area alone and flew for over 3 minutes before landing to trap. However, there were several positive points to the race day. First, all 5 A birds were home before the first B bird clocked. Second, all of the birds trapped within one hour after the first B bird clocked. So the overall team seems to be in relatively good shape to continue racing in form.

The birds found 1/2 Pedialyte and 1/2 water in their 2-liter plastic drinking fount when they returned. There was a soupspoonful of a depurative mixture plus extra safflower waiting for them in their nest box. After about 15 minutes of eating, drinking, and resting, the race birds are let into the side of the nest box containing their mates for coupling throughout the day. Mates were removed after dark Saturday night. Sunday, the birds were exercised twice a day for a minimum of one hour per exercise period. Sunday the race birds were bathed.

Today, the birds were exercised in the early morning as usual despite forecasted rain that did not materialize. The birds flew for one hour and seemed a little lethargic which told me that four weeks of racing, the birds are beginning to feel the collective stress of racing. Managing the team over the last 4 weeks of racing while racing 2 - 200 mile races and 2 - 300 mile races. Rather than make them exercise longer, I let the team enter the loft after about 1 hour. Around noon, the team was exercised a 2nd hour. At about 5 pm this evening, they went out for a third time to exercise for one hour.

TEAM 331 and 26 are 2nd and 3rd Ace Pigeon in the Club after of racing. I am very proud of their consistency. With 461, they have raced most consistently of all 16 young birds.

Tomorrow I will discuss the concept of Due Diligence when selecting new pigeons to bring into the loft for breeding. Don't miss it. I think you'll like it!!!

Today was very normal at the loft. The young birds exercised twice a day. They received their Tuesday regiment as outlined in Table 1. Their droppings look good. They are rested and starting to fully recover from the last race. Saturday is the first 200 from McKinney, Texas. Early weather forecasts predict another sunny day with strong southeast winds. After 4 weeks of racing under the same weather conditions, the forecast sounds like a broken record. Although each race has not been hard on the birds, 4 weeks of racing gets taxing if the birds aren't maintained properly. In Oklahoma, the birds have one day in the shipping crate or basket as they say in Belgium. In Belgium, birds often have multiple days in the crate. Depending upon the number of days in the basket, the number of birds placed in each crate or basket is very important. The formula or ratio to determine shipping stress on race birds is easy to calculate and understand. Simply, the more birds placed in a shipping basket, the greater the stress on the birds. Dominant birds will fight for space, water, and food. However, the energy they expend dominating the others is energy they don't have to use in the race. Subordinate birds will stress due to the dominant birds, they make be injured via pecking in the eyes, head, beak, wattle, etc. and have a reduced access to space, food, and water. The energy they expend plus the hunger and thirst they experience reduces the energy they have to use in the race. Other shipping dangers include contamination due to external parasites, i.e., pigeon flies and ice and internal parasites, bacteria, and viruses. Heat is also a shipping danger. In Oklahoma, many races are flown in temperatures that are 70 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Even when it feels cool to you, crowded pigeons can become overheated. It is in the best interests of all fanciers to minimize the number of racers in shipping baskets. All of the time, energy and expense maintaining and training your birds during the week can be neutralized in just a few hours given an overcrowding situation in shipping baskets. The AU recommends a formula that will determine the number of birds that can be satisfactorily placed in a shipping basket depending upon the size of the basket.

Due Diligence is a term generally used in the legal profession and refers to the obligation of a buyer to completely seek out any and all data relative to a future purchase. Due Diligence can be looked at as insurance for the buyer. The more all of the facts surrounding a purchase are understood, the less the likelihood that a major purchasing mistake will occur. So Due Diligence refers to a process through which a buyer will make an informed purchase. What does that have to do with pigeon racing. Well, now is the time of year many fanciers will add new breeding stock to their loft. There are many ways to make a purchase. You may be able to purchase quality pigeons from a local winning fancier. You may be able to trade quality pigeons with another good fancier. Pigeons can be purchased in sales and auctions, online services, and directly from an unknown fancier or "feather merchant." I have never liked the term feather merchant if it refers to anyone who sells pigeons. To me, the term feather merchant generally enjoys a negative connotation. It usually refers to a person that is more interested in making money than selling quality pigeons. I suppose there are those people out there. I do not consider myself a feather merchant and I try to breed the highest quality pigeons possible. Mike Ganus is not a feather merchant either. Although Mike prices his birds out of the reach for the average fancier, it is because he plays at the very highest levels of the pigeon racing game; and that is very, very expensive. American fanciers have to compete with fanciers from all over the world in the homing pigeon marketplace. Other countries, particularly Asian countries, tend to set the price for European birds. The most expensive racing pigeons from Europe tend to go to Asian countries, Japan, Taiwan, China, etc. The fanciers in these countries spend thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars on European pigeons. There are several reasons for this. First, the sport is more popular among those who have more money in Asia. Wealthy fanciers can afford to purchase all the winners they want to purchase. In Oklahoma, the sport is popular among middle class fanciers, many of whom are blue collar, many of whom live in rural settings. In Oklahoma, $250 is considered a large price to pay for a pigeon. Second, fanciers can make a lot of money racing pigeons. Asians, among other cultures, are avid gamblers. Some races in Asia offer one million dollars for first place. The cultural gap in the fancy between the way we race pigeons in Oklahoma and the way pigeons are raced in Europe is incredibly wide. Mike Ganus plays in a world-wide game and is very successful. However, it costs a fortune to play at this level. Consequently, his pigeons are priced to absorb the costs of his business, and to make a profit. The same is true for me. It is not prudent to pay $5,000 for a pair of pigeons that were rung in 2000 and to sell all of their best children for $150. If this hypothetical pair bred three more years and produced 8 good healthy youngsters a year , they would need to bring $200 per bird and all of their offspring would need to be sold to pay for the purchase price of the breeder pair. In other words, I could raise young birds from this pair for three years, sell all of their offspring for $150, and lose $1,400 plus three years of expenses and three years of time. This formula does not produce revenue to reinvest in the game, i.e., air fare to Europe, pigeon purchases in Europe, food, gas, hotel in Europe, etc.; nor does it factor in any profit.

Clearly, Belgium, Holland, Germany and England are generally considered to house the best racing pigeons in the world. While I believe the USA breeds racing pigeons on a par with Belgium, and there are great American fanciers that do effectively sell pigeons internationally, our country is too large, our racing series are too parochial, and are national organizations are too vague to significantly appeal to a worldwide racing pigeon market.

The best way to purchase pigeons is to buy them from someone who provides you with all of the information you need to make an informed purchase. Buy them from someone who is interested in your success as much or more than they are interested in the price of the birds. Buy from someone who wants to provide a quality product to the fancy. when you purchase pigeons, ask questions. Don't simply be enamored with a pretty picture or a great pedigree. While good pigeons are generally photogenic and good pigeons come from good pigeons, perform your due diligence by asking questions and seeking as much information as you can about your future purchase.

It is about 9 am and the race team is out exercising. A cool front went through Oklahoma yesterday . The morning temperature is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. There are bright blue skies with little wind. Generally, it is an absolutely ideal morning for the birds to exercise. This reminds me of good Belgian weather. It's very exciting the few times when Oklahoma weather mirrors the very best Belgian weather.

I have received several emails lately from readers that I thought I might share while I am waiting on the race team to finish their morning exercise period. The first email is from Gerard from Scotland who writes:

Dear Sir: I have just read your blog and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My name is Gerard. I am 45 years old and live in Scotland. I have just in the last three months got involved in the sport again and built a new 40 x 8 x 8 foot six section loft and obtained 35 late breds from two of my brothers who are good fanciers and a local fancier in my area. I was involved in the sport in the mid seventies and early eighties as a partner with my dad and elder brother but due to work commitments I had to move abroad

I look forward to your updates and hope 354 won at the weekend for you got to go start work at 6 tomorrow morning. Cheers. Gerard

Dr. John Lamberton:

I really enjoyed reading your daily blog. Keep up the good work! I found it very interesting and there are some ideas you suggest that I will try. I like the training in all directions. I have not done that but agree with your reasoning for doing it, not just the eating places!!!! ha. I will be reading your notes everyday now....don't let me down. Now, some questions for you:

1. What about raw Spanish peanuts. I do not feed corn.

2. Tell me more, or where I can get more information on red cell.

Thank you for the time you have given to the sport, I have enjoyed and learned from it. Yours in the Sport, Terry

Thank you for your generous email. Your response helps keep me focused to write something significant everyday if possible.

To answer your questions, many people feed raw peanuts as part of their food grains and are quite successful. I don't think feeding peanuts will hurt the birds in any way if they receive the necessary daily exercise. I know successful fanciers who regularly feed peanuts as part of their weekly ration. I feed them only as a "treat" to the race team both in and out of the racing season. Particularly at night, I like to slowly stroll through the widowhood loft checking the race team bird by bird, nest box by nest box, as well as the general condition of the loft, the supplements, i.e., grit, pickstone, powders, etc, and the water fountains. I will place a peanut or two just inside the box of each bird, or more normally, the widows will take a peanut from my hand - both males and females. Because of their love for peanuts, feeding them as a treat helps build a bond between racer and fancier and causes the racers to look forward to my presence in the loft and our "special times" together.

I feed corn which is included as part of the ration I normally purchase. It comprises a relatively small percentage of the mix. I like the medium-size corn; not the very large version or popcorn. However, I have a very good friend whose birds love popcorn and he races very well; particularly at the distance. My favorite is kafir corn and I rely on it as a significant part of a mix for the middle and longer distances.

I also rely on safflower. Safflower is a wonder grain and comprises from 25 to 30% of a daily ration for racers, breeders, youngsters, etc.

Red Cell is a horse supplement and usually can be purchased at a feed store for large farm animals. It is a Vitamin - Iron - Mineral Supplement for horses. It also contains Selenium and Biotin. It is Yucca flavored; but the birds eat it easily once they are used to it. It's consistency is syrupy that makes the grains sticky until it dries. The birds will have to get used to eating a sticky grain unless you let the treated food dry for about an hour before you feed it. I typically purchase one gallon of Red Cell; but the size of your purchase should be in relation to the number of birds you want to feed with this supplement and the frequency with which it is fed. The shelf life is fairly long provided it is not exposed to extreme temperatures. I keep mine in the house under climate control to maximize the shelf life.

I would like to know what wing feather your bird (461) and other birds are moulting on the wing? It would seem that if these racers were born early in the year they should be about through the moult. With no darkening or anything to accelerate or slow the moult down, most of my early hatches, January and February are almost through the moult. The Dworek birds seem to moult quicker and faster than the others.

Due to several smashes, I lost most of the early rounds. I am racing a number of third and fourth rounders that have been moulting heavily of late. The early rounds, i.e., TEAM 26, has completely moulted. The moult may hurt the overall performance of the yb team this year although I'm still leading in club average speed. Best regards, John

A fourth email comes from another friend:

John:

Karen at the AU likes your web site. Actually, her response was "wow! You are right, the site is great and a ton of information." I was emailing her something and sent your link with it. Thought you might like to know her reaction. Tina

The birds have just trapped after morning exercise. They flew about 90 minutes. While they are out of the loft, the loft is cleaned, nest boxes are cleaned, drinking fountains are washed (soap and water will do), grit replenished, pick stone and other supplements (if any) are replenished and cleaned. The daily food ration is prepared and then placed in the side of the nest box for each racer. Due to my Belgian training, I use either an old fashioned soup spoon or my bare hand to administer the food. when using the soup spoon, the racers get a level spoonful of food in the morning. In the evening, they receive from one heaping soup spoon to two soup spoonfuls of food, depending upon the day of the week and their exercise during the week. Hypothetically, after a Saturday race, racers will exercise relatively easy on Sunday; and exercise more each day until Thursday when they should exercise very well and begin to peak into their race form. From Sunday to Thursday, their food intake increases as their exercise increases. However, there are variables which can interrupt a perfect world and disrupt the schedule for the week. Several of these factors include rain. when raining, the race team stays in the loft and cannot exercise. It is difficult to increase their exercise when they stay in the loft due to weather. Second, family pressures, personal health, and work conditions. These are a number of reasons why fanciers have a hard time maintaining a perfect schedule exercising their birds and why exercise periods are interrupted or can be sporadic. I generally think most circumstances can be overcome or adjusted to. Racers can adjust to an erratic schedule. Pigeons are very smart and can adapt to the most unusual circumstances if healthy and with patience. Health and patience are two areas in optimal loft management that can't be compromised under any circumstances.

when the racers finish an exercise period and trap into the loft, they find a clean loft, clean water (medicated or treated if scheduled), and a soup spoonful of food in their nest box. I want to maximize the importance of the nest box by feeding race birds in the box. In addition, by feeding in the nest box, each bird receives the desired food mixture and food amount for maximum conversion to energy. If birds are fed in a hopper, or collectively on the floor, too often the more dominant pigeons select their favorite grains first and leave the least favorite grains for the more submissive racers. Neither type of bird, dominant or submissive, eats a balanced diet of grains. By feeding individually, racers can't just eat their favorite grains. There will be only so much of their favorite grains in the spoonful of feed. To satisfy their appetite, they will have to eat most, if not all, of the food in the box. To accomplish the same goals, Mike Ganus used to advocate feeding one grain at a time on the floor on his early training tapes. But I like the added interaction between racers and their nest boxes when racers are fed in the box. when the race team traps, while several may seek a drink first, most hurry to their box seeking their daily feeding.

After the race team is exercised, trapped, and fed, the late hatches and some of the sale birds are exercised. Currently, I am having terrible hawk problems. Yesterday, the mate of one of the young females, 351, was killed by a hawk. 351 will go to Saturday's race without a mate. Upon her arrival from the race, however, she will find a new male. Since her old mate was a dark check, another dark check will be waiting for her. Since there are several celibate dark check males available, I'll try to find one that she likes and will couple with her quickly. Incidentally, I'll discuss this subject another time, but pigeons can be very picky when it comes to mate selection. The "right" mate makes a huge difference in the proper motivation of racers.

Tonight, the race team will be fed all of the grain they can possibly eat. Tomorrow, they will be fed according to the race distance and weather. While I concentrate Sunday through Thursday on exercise and health, Friday's focus is strictly on motivation for Saturday's race.

I'll blog again this evening and discuss what options are available to motivate the young bird team on Fridays.

Fridays, the race team stays inside the loft. Years ago, I would toss young birds on Fridays in the opposite direction from the race station and experienced very good race results using this strategy. Now, however, I try to motivate the young birds in several ways.

1. Use nest bowls to motivate. If the nest bowls are not in the nest boxes during the week, place them in the racers' nest boxes Friday morning. In several weeks, the young birds will associate the nest bowls with the race, and the race with the promise of coupling with their mates when they arrive home. Some fanciers leave nest bowls in the nest box upside down creating a perch for widows. In this case, turn the bowls over Friday morning.

2. Use nesting material to motivate. If the nest bowls are always in the boxes, place nesting material on the loft floor and several pieces in the nest bowls to stimulate a desire within the race team to couple.

3. Place strange celibate females or males in the loft. Young males will try to couple with unmated females and the new celibate males will attempt to mate with the young females.

4. Pen young males in 1/2 of their nest box and let other old males and females into the loft such that the new old birds temporarily occupy the open side of a young males nest box. There are aggressive females that will defend their territory also.

5. Show the race team their mates for about 30 minutes to 1 hour before basketing. Let them couple and mate if they desire to do so.

6. Basket the race team and leave the basket on the loft floor such that the basketed birds are able to see their mates when they are let into the loft. Be careful, sometimes this procedure makes the racers very aggressive and they may fight with their team mates if the basket is very crowded.

7. Place the race team in another loft or in an aviary where they cannot see their loft or hear their mates.

I'm sure there are many other variations of the widowhood system. I know one local fancier who lets the race team couple, lay eggs, and hatch youngsters. At some point, mates are removed so that the race birds are left to care for 1 youngster by themselves. This system is a hybrid motivational system that combines the natural system with the widowhood system. Regardless of what tricks you play or procedures you follow, Fridays are for motivating the race team to race home rather than fly home.

Today, the race team stayed in the loft. As I said in yesterday's blog, Friday is a day in which motivation is built beyond the level of passion felt during a normal week day. Why Friday? Because we race on Saturday. Tomorrow's race is 200 miles. The forecast calls for a 5th week of strong southeast winds. Boring!!!! Today, the racers sat in their box virtually all day until 4 pm. The loft design includes 11 5 foot sections with 6 nest boxes per section. Each section has sliding doors on either side so each section can be closed or isolated from the rest of the loft. The nest boxes are fronted with wire color-coded nest fronts from Belgium - white, light blue, red and yellow. The fronts are split in two halves. One of the halves is permanently closed. The other half pivots from the front 90 degrees perpendicular to fully enclose 1/2 of the box. The half that pivots has a small wire door in it so that the racers can walk into the enclosed half if the door is up. In this way, a widowhood mates can be locked into 1/2 of the nest box waiting on the race widows to return. The racers can fly into the open side of the box and court their mates after trapping into the loft from a race. A soup spoon of food will be waiting for them tomorrow - mostly small grains with about 50% safflower. Typically, the racers will trap into the loft, get a drink, then quickly fly to their nest box where their mate and food is waiting. Tomorrow's water will contain a mixture of Pedialyte and water. As I have already mentioned, the Pedialyte is an excellent source of electrolytes that will be quickly absorbed into the racers systems so they will recover enough to be amorous in less than an hour. With these fast races, the racers have not been tired upon arrival and acting sufficiently amorous has not been a problem. Upon arrival after a race, I want to see both the racers and their mates act very amorous as they couple. The racers usually are not let into the side of the nest box containing their mates for about 15 minutes or longer depending upon fatigue. After recovering a few minutes with food, drink and rest, the racers are let into the nest box to physically couple with their mates. The nest boxes are completely closed when the widows are coupled after a race. A small drinking cup is hooked on the outside of the nest box to let the racers continue drinking. The food is also inside the closed nest box. After all of the racers are home, the nest boxes are opened to let the pairs have full use of the loft section and drink from the water fountain on the floor.

This will be the 5th week for the above-described regiment which brings me to a very important point. The natural world contains "bio-rhythms" that adjust to habitual behavior. In pigeons, if a fancier repeats the same management routine each day of the week, after a few weeks, the pigeons' "bio-rhythms will become conditioned to the weekly schedule. For instance, if you were raised in a home in which supper was always at 6 pm, years later when you no longer live at home, you will get hungry at 6 pm. This type of pfemaleomenon called "conditioning" was studied by Ivan Pavlov in dogs. You may read about Pavlov at this link - IVAN PAVLOV. Why is conditioning important in racing pigeons? Because racing pigeons will be conditioned to the management routine of the fancier and they will learn to "expect" a certain outcome ahead of its occurrence. At my loft on Fridays, the racers are motivated many ways including "showing" mates to racers about one hour before basketing. Based upon this consistent practice, on Friday morning, the racers will begin to call their mates because their conditioned response or bio-rhythms tell them that coupling is about to occur. The racers learn what to expect on Fridays and will expect the same routine every Friday. KEY POINT: Meeting the expectations of race birds consistently and completely is a basic component of successful pigeon racing week in and week out. Many fanciers have little idea how smart their pigeons really are. Likewise, racers learn and comprefemaled that Saturdays are race days and they learn to expect to see their mates upon arrival. Their conditioned responses may be compromised if the racers' expectations are not met. This is why I don't mate the race team together. That is, I don't keep the sexes separated all week, put the sexes together on Fridays, and let the racers couple together on Saturdays. This method has several intrinsic problems. First and most obviously, one of the mates may not return from a race. If male racer A is mated with female racer B and female racer B does not return from a race, the expectations of male racer A were not met. Second, mates may not arrive at the same time so that one of the couple must wait for the other mate and is not instantly rewarded for "racing" home immediately after arrival. Third, mates that both race may be tired from racing. Tired racers have great difficulty showing excitement after a race. If both mates are tired, the thrill of arriving home can be severely muted. I believe that the violation or interruption of learned expectations or conditioned lowers the level of motivation in racers. My young bird race team is mated to older mates that do not race. Therefore, the expectations of seeing mates upon arrival is always met.

Taking good care of the widows' mates during the week is extremely important to the performance of the racers. KEY POINT: The level of motivation in racers is directly proportional to the demonstrated passion of their mates. In other words, I want the mates of widows to act insanely amorous when they are coupled prior to basketing on Fridays and again when the racers return home from a race on Saturdays. Racers can actually become turned off or depressed due to a passive mate. In the widowhood system, passive mates are one of the greatest deterrents to success in the game.

So, tomorrow morning, actually this morning (it's 2 am by my watch), I will head to the loft and completely clean it: nest boxes, floors, drinking fountains, walls, ceilings, etc. Mates will be properly fed and watered, let into their boxes, and shut in one-half of the nest box. I will

1. Mix the proper ration of food and place a large soup spoonful in the side of the open nest box.

then, after taking care of the breeders and other pigeons, Morgan and I will settle-down to a great cup of coffee, we will read the daily newspaper, I will work the crossword puzzle, and we will enjoy each others company as we anticipate the thrill of spotting a race bird high in the sky.

With winds 15 to 25 miles per hour gusting even higher, the 200 mile race was over almost before it began. The A race birds were released at 8 am. My first bird dropped out of the sky at 10:57.53 am. Click for club race results. The first bird was 331-07, the TOTAL PACKAGE, sired by TOTAL RECALL, a fantastic son of Mike Ganus's GOLDEN MATTENS. 331 is the second high point bird in the club only 3 points behind a fantastic grizzle male of Joe Liu. Although Joe is not sure of his male's lineage, another club member with similar birds says it is down from a white Jacops female. We're going to check it out over the next week. The B race birds were released at 8:30 am. My first bird trapped at 11:11:27 am. Click here for race results. 312-07, SUPER MATTENS, is a son of SUPER MAN, a fantastic Antoine Jacops male bred to LOIS LANE, a tremendous double-bred granddaughter of the GOLDEN MATTENS crossed on the GOLDEN SISSI. The winning pigeon was flown by Gary Williams, BULLSEYE LOFT, and was Gary's first win. The mother of Gary's bird is from LAMBERTON CUYPERS. Gary's bird flew almost 78 miles per hour.

The race birds returned to a clean loft, an amorous mate locked in 1/2 of their nest box, a healthy soup spoonful of depurative mix in their nest box, and the Pedialyte mixture in the water. The race birds have to drop and trap with the same daily activities surrounding the loft as they experience during the week. I don't ask the family to stay away or be unusually quiet during race time; and I certainly don't hide from my birds. when I first see them in the sky, I wait until they get close enough to drop onto the landing board; then I start calling them the way I do every exercise period. I find that my voice helps calm the racers and focuses them on trapping. Often race birds land on the loft, go into a sort of trance, and sit for what seems like hours. Too often, it is an amount of time that costs the racer a number of race spots.

Years ago, I used to use Satinette "droppers" to help quickly coax the birds into the loft. Now, I simply use my voice and actions to bring the birds into the loft. You may shake a feed can. My partner in Belgium blows a whistle. when I raced in Belgium I tried blowing his whistle. The whistle didn't seem to help the birds they way I was used to handling them and blowing it gave me a headache. I prefer to use my body, my hands and arms, and my voice to bring racers into the loft. This trapping method begins the first week when the young birds were weaned. The young birds are fed a robust young bird ration which includes 25% to 30% Barley. The young birds get plenty to eat but seem always hungry. After a few days, when I call, they come running to eat. I often feed them on the floor when I am sitting on it with them. I sprinkle grains on my legs, in between my legs, on my shirt, and feed from my hands while continually calling the young birds to eat. Very quickly, the young birds will learn to trust you, your arms and hands, and your voice. During this time, don't overfeed. The Barley will help you. If you burn this procedure into your young birds psyches during weaning, they will remember it their entire lives. Antoine Jacops taught me this procedure. He told me to be very strict with weaning youngsters such that they learn the required feeding procedure at their earliest moments. If you teach squeakers correctly, the will wean into robust, healthy young birds that imprint a strict feeding procedure into their minds such that they will respond to you, the fancier, and give you a control over them for life. Teach your birds to do what you want using strict feeding techniques rather than forcing them to do what through deprivation and abuse; or worse yet, have no control over your birds so that they will control you and do whatever they wish at the moment. A bird that can't learn very quickly is not a candidate for my young bird race team. Responsiveness to my teaching methods is one of the most important selection criteria I use to pick a young bird race team. If a youngster is very healthy, is very nice and balanced in the hand, shows good balance and form in the loft, and responds quickly to me personally in general and my teaching methods in particular, they generally become excellent candidates for the young bird race team. I am always amazed by those fanciers who say they can't pick which young birds will make great racers and consequently have to let the basket do the entire selection for them. My good friend Achiel Vangilbergen in Hakendover, Belgium, raised 165 young birds in 2005. He chose 65 of them to race. At the end of a sixteen week season, he had 59 young birds left. Achiel criticized his selection procedure because he lost 7 young birds. Achiel said that if he had done his job selecting better, he wouldn't have lost a single youngster. I personally think Achiel did a great job selecting his team. If I am 80% to 90% successful selecting a team, I think that I have done very well. Every year there are surprises, however. There are birds that you think will do well that don't; and birds you don't think will make great racers that do. I personally think that I have lost very few great racers. If they were great, they would have returned home. I have an adage many of the local fanciers know. On a training toss, once the first bird returns, the fate of the rest of the team is their responsibility. Why? Because if one of them returns; then all of them could have returned. I will only blame myself on a smash training toss if none of the birds return; and fortunately, that has never happened.

Since all 5 races this year have been very fast, the young birds have felt well and looked rested on Sundays. Today, they received a bath with Bath Salts mixed with Ivermectin for external parasites. If they drank any of the water, it helped with internal parasites also. Even so, each young bird was wormed with several drops of Ivermec down the throat. Vitamins were in the water. Red Cell was on their food. They exercised about 50 minutes twice: morning and evening. If you raised late breds and want to race them in 2008 Old Birds, start training them down the road when they are 90 to 120 days old. Give them many, many short tosses from all directions. Make the first tosses - single tosses. Do not initiate an expectation of circling around the release point waiting for additional birds to be loosed. Although pigeons are a flock animal, most fanciers train them to fly in flocks by always exercising and releasing flocks of pigeons. Single tossing after teaching them the expectations inherent in a flock release is inherently backwards. Young birds should be released in flocks after they are trained down the road alone. Are there too many late breds to single toss? If so, I suggest selecting only the most robust, confident, intelligent, and structurally correct late-breds that are best managed within your unique time constraints. Do not teach young pigeons bad habits because of time problems? My late-breds are trained after the race team has completed their morning exercise period.

The race results from this past weekend are now calculated. Here are some of the results.

In the B SERIES Race there were several Lamberton Cuypers bred racers that performed well for a number of fanciers: 1st place club, combine, and federation was won by Gary Williams, BULLSEYE Loft, with female that was bred from AU 05 LAMBERTON 96 female. 96-05 is an Antoine Jacops/Gaby Vandenabeele female that was a good racer herself. Gary is a second year fancier and this was his first win in the Club, Combine, or Federation. TRI-COUNTY Loft, Kirk Hardin, was 9th place Federation with female bred from Lamberton Cuypers pigeons. Steve King, FAST LANE LOFT, was 33rd Federation with a grizzle female bred from AU 05 LAMBERTON 113 grizzle female. Tony Smith and Josh Cooley, TNT TITANS Loft were 77th Federation with a bird bred from Lamberton Cuypers breeders as was Shaun Simpson, TAISHO Loft, 89th Federation with his grizzle "55" female bred from Lamberton Cuypers pigeons.

One of the best litmus tests of "breedable" racing pigeons is how they perform in the hands of other fanciers. I am always pleased when other fanciers perform well with Lamberton Cuypers pigeons as did these five fanciers in the B Federation race.

Getting back to the young bird team, the young birds exercised about an hour in both exercise periods. They were medicated with Pegosan pills last week so they will not be medicated for Cocci and Canker this week. They were medicated today with Tylan for potential respiratory infections. Remember, the shipping crates are often a pool of internal and external parasites and other potential infections. Racers are exposed every weekend to the maladies of the other race birds in the crates. Because of this reality, racers need a regular weekly program of medications and supplements to combat these weekly contaminations.

Today is a regular Tuesday in the exercise, feeding and watering program. The birds exercised very well this morning for about two hours. I don't know if this was because of a hawk in the area or they just felt good. Their second exercise period will be in about 45 minutes so I thought I would blog a little.

My thoughts today concern the general Sport of Racing Pigeons. The fact is, the Sport of Racing Pigeons is simply a game. Pigeon fanciers who race homers are collectively playing a game. It is a game that most of us enjoy in much the same way people enjoy a myriad of hobbies including golf, tennis, bowling, fantasy football, etc. Since domestic pigeons are kept all over the world, competing with pigeons in organized games is also all over the world. Various societies compete with their pigeons in many different ways. In the Middle East, fanciers compete with pigeons that fly many hours without landing. The pigeon that continuously flies the longest time without stopping wins the competition. Other fanciers, including some in the USA, compete by using their pigeons to trap the pigeons of other fanciers. These fanciers compete to "kidnap," for lack of a better word, their fellow fanciers' birds.

At this point in the discussion, let me skip to another competition involving horses and cattle rather than pigeons. In Oklahoma and other southwest states, raising cattle was a primary economic industry. Many cowboys tended cattle for a living. While this was a very hard life, there were long periods when the cattle were resting or grazing and the cowboys, probably out of boredom, would challenge each other to compete in various contests with their horses or with the cattle. While originally these competitions took place out on the range, today these contests take place in livestock arenas and are known as rodeos. Rodeos are games based upon old traditions.

Pigeon racing is also a game steeped in old traditions. Pigeon racing in the USA was introduced primarily by immigrants from Europe who learned to race pigeons "in the old country." Historically, pockets of people who joined together to play the pigeon racing game as immigrants settled the vast untapped lands of America. Therefore, in my mind, the Sport of racing pigeons was introduced into American culture by European immigrants who brought this wonderful hobby with them. So it seems logical to me that if we really want to understand the Sport of racing pigeons, we should look east towards Europe in general and Belgium in particular, to grasp the essence of the game. Consequently, in the mid 1980s, I began traveling to Belgium with Mike Ganus on a regular basis to learn how to play the game from the Masters themselves, i.e., the Janssen Brothers, Jos Van Limpt "De Klak," Antoine Jacops, Karel Meuleman, the Van Riels, the Vanhees, Piet Manders, Leo Broeckx, Willy Van Berendonk, Van Rijn Kloeck, the great master Flor Engels, the immortal Jan Grondelaars, Ad Schaerlaeckens, the Herbots and many others. Eventually my desires grew to include competing in Belgium with these fantastic pigeon fanciers. Luckily, several years ago, I met Jef Cuypers and the Belgian partnership began. Although Jef used a wonderful medium-sized loft, we needed more space. So we sought out the best loft maker in Belgium to build us a state of the art racing loft. After that, we purchased many excellent breeders to complement the super pigeons of Gustaaf Cuypers, Jef's father, and Herbot pigeons that Jef had collected. To date, I have raced in Belgium with Antoine Jacops, with Jef and by myself. In 2005, while Jef and his family were on a holiday in America, our partnership won the first two races that I flew by myself. It was wonderful. The first week, we took the first four places in the race. While most Belgian fanciers thought this accomplishment was lucky, after winning the second race with a very early youngster, one Belgian fancier ambled over to my table, leaned down toward my ear, and whispered that I was the Lance Armstrong of racing pigeons in Belgium. This was the finest complement that I have ever received in 40 years of racing pigeons.

As a result of my experience in Belgium, let me share with you what I have discovered.

Since the explosion of the industrial revolution, American production has risen exponentially. Most Americans no longer have to work to produce what is consumed on a daily basis they way it was done back on the farm years ago. Our American economy has evolved into a relationship between production and consumption. Americans are consumers. Thrift is an old-fashioned, out-of-date word. We are taught to spend, spend, spend. Easy to get credit cards allow Americans to spend money they don't have at interest rates that have made the banking industry prosper. when I was happy for our family to purchase one huge black and white TV console that looked like a piece of furniture in the mid 1950s, today, there are televisions in every room of the house. Very soon, television will become totally high definition and our current televisions will be obsolete. We will need to purchase new flat screen HD televisions.

This consumer-oriented ethos has bled into American pigeon racing game. Influenced by the tenets of American culture, many fanciers believe that bigger is better than smaller - more is better than less. Many fanciers keep from 50 to 150 young birds on their young bird race team. Racing pigeon mathematics has become skewed by the desire to produce and consume. If a young bird loft can comfortably hold 35 young birds, then it can hold 70. If a shipping crate can comfortably hold 30 pigeons, then it will hold 50. Like a mantra we can't get out of our heads, our socialized psyche (Sigmund Freud's superego) constantly taps us on the shoulder reminding us to produce and consume. So, we constantly add on to our lofts. We constantly purchase more breeders. We constantly raise more young birds. We constantly keep more old birds and we constantly breed more late-hatches. This logic means that fanciers' purchase more feed and administer more medications. Playing the game becomes an onerous chore because of the time it takes to care for the growing monster initially created for relaxation and enjoyment.

New fanciers, excited by the thrill of competing in a new game involving the fascinating and mysterious world of homing pigeons, look at the mega structures they will need to build to house hordes of pigeons they will need to obtain, the sophisticated computerized clocking systems they will need to purchase, the ever increasing prices for countless bags of feed, the European medications ordered from a national supplier (no more chicken and turkey medications will do), the gallons and gallons of $3 per gallon gasoline needed to road train, and the race fees that creep up on their finances twice a year like the plague.

And we wonder why our Sport is not growing? Is America's version of the racing pigeon game affordable and manageable for most Americans?

Before continuing with yesterday's discussion about the game of racing pigeons, I received an email from Jason and want to answer his questions.

Dear Dr. Lamberton, I have a couple questions about the way you fly your young bird team. First: How large are your nest boxes? Would I need to make the boxes large enough for a nest bowl? At any time are the YB's ever allowed to sit on eggs with their mate? I really enjoy your site and thank you for all of the knowledge you've passed along to me so far, I look forward to reading and learning more from you. Jason.

Jason, the nest boxes are about 15 inches deep and about 22 inches wide. The following picture is taken of 1/2 of the nest box - the half with the nest bowl in it.

As you can see from the photo, a nest bowl can fit very comfortably in 1/2 of the nest box? The wire nest front on the right side of the picture divides the nest box in half. Can you see the little wire door in the middle of the bottom half of the wire nest front? The door can be opened by sliding it up and locking it onto the upper half of the nest front. In order to take the picture, I removed the wire nest front covering the front of this half of the nest box. Normally, in order to see the male in the bowl, you would be looking through the other half of the wire nest front. KEY POINT: There is no difference between the size and design of a nest box for young birds and a nest box for old birds. Young and old birds use the same type of nest box.

If you want to use the same system of motivation for young birds and old birds, the young and old bird lofts need to be identical. Or, the same loft can be used by moving the old birds out when the young birds are raced and visa versa. In my experience, a loft for each race team is better than one loft however. Swapping birds into and out of the same loft space is difficult for the fancier and confusing for the birds; but it can be done if a small loft is the only option given the size of a yard, garden, roof top, etc.

Concerning young birds sitting on eggs, as I think I have outlined in earlier writings, first and second round youngsters hatched January 1 through February 15 are trained in April and May, and mated to old birds in early June. They are allowed to sit on eggs and raise one youngster. After the youngster is weaned at 25 days, the young bird team is ready to re-train on a double widowhood system. They spend the week celibate except for a short time Wednesday mornings when they get to spend several hours with their mates. (It is often difficult for immature young birds to retain the same passion for their mate if they must only see their mate once a week. This is much less of a problem for old birds.) By practicing on Saturdays by taking the young birds on tosses of 35 to 60 miles, they learn to expect their mate on return from Saturday tosses. Remember, expectation is one of the key building blocks of motivation. My proposed schedule assumes races are held on Saturday. The schedule will need to be adjusted if races are held on Sunday; or any other day besides Saturday. In Oklahoma, the young bird race series usually begins the week after dove season opens; September 8 this year. In the northern USA, young bird racing begins much earlier in July or August. So, the schedule will need to be adjusted depending upon the onset of young bird racing.

In Belgium, young bird racing begins in May and extends until the last of October. The 4 prestigious National young bird races begin about August 1 and continue every two weeks until all 4 races are flown; ending in September. In Belgium, young birds and old birds are generally raced at the same time; although there are races that exclude one or the other. Races are divided into three age groups, young, yearling, and old birds. They can be also divided by sex into males and females.

Back to eggs, the nest box, and motivation. It is important to build an attachment with a nest box in pigeons beginning at the earliest moments of life. Breeder boxes are built just like racing boxes except they are an additional 10 inches deeper. Young birds are hatched and raised in an almost identical nest box to the nest box they will be trained and raced from as young birds and old birds. They learn to eat and drink in the nest box. Although pigeons are incredibly adaptable, I try to reduce the number of times they are required to make major adaptations in their lifetime. And any adaptations they are required to make should be as easy to learn as possible. As an example, my loft uses the same entry way for all pigeons, breeders (retired old birds), young birds, old birds, late-hatches, and celibates or extra pigeons. The European breeders or captive pigeons are in a separate loft; but they are not released to fly. All flying pigeons use the same trap for their lifetime. While I have separate lofts for all of the pigeons, they are all joined in a common foyer or entry way. The loft design is shaped in an inverted T or cross which has a common trap at the top of the cross and once in the entry way, birds are directed right, left, or straight ahead. The loft straight ahead also has choices right, left, or straight; so that 6 to 8 sections of the same loft have a common entry. After young bird racing is finished, I don't want to retrain the young birds to trap into another section of the loft, or adapt to a different building in another part of the garden.

Thursday, the birds received the regular two exercise periods and were fed all they could eat Thursday night. Friday, the race team is left in the loft all day. This past week, I tried something a little different with the team. The half of the nest box with the bowl was shut all week so the racers could not sit in their bowl. Friday morning, the nest bowl half of the box was opened and the racers quickly entered the side of the nest box with the bowl and the young males started calling their mates. This procedure stimulates the young birds passion for their mate, their nest bowl, their box, and the loft. At 4 pm, I let the mates of the racers into their loft. Immediately there is pandemonium in the loft. The noise is deafening as the coupling process begins. After 1 hour, the racers were basketed for the race. For old birds, mates are only shown for a few minutes. With young birds, however, the "showing" process is more effective if the couples spend longer together. Whether they are left together for 30 minutes, 1 hour, or longer, young birds seem to need longer to bond with their mates than old birds. I don't know if the exact time matters as long as it's over 30 minutes. For faster races, I keep either the racers or their mates locked in with the nest bowl so the couples cannot mate. For these shorter faster races, I want the racers as excited as possible at basketing. For longer races, I want the racers more calm at the time of basketing. If the 300 mile race is another blow home like each race of the first six races have been, the racers should probably be excited at basketing since the race may only take a few hours to complete.

For long races, I not only let the racers spend more time together, they will have access to nesting material (pine needles) during Friday afternoon. I place a small amount of nesting material in the bowl to try to "jump start" the males to bring their females pine needles. This includes the young males mated to old females and the old males mated to young females. Anything you can do to facilitate passion in your racers is excellent. Remember, passion is one of the most important building blocks of motivation. Next Saturday, the race is from 300 miles or 480 kilometers. We have two 300 mile races left. I haven't seen the 7 day forecast yet, but I sincerely hope the race isn't influenced by another excessive tail wind. All 6 races so far have been speed races. The wind has played an usual effect on the season so far. Normally, not every race is a "blow home." But this season has been different and very consistent.

There are many tricks that you can play on your racers on Fridays. Remember, the racers are trained Sunday through Thursday. Friday is left for the mental or emotional part of the game. The birds are left in the loft and are not exercised on Friday in order to sharpen the mental approach to Saturday's game. For young males, lock them into the nest bowl half of the nest box. Place other old males in the loft with the young males. The old males will fly into the open half of the young males box. This should make the young males very angry. The young males will try to fight the old males through the nest front. Conversely, show a young male a strange passion old female that is unmated and very ready to mate. Leave her with the young male to couple. While you can stop here, another trick includes releasing the young males normal mate after he has mated for an hour or so with a new female. when both females are in the nest box with the young male, chaos rules the box. Sometimes the females fight. Sometimes the young male fights his normal mate. Sometimes he will turn on the new mate and run her out of the box. In any event, the young males become intensely passionate trying to solve the new problem of two desirable mates. Sound familiar?

Again, you may discover new tricks to infuse your racers with passion. If you do, and they work, use them. One last trick is to basket your racers; males in one basket and females in another. Be sure to spread your racers out rather than pack them tightly or closely in one basket. Use as many baskets as it takes to leave plenty of room for each racers. Leave the baskets on the loft floor in front of the nest boxes. then, let the racer's mates into the loft. The racers will see their mates and hear their mates, yet they are basketed and cannot reach their mates. The young males, in particular, may get mad and fight each other if they are packed too closely in the basket. Only leave the basket on the floor for a few minutes (5 to 10 minutes). then, remove the baskets from the loft. This procedure is simply another way to stimulate passion in the young racers. Stimulating passion in racers, young or old, is normally the primary function of Fridays at LAMBERTON CUYPERS.

C - Young Bird Sections 5 feet wide - 6 feet deep. There are 6 sections on the left and 6 sections on the right side of the loft.

E - Nest boxes. There are 6 nest boxes per section. Nest boxes can be divided in half by folding both halves of the nest front to the back of the box and hooking them to metal loops on the back wall of the nest boxes. when the nest boxes are divided, each section can hold 12 racers rather then six.

H - Entry openings into different areas of the loft. As you can see from the diagram, entering racers have 5 openings that will direct them to particular sections of the loft from one common entry way.

This loft was built to be very flexible. Sections can be used as normally constructed; or quickly modified to accommodate different or unique circumstances.

The race results for yesterday's 200 mile races are in for the club. CLICK HERE. In the A Race (5 Bird Limit), 331-07 - THE TOTAL PACKAGE - was the first bird in the loft by a few minutes. After 6 races, THE TOTAL PACKAGE is now leading in the points for Ace pigeon (A Race and A & B overall) of the Blue Skies Club. THE TOTAL PACKAGE is a line-bred GOLDEN MATTENS whose sire is TOTAL RECALL, a son of the GOLDEN MATTENS that Mike Ganus described as the best son of the GOLDEN MATTENS he has ever bred and raised. In the A Race series which is my favorite of the two races, 331-07 THE TOTAL PACKAGE is 1st, 26-07, a super line-bred Antoine Jacops, is 3rd, and 461-07, daughter of the SHADOW, a super son of Mike Ganus's PHANTOM is 4th in the Ace pigeon series. The reason that the A Race Series is my favorite is because fanciers are supposed to pick their 5 best racers to compete in an elite weekly race. The B Race Series has far more birds in it than the A race and it is very nice to win a race with thousands of birds in it. Last week, BULLSEYE Loft won the 200 mile Federation race against 1272 birds with a female whose mother is a LAMBERTON female. 312-07 was 4th Federation. Many fanciers enjoy competing against a large number of birds; and so do I. But there are fanciers who enter 40, 50, and 60 birds in the B race alone, just to win. This A & B Race Series, I have sent an average of 16 racers to both races and am ahead so far in overall average speed in the Blue Skies Club. While I don't think that numbers ultimately matter, I prefer races where the odds are the same for all fanciers and the best birds are raced.

The racers are really looking good today and exercising very well for a Sunday. Normally they exercise about 45 minutes per exercise period on Sundays. Today, they exercise twice that amount. They all look better after yesterday's 200 mile race than they did when they were basketed for the race. By racing 3rd and 4th round young birds, the moult has affected the race team this season far more than in years past. Normally only the first two rounds are raced and are finished with the moult before the first race begins. Several weeks ago I wrote about 354-07. He had not accepted a mate; but was racing very well. After finally accepting a mate, I wondered what effect coupling would have on 354's performance. As readers, I asked you to watch his performance. He ended up having his worst race of the season. However, that weekend, he had fallen apart moulting body feathers and is only now beginning to shine again. The last two 300 mile races should be flown with a team finally through most of the body moult.

KEY POINT: moulting pigeons race much slower than racers that have completed both the body moult and the casting and re-growth of all 10 flight feathers. The moult is harder on pigeons that many fanciers realize. Often, moulting pigeons just don't feel well. Racing is hard on them and they must be fed and handled with the greatest of care or they may be lost from home.

KEY POINT: Training and Racing retards or slows the moult. The birds for sale that are the same age as many of the 3rd and 4th round racers look like beautiful old birds. They are completely through the body moult and far along moulting their flight feathers. Why is there such a difference in appearance between the birds for sale and the racers? Because the birds for sale sit in the loft doing nothing but eating and drinking, bathing and basking in the sun. Due to inactivity, their body moult occurs more quickly than young racers their same age. Conversely, the stress of training and racing slows down the moult and influences young birds to take longer to moult.

Next year, raise your 1st round as early in the year as possible. After weaning, keep them in a loft with 16 or 17 hours of bright interior lightening that simulates summertime. Increased lightening will stimulate the young birds' pituitary gland that regulates the moult. Young birds will immediately begin to moult because their brain is telling them its summertime in February. Consequently, they moult. By leaving the lights turned on for 16 or 17 hours per day, through June, very healthy young birds should have complete the body moult and flight feathers by early September. In order to insure a complete moult of flight feathers, in June, the 9th and 10th flight feathers are cut off about 1/3 of the flight feather down from the flight tip. In 10 days when the feathers are dead, they are pulled and new feathers are quickly grown. Some fanciers only pull the 10th flight. In either case, the goal is to begin racing with racers who have completed their moult and whose performance will not be negatively influenced by the moult the way my race team this season.

Coupling the breeders will begin in about a month; between Thanksgiving and December 1. If you haven't already, started to seriously study the conformation, health, pedigrees, and 2007 coupled pairs of your breeders, begin to do so immediately! There may be breeders you want to eliminate. There may be breeders you want to re-couple. There may be racers, stocked young birds, or late-breds that you want to add to the breeding loft. Begin to inventory your breeders and determine how many pairs of breeders comfortably fit in the breeding loft without overcrowding. If the breeders are overcrowded, the entire breeding and racing season are in severe jeopardy from the beginning because the young birds produced may not be robust, healthy race candidates that will mature into champion racers. KEY POINT: Medications cannot repair the stress of improper care of young birds in the nest or after weaning. The immune systems of young birds are designed to protect them from the many dangers and potential infections common in young birds. May I suggest that you rely on their immune systems to protect young birds from potential infections by managing them well rather than thinking that medications can make up for unintended mismanagement. Therefore, start the breeding season this week by medicating your breeders. Over the nest 4 weeks, treat them for canker, cocci, crop and intestinal infections, respiratory problems, and worms. I do not use 4-in-1 products for this annual treatment. I treat the breeders each week for a different malady. Tylan and Lycosin are two good products for respiratory infections. Flagyl is good for canker although there are several good products including the PEGO products. Baytil is good for general crop or intestinal infections. Ivermectin is food for worms. By Thanksgiving, your breeders should be totally medicating and back on vitamins and preventative supplement like Red Cell. Also, vaccinate your pigeons for paramyxo and paratyphoid. Coupling should begin only after breeders are in tip top shape.

Be sure to bathe your pigeons regularly (at least weekly all year, if climate permits) and put bath salts or medicated shampoo in the bath water. when there are medications in the drinking water, don't leave bath water in the loft for the breeders to drink rather than the medicated drinking water. Let them bathe for an hour or until finished and then remove the bath water. I like to thoroughly dunk by pigeons in a 5-gallon bucket of fresh water treated with Adam's Medicated Shampoo.

The Adams product has pyrethrine in it which will kill any external parasites on the breeder's feathers. Shampoo cleans the feathers and makes them soft which is important to winning races. KEY POINT: Feather quality should be managed all year long for all pigeons, particularly the young and old bird race teams.

One of the early tasks in the new week, say Sunday or Monday, is studying the weather forecast for the next Saturday which is race day. Based upon the weather forecast, the management system for the race team is skewed towards the forecasted weather conditions. For instance, a tail wind translates into feeding more barley while a headwind translates into feeding more energy grains and less barley. Currently, all of the network television stations are predicting a warm up for Saturday. One television station predicts a south wind or tailwind of 10 mph. The other two stations predict a north wind or headwind. Past experience suggests that a warm up of 5 to 10 degrees in one day is usually accompanied by a south wind bringing the heat from Texas up into Oklahoma. For this reason, the race team will be managed for a relatively fast 300 mile race as a result of a 10 mph tailwind. Click Here for the National Weather Service's 7 day forecast for Tulsa, OK.

It is raining in Tulsa today. So the race team will not be exercised outside until the rain stops. While the race team stays inside, the nest boxes will be scraped and new feed added. As I have said earlier, cleaning the nest boxes twice a day gives me an opportunity to study the droppings of each bird. Lately, the droppings have looked very well, i.e., firm, dark brown, white-tipped, and grouped. I also study each young bird closely every day. Today, their wattles are very white, their feathers look clean and shiny, their feet are clean, and while they radiate super health and form, they are calm and quiet. when I enter the loft, several of the females display for me. Several of the males however, are competitive and sometimes warn me to keep my distance by lightly cooing, crouching, and flicking their wing. It is hard for me to enjoy a race team of 40, 50, or 60 birds all sitting on perches or in small box perches. First of all, I'm not physically capable of properly studying 40 to 60 individual racers on a daily basis. Unless the loft is properly constructed, perched young birds usually fly off of the perch, land on the floor, and fight with their neighbors in a chaotic frenzy when fanciers enter their loft. Not so in a small widowhood loft. With 5 foot wide sections housing several birds per section that can be easily controlled by the physical size of the fancier, race birds stay calm and remain in their nest boxes when I walk in their loft. Each section of the loft is no taller than a few inches over my head. Since I am 6 feet tall, the ceiling is about 6'6". Each section is no wider than the length of my arms sticking straight out from the sides of my body - about 5 feet. And each section is about 4 feet deep which places me near the front of the nest boxes without being too close or too far. Consequently, each section is built to accommodate my size. when I walk into a section, my presence gives the racers no options to move from their box. And, if the racers are on the floor when I walk in the section, I tap my foot until they fly up to their box. Michel Van Lint, arguably the best fancier in Belgium over the past few years, taps on the floor with a stick or cane to notify the widows that it's time to fly up into their box. Each and every time I walk into a section of the loft, I expect the widows to fly into their nests if on the floor and quietly stay in their box while I am in their section. Like last week, the widows are currently locked out of the nest bowl in their nest box. I will open the nest bowl section of the nest box on Friday morning to initiate the normal Friday ritual of stimulating and building motivation in the racers. While the ritual may change from Friday to Friday, there is a regular, consistent procedure to build motivation each and every Friday.

Saturday, the race team drank a Pedialyte mix to replace the electrolytes in their systems that was lost due to the physical stress of racing home. Sunday, they were medicated for cocci, canker, and respiratory. Today they will be wormed with Ivermec. Vitamins are in the drinking water. Red Cell was on the food Sunday and today mixed with the Herbots Optimix. In the Herbots system or "scheme" as they call it - Click for Scheme, Optimix is usually coupled with Zell Oxygen. However, I use Zell Oxygen and Red Cell interchangeably. See Table 1 again for feeding and watering race birds.

KEY POINT: In an effective 7-day management system, each day has a normal, consistent routine to follow. These routines are influenced or adjusted, however, by the weather of the day, the forecasted weather on race day, and the daily condition of each racer. It is very difficult for me to properly execute an effective individualized routine for race teams larger than 24 racers.

Animal behavior is usually based upon normal daily routines. Animals respond better to routines and behave more consistently and more effectively the more the routine is consistently followed. So do humans for that matter. KEY POINT: Consistency is a function of the fancier's dedication to the birds; rather than visa versa. Racing success is a function of the ability, motivation, discipline of the fancier. While a good pigeon will perform well in spite of the fancier only a few times in its lifetime, if ever, excellent race results, season in and season out, is dependent upon the passion of the fancier more than the passion of the pigeons. when both fancier and racers are disciplined and passionate about the game, dynasties are built, i.e., Mike Ganus, Antoine Jacops, Jos Deno, the Herbots, Michael Van Lint, Gommaire Verbruggen, etc.

I study Pedigrees all the time. I pick routine times of the day when I need a little quiet time and study pedigrees almost every day. The more you study pedigrees, the more information you will have at your disposal to make quality decisions about breeding. As an example, several years ago I purchased several excellent pigeons at the final complete disposal of Romaine Loozen's pigeons conducted in Belgium by the Herbots. The best bird Romaine Loozen bred and raced was HERO 19 who won 19 races during his lifetime, 5 of which were 1st Provincial races and 1 was a 1st National race. Consequently, HERO 19 was a world champion racer and was purchased by the Herbots. HERO 19 and his family of pigeons were also great breeders. Unknown to me, Mike Ganus bought a daughter of HERO 19 and bred her for several years with great success in the USA. Mike donated a pair of breeders to the World of Wings; one of which was a daughter of HEROINE who was the daughter of HERO 19 Mike imported. when Carl Dewberry, Freedom Loft, began to go out of business several years ago, I went to his loft to see what I might find. I spotted a very beautiful blue male on a perch with a World of Wings 2415 band on it. when I asked Carl to see his pedigree, I noticed that 2415 was out of the Ganus pair of birds down from HERO 19. Instantly, I knew this bird would cross well into the Loozen breeders I had imported into the States the year before. And, 2415 had already bred excellent racers in the Northeast Oklahoma RP Federation and was a proven breeder. What a find!!! 354-07 on the young bird race team is a son of 2415 bred to a Loozen import female, VALENTINE, a beautiful breeding female with a great race record down from the HERO 19 family. 354-07 has placed in the top 15% of several races and will be a great widowhood male after he finishes moulting. The moral of the story is that if I was not a student of pedigrees, I probably wouldn't have recognized the incredible value of 2415. I use this story as an example of how luck is usually generated from hard work, i.e., studying your pedigrees.

The breeding season begins for me and most of Belgium in late October each year; 30 days before coupling. The goal of winter breeding is to hatch the first round of young birds as early in the calendar as possible in order to race sexually mature young birds that have fully completed their moult by September 1. Coupling begins between Thanksgiving and December 1. I prefer to couple on sunny days during this week when the birds feel good and are stimulated by sunshine. As I have said earlier, for 30 days, the breeders undergo a rigorous medication regiment so that they are in the best health possible to begin the breeding season by December 1. Caution: Take good care of your breeders all year long so that they won't need as much medication to bring them into top form for breeding. Please don't think breeders can be abused all year long and annually corrected by medicating heavily in November. Every day breeders need sunshine, good clean food and water, a clean loft and nest box, a certain amount of room in the loft, clean fresh grit and pickstone, vitamins and other supplements, and regular medication regiments in order to breed quality youngsters every year.

In addition to medicating the breeders during November, inventory your breeders like I mentioned earlier. Click Here Write down hypothetical breeding pairs based upon the genetic crossing of pedigrees as well as how they feel in the hand compared to the hypothetical mate. Mates should complement each other physically, i.e., balance, wing, feathering, size, weight, eye color, general conformation, strong back, tight vent, pretty head, good wattle, etc. They should also complement each other genetically. I like to produce youngsters that can race and breed at a high level. As for racing, I want to pair breeders that will produce youngsters with the physical characteristics necessary to race well. So, I breed from pigeons with similar physical characteristics. Although I have over 100 pair of excellent import breeders from over a dozen friends of mine in Belgium and Holland in addition to my good friend Mike Ganus, visitors always comment how similar the breeders feel in the hand. I select breeders true to a certain physical type that I have described earlier. For breeding, there are several mating combinations that I prefer. I like to breed first cousins together. I also like to breed uncles with nieces and aunts with nephews. Next, I prefer second or third cousins. I generally prefer to line-breed rather than in-breed. Mother son, father daughter, and brother sister, both full and half, are matings that I consider in-breeding. I will use these breedings if I want to breed a late hatch strictly for stock, however. Line breeding allows youngsters to have a fairly homogeneous genetic structure yet still retain the hybrid vigor from the outcrosses in the pedigree. I don't want to produce a family of pigeons necessarily. It is not necessary to breed excellent racers and breeders. Select an outstanding racer/breeder with a certain physical type that you like regardless of pedigree to breed around. when purchasing breeding stock, purchase children of outstanding racers and breeders that all meet a common physical type or personal standard rather than selecting breeders that simply have a pedigree with which you are familiar. when you purchase breeders, whether in the USA, Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, or wherever, you are buying a series of crosses. Karel Meulemans foundation pair of breeders, the Golden Couple, was a Janssen female from the Brothers bred to a Vandenbosch male. Please consider reading Ad Schaerlaeckens very interesting articles about Karel Meulemans and the GOLDEN COUPLE. CLICK HERE

This pair of crosses set the world on fire for many, many years. Did you know that one of Janssen's best breeders that was crossed into their pigeons was a bird purchased at a local market? The pigeon had no pedigree. If you have Janssen pigeons that go back to the Brothers pigeons, you have a pigeon in your birds ancestry that was selected just because Father Janssen like the bird and thought he might be a good breeder. No pedigree. No race record. Only the keen eye of a master breeder. As I also said earlier, racing and breeding success is primarily a function of the fancier rather than the pigeons. I often hear of fanciers who constantly want to race from a different direction to increase their odds of winning. While loft location is certainly a factor in racing, you will probably discover that the best, most dedicated, most passionate fanciers regularly win from any direction. Back to breeding, the function of outcrosses in a pedigree is to lock hybrid vigor into the young birds produced from these matings. KEY POINT: There needs to be a proper balance between line-breeding and outcrossing in a pedigree to consistently produce fantastic youngsters. Antoine Jacops estimates this balance at 70% line-breeding and 30% outcrossing. I consider Antoine Jacops the best breeder of performance homing pigeons in Belgium. Period. If you study his pedigrees carefully, you will see how to weave the genetics of high performance birds into the pedigree to produce superior breeding ability and hybrid vigor in young birds. Look at the following Pedigree:

This is the pedigree of BELG 05 6046873 (873), a full brother to the 1st Ace Young Bird Antwerp Union 2004. Let's examine the four grandparents of 873. (1) 873's paternal grandfather is the KLEINE LIMOGES. Kleine means small in Flemish. This pigeon won a 1st prize from Limoges, a race station in France. femalece the name KLEINE LIMOGES. The KLEINE LIMOGES is a product of 50% Jacops old family of pigeons crossed on a female from the Janssen Brothers. Antoine is a close personal friend of the Janssen family and has always been able to obtain the very best birds from the Louis Janssen. (2) 873's paternal grandmother is bred from another outcross. This time, the SUPER ACE - 1st Ace Hafo Lier Antwerp Union 1988 and 1989 (a 1/2 brother to the FINE CAHORS, the KLEINE LIMOGE'S father) was crossed on a full sister to Dirk & Louis Van Dyck's super racer and breeder, the KANIBAAL - 1st Ace Pigeon Belgium 1996. (3) 873's maternal grandfather is a third outcross. This time, the LATE CAHORS (a full brother to the SUPER ACE and 1/2 brother to FINE CAHORS) was crossed on a full sister to a 1st National Ace from Tom & Karel Hufkens, also good friends with Antoine. (4) Lastly, 873's maternal grandmother, the KLEIN VUIL, is a female that is a blend of Antoine's old family that goes back to Karel Meuleman's GOLDEN COUPLE pictured earlier. The KLEIN VUIL is a 1/2 sister to the FINE CAHORS, THE SUPER ACE, and the LATE CAHORS. All of these key grandparents ultimately go back to Antoine's best bird, the KLEINE CAHORS, 1st Olympiade winner 1987.

Let me summarize, 4 children of the KLEINE CAHORS were out crossed on three super pigeons from good friends: a fantastic Janssen female, a full sister to the KANIBAAL, and another full sister to a 1st National Ace. About 70% of the pedigree represents Antoine's old family while 30% of the pedigree represents outcrosses to super pigeons. Four children of an Olympiade winner outcrossed on three supers from top fanciers. Can breeding super young birds be more obvious than this pedigree clearly demonstrates? The children of the KLEINE CAHORS Olympiade winner allow youngsters to have a homogenous genetic structure and the three super outcrosses allow youngsters to posses the hybrid vigor to make super racers. There you have it in a nutshell. A simple formula for breeding highly successful young birds that mature into super old birds. As I have said over and over for twenty years, Antoine Jacops is a master breeder and has some of the best pigeons in the world. This year in my club, there are 6 fanciers including myself who have scored with pigeons carrying the prepotent blood of Antoine Jacop's pigeons.

To summarize, the goal is to breed young birds that carry a homogenous genetic package that allows them to breed good breeders. A second goal is to breed young birds that carry enough high quality outcrosses in the pedigree to allow them to breed good racers. The goal is 70% line-breeding and 30% outcrossing.

So study your pedigrees, and jot down the nephews or first cousins of your best breeding females. Conversely, write down the nieces and first cousins of your best breeding males. Also look for 2nd and 3rd generation cousins. This past week, I offered AU 07 TEAM 385 for sale on ipigeon. I guess the picture is less than impressive because no one has bid on 385 in three weeks. Picture aside, let's study her pedigree:

In this pedigree, a full brother of the 1st Ace Young Bird Antwerp Union, BELG 04 6073187, was mated to a daughter of the 1st Ace pigeon, BELG 04 6073024. While 385-07 is bred from 100% Jacops pigeons, 75% of the pedigree is line-bred to the parents of the 1st Ace Young Bird. Besides having a very homogenous genetic package, 385-07 is balanced in the hand with plenty of good feathering, a strong back and tight vents, and a beautiful eye. 213-07 is a very promising young male on the young bird race team. This past week, 213-07 was 27th club against 207 birds - 8.08 minutes to win. 385-07 is the type of young bird that I trust to sell and help someone's breeding program. Study her pedigree carefully and write down every related bird in the pedigree and the way they are related to other birds in the pedigree. You can actually track the homogeneity on paper as well as the hybrid vigor.

Once you have written down a number of your own super breeding pairs by pedigree similar to 385-07, go out in the loft and handle each breeder very carefully. You may choose not to mate several of your hypothetical breeding pairs because the hypothetical pair are not complementary and do not fit well together. Lastly, couples should like one another; especially widowhood mates. Pre-breed your selected pairs prior to December 1 to insure that each male really likes each female in these proposed couples. Often, I have had to bring unmated males 2, 3, 4, or 5 females before I found a female that matched him well in temperament. So three components need to match well in order to mate a super breeding couple. First is pedigree. Second is complementary physical attributes. Third is a passionate temperament between male and female. Although this formula will work well, I want to offer another match that must be made for a super couple in my loft. The color of the breeders must be complementary. I prefer couples that look nice together. This is simply one of my personal preferences and may not make any authentic difference in coupled pairs.

While it rained all day yesterday with blustery northwest winds, today is absolutely beautiful with bright blue skies and little wind. While the current temperature is in the 40's F, the high is forecasted in the mid 60's. Today, the birds will hopefully exercise a little more than normal to make up for the day they spent inside the loft yesterday. Because they were in the loft all day, their feed contained about 50% barley. Today, after exercising well, the birds will receive a mix that contains about 5% barley. The forecast for Saturday's race still calls for north winds or headwinds from 5 to 15 mph. In the event the forecast is accurate, the race team will receive a high carbohydrate feed regiment today, tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. While the first 6 races have been complete blow homes, a 300 mile race with a 5 to 10 mile per hour headwind will definitely be a change. Although the birds will receive a heavy mix the next three days, if Saturdays weather changes to south winds, they will receive a high barley diet on Friday. If the forecast is correct, they will receive a heavy diet on Friday. This week is an example of how to prepare for two very different races at the same time by alternating grains in the diet on a daily basis; yet still be prepared to perform well in either case. Barley and safflower are wonderful grains that let you switch gears from day to day.

I want to go back and talk about loft design a little more. Success in anything usually depends upon control. And, control usually brings consistency. McDonalds Restaurant wants their customers to purchase burgers and fries at any location in the world and have their purchase taste exactly the same. McDonalds wants to control their manufacturing process to such a degree that their products have a consistent taste anywhere - anytime. Successful pigeon racing also depends upon control and consistency. There are many aspects of the game that fanciers should to try to control, i.e., birds, feed, water, medications, routine, etc. Weather is a pfemaleomenon out of human control and often becomes a difficult intervening variable in the equation to success. Today, I want to primarily discuss the task of controlling pigeons by the construction of the loft.

Pigeons cannot read the minds of humans. While they are very remarkable creatures, clairvoyance is not one of their gifts or skills. Because they cannot read minds, they are not able to divine the desires of fanciers unless fanciers communicate their wishes to the pigeons crystal clearly. How do we communicate with pigeons in order to get them to do what we want them to do? The simple answer is by reducing or eliminating their options. If a pigeon, or any animal, or any human for that matter, has choices or options, there will be times when they choose options that were unintended by their fancier. Rather than rely on clairvoyance, the most consistent method of influencing our racers to conform to our intended desires is to make our choices their only options. Did you get that last statement? Let me repeat it because it may be one of the most important points I ever make in this writings. To repeat, if our intent is the only option available to our race birds, our intent becomes obvious and their response becomes more consistent.

If I keep the doors closed to each section of the loft, when I enter a section, the racers have little choice but to stay in their boxes. The section is slightly bigger than my body space if I stick out my arms and turn around and there is little safe space for them to fly around the section. Should a racer ever chaotically fly at me and go to the floor or to another box and upset another racer, I immediately force the racer to return to the box and sit there quietly while I stand and move around in the section - teaching that the safest place to be is in the nest box. Let me pause a moment and say that wild or untrainable pigeons that dart recklessly around the loft grunting in fright, and are a continual nuisance and disruption, are immediately eliminated from the race team. In my loft, these birds are never selected for the race team. Not every young bird is capable of conforming to a defined system of control. Only the very smart ones can do it well and they usually make the best racers. Give wild birds away to fanciers who race a different system. Sometimes the natural system is a good system for wild pigeons. Only race those intelligent young birds that have the mental capacity to accept, conform and execute the widowhood system of control and consistency. when I leave the section doors open and create an open loft several sections long, there are those widows who sometimes fly to the floor and walk ahead of me when I walk in the loft. While these birds are not wild enough to eliminate, they are still afraid enough to let their fear control their actions, and they choose to fly away from me inside the loft. On the average, I prefer widows that stay in their box when I am in the loft. By keeping the section doors closed, I take away the option of flying to the floor and walking away from me.

Let me also add that my nest boxes in the race loft are 15 inches deep. If they were 25 inches deep, the racers would have a deeper area in which to retreat should I enter the loft and make them nervous. So to solve my own problem should it become an overwhelming issue, I can deepen the nest boxes and/or leave section doors closed. Right now, I am leaving the section doors closed; but may deepen the widowhood nest boxes in the future. The breeder's boxes are much deeper and would make excellent widowhood boxes as well.

In summary, racing lofts properly constructed to give fanciers control over their race team will allow fanciers to consistently execute the widowhood system effectively.

Several years ago, there was a new fancier in the area that built a beautiful new loft that was a 12 feet by 20 feet rectangle. He wanted to have plenty of space for his birds. That's commendable. The only problem with the loft came, however, when he wanted to catch his pigeons. Every time he wanted to show someone one of his birds or basket his race team, he would chase his birds all over the loft huffing and puffing and sweating until he became as tired as the birds in the loft. After performing this basketing procedure several times, he desperately sought a remedy that would allow him to catch his pigeons in the open loft. His answer? A net! He purchased a fishing net with a short handle, and after practicing, he could snag those wild birds out of the air with his net without breaking a sweat! He did however break a few flight feathers. Of course the better solution would have been to reconstruct the interior of his loft to give him more control over his pigeons by taking away their options and forcing them to choose his intended outcomes. And after a period of time, that's exactly what he did. Do you know someone who uses a net to handle pigeons? In all of my travels to Europe, I never witnessed that procedure practiced.

The point to this story is to emphasize that the loft is the greatest single variable that will give fanciers control over their race teams by eliminating options and forcing the race birds to perform as required. If the race birds are not trapping quickly, reconstruct the loft and landing system to take away their options? Make trapping quickly their only option. when fanciers put up short fences across the front of their loft, they are removing the top of the loft as a landing option for returning race birds. when basketing, construct your loft so that your birds are easy to basket. I know of fanciers who create loading docks on their lofts such that they can basket 50 to 100 pigeons in large shipping crates for training tosses in a matter of a few minutes without touching the birds. One loft futurity lofts are particularly adept at this procedure. There is a huge difference between 10 minutes to basket racers and 30 minutes to do the same. If you are late for work at 6:30 am in the morning, most of the time, you will be too rushed to basket your race team and take them with you for a training toss. However, if it only takes a very few minutes to basket your team, chances are the race team will receive many more training tosses. One of the deterrents to proper road training is the time and effort it takes to basket the race team. The less the time and effort, the more road training the race team will receive and visa versa.

I have often seen new fanciers remodel an existing out building for a pigeon loft. While these buildings might make descent breeding lofts, rarely do they make quality racing lofts. Do you know why pictures of lofts in Belgium and the Netherlands look different that American lofts, because most Belgian lofts are built to breathe or draft. Belgian lofts are built like chimneys; they draft. Most of them are two meters wide or less. That's six feet wide or less. Narrow lofts built like a chimney tend to draft if constructed properly. Drafting means that the construction of the building itself causes air flow. In the USA, we are raised to think spatially in sizes of 8 by 6 feet or 10 by 12 feet or 12 by 16 feet rectangles. It's part of our spatial educational curriculum. The difficulty is that most 12 by 16 feet buildings do not draft well unless wind turbines or ceiling fans or other type of forced mechanical air flow is included in the building's design to overcome its natural tendency to hold stagnate air. The air within a racing loft should change itself or replace itself or exchange itself on a continuous basis. Unless there is a great similarity between pigeons and chickens, we shouldn't attempt to race homing pigeons out of chicken coops. Respiration is one of the essential building blocks of successful pigeon racing. Therefore, pigeons need to breathe fresh clean air on a continuous basis. The construction of the loft determines the exchange rate of air flow within the walls. If a chicken coop-type loft is opened to allow greater air flow, drafts will occur rather than a smooth continuous air circulation. There is a huge difference in the health of racers between those who are housed in a properly constructed loft and those who are sitting in drafty conditions. The former produces super health and form. The latter produces a host of respiratory ailments.

I have not discussed the pigeon racing game in several days and I want to get back to it. From now on, I will refer to pigeon racing as simply, the game. As I have said before, pigeon fanciers play a game. Like most other games, it is a game governed by rules. In Belgium, the homeland of modern day pigeon racing, rules of the game are determined by the Belgian Federation which is a national organization. CLICK HERE for KBDB website. In the USA, as most of you know, there are two "loose" organizations of oversight, the AU and the IF. Our democratic style of government causes our national organizations to be different from the KBDB. Our style of government supports the basic concept of "home rule." That is, cities make decisions for cities, counties or parishes make decisions for themselves, states make rules for those within their boundaries, and the Federal government is supposed to represent all of these smaller somewhat independent entities. So it is with the game. Rules are primarily left up to the jurisdiction of "home rule." That is, while the AU and IF may have general vague rules that apply to vast general cases, specific rules and procedures are left to the purview of individual clubs. So in the USA, specific rules are decided by clubs while the Belgian Federation establishes all of the rules for clubs. As you can imagine, there are pros and cons about both systems. I want to focus primarily on the American version of deciding the rules of the game.

Several months ago a club president from another state stopped by my home. He told how several years ago, there had been someone in the club that had spent club futurity money on personal expenses and didn't return the money to the club when the club needed it back. Angry, several of the club members reacted to this situation by creating a new club governance in which new members are not full members in the club for 5 years. Further, there were certain policies and procedures that could only be decided by the few founding members of the club. He also bragged that he had just unilaterally terminated the membership of one of the members. As he was talking, I couldn't help but feel a deep sadness for this man and the club over which he presides. Our Sport is a wonderful game handed down through the years by great champions who bettered the game through their involvement and participation. To me, the rules, policies, and procedures of this man's club tarnish the game for all of us. when local clubs create rules that keep new people from playing the game, discriminate against better fanciers, and distort the way the game is played so that some kind of advantage is gained, this type of governance only diminishes the integrity of the game. About 15 years ago, I was aware that a new club terminated the membership of a 14 year old teenager because he and his father played the game too well. I'm sure there are countless examples of home rule gone berserk. These examples are reasons why I think it is the game's best interests to establish effective national organizations that standardize the rules of the game on a national level to ensure that the integrity of the game remains at a high level.

Let me also recognize that there are pitfalls and dangers inherent in over zealous insensitive federal rule. Too often, individuals are treated unfairly by national organizations whose representatives yield their wisdom and insight to politics and greed. The answer to the fairness of rules lies somewhere between a standard of rules legislated by a national organization and home rules legislated by local club interests. Ultimately, however, there must be some sensible standardization of race rules, club policies, and procedures. Ultimately, it my hope that you understand the difference between rules that are established for the good of the Sport, and rules that are established to benefit the personal interests of an individual interest. The former will advance the Sport forward and result in a benefit for all of us. The latter will damage the Sport and result in a loss for all of us. I know of a fancier who recruited over 50 or 60 new and former fanciers to a new Combine. The Combine built a model club house and all was well. Until the original fancier had trouble winning due to the growth and maturity of the novice fanciers. In an attempt to improve his place on the race sheet, he unilaterally legislated a new rule to limit competition. Within two years, the Combine disappeared and 60 fanciers melted down to 5. The model clubhouse is no longer used for the reasons it was built. Greed and insatiable egos can ruin the Sport within a club. Without the benefit of a fair national standard of rules, the integrity of the game played at the local level is solely a function of the integrity of club leadership.

As you can certainly tell from my writings, I believe that the Belgian model of the game is the best model from which to play. I am not a fan of those fanciers who get into the game, bend it to their self interests, and then represent their version of the game as true pigeon racing. These fanciers may call it pigeon racing; but to those fanciers who have traveled globally, it seems an aberration. Of course the Belgian model is not the global standard. For example, there are major differences in the game between Belgium and the Netherlands. In terms of the fond races or long distance races, I personally like the Dutch model. In the Netherlands, long distance birds are released at noon or 12 o'clock pm. The logic is that no bird has an opportunity to reach home on the day. Therefore, loft position between the short end and the long end is minimized. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the logic, under this version of the fond game, Netherland fanciers have developed excellent long distance pigeons that are both fast and tough. There are those who think that the best long distance pigeons in the region are located in the Netherlands. In Belgium, the one-day long distance races are popular and there are excellent pigeons in Belgium that belong to fanciers who like to play this game.

Friday morning (yesterday), the race birds knew it was Friday. As I mentioned earlier, pigeons (as well as most animals) learn the days of the week. On Fridays, the race team is kept in the loft to concentrate on the mental ands emotional aspects of the game. On Thursday, the race team exercised very well. The morning release was about 1 hour as opposed to the normal hour to an hour and fifteen. That means the team was peaking physically towards the end of the week - on Thursday - such that Friday's focus could be on motivation. On Friday morning, the loft was very noisy as the old widowhood males mated to the young females were calling their females as they sat in their section of the loft separated from the females. The race females displayed to me as I opened the half of the nest box containing the nest bowl and they rushed inside. Several of them spun in their bowls similar to a male, bobbing their heads and fanning their tails. As I did the same for the young males, several young males displayed, then laid in their bowls and called their females. The old widowhood females were on the floor by the section door hoping I would let them in with their young mates. I could tell it was Friday; and so could the birds. I let the young birds stay in their boxes and nest bowls until about noon. At noon, I let them in with their mates. The old males rushed into the young females loft and popped their wings as they shot up into their nest boxes. The same occurred with the old females. There was pandemonium as the birds saw each other for the first time since the last race. I usually show mates briefly on Wednesdays; but did not do so this week. The young birds are two months older than when they started racing and have raced 6 weeks not counting several training races. Therefore, I pushed them psychologically by eliminating the Wednesday session.

Every Friday, I show young racers their older mates in some way. Why? Because all of the young bird races require one night in the shipping basket before release. I want the young birds peaked when they are shipped on Friday nights. Because Fridays are always the same general schedule, the birds learn the schedule and know its Friday. Friday is the day of basketing for a Saturday release. The racers and their mates learn this routine. My birds knew it was Friday. That knowledge base contributed to their motivation because they know that Friday's schedule leads to a Saturday race after which they race home to see their mates. Another way to put it is that a race in my loft begins Friday morning. It does not begin when the birds are released at the race station. If you think about it, the race must begin at the loft and end at the loft. The race begins at the loft on Friday mornings with the onset of motivation and ends at the loft on Saturday afternoon when the racers arrive home. Races at my loft can be conceptualized as a complete circle - beginning and ending at the same point - the loft.

This race continuum illustrates the way races are approached at my loft. I want the race team to begin the race Friday morning. I want to intensify motivation all day long; peaking just before basketing. Basketing is the point at which the racers are removed from their loft, box, bowl, and mate. From that point on, the birds are waiting for an opportunity to return to their loft, box, bowl, and mate. The opportunity will occur on Saturday morning at 8 and 8:30 am. The race is over when the birds return to their loft, box, bowl, and mate. At my loft, the race is not over when the racers enters the loft and the race band registers on Unikon. The race is over when the racer has flown up to his box and joins his mate. Mates are locked in the half of the nest box with the nest bowl. After racers have settled for a few minutes, they are let into the nest bowl with their mate. At this point, the race is over. I am always home to finish the race with my birds. I am seldom somewhere else. I call them in the loft, settle them, and let them into their boxes with their mates. It is at this pint that the race is over. KEY POINT: when the returning racers first enter the loft, drink Pedialyte from the water fountain, eat a food mix of 50% regular mix and 50% depurative mix in their box, and couple with their mates, they are beginning the initial preparation for next week's race.

FLASH: I just received a telephone call from my very good friend Kirk Hardin, TR--COUNTY LOFT, who informed me that a beautiful red male down from a Lamberton Ceulemans (Hercules) male and the Lamberton "65" female, nestmate to "64" - the 4th National ARPU 2006 Old Bird Race Series, won the "A" Race in the Keystone Racing Pigeon Club by 45 minutes!!!. The Hercules - Jacops pigeons have scored very well for me and for others. Ceulemans and Jacops were both excellent fanciers in the Antwerp Union Belgium. Crossing their pigeons has produced supers!!! Take a look at the pedigree of Kirk Hardin's race winner.

Today, we raced a 300 mile race with a 5 to 10 mile per hour headwind. We will figure our race results tomorrow, Sunday October 28, at 2 pm. My first A bird was 471-07 blue female. The second female was 461-07 PHANTOM female that has flown so well all race season. Third was 26-07, a Jacops female that has also flown very well all season. All 5 A females were home before the first B bird was clocked. The first B bird was 58-07, a beautiful cross between the long distance birds of Antoine Jacops and the super long distance pigeons of Oliviers - Devos. 58-07 is a grandson of the Steketee 603. I held back 331-07, the TOTAL PACKAGE, the daughter of TOTAL RECALL, the club high point Ace pigeon in the club after 6 weeks of racing in order to race her next weekend.

On Saturday, we finally had a decent weekend of racing after 6 blow home races. As I said last session, Kirk Hardin won a race in his club with a male bred from two Lamberton Cuypers pigeons. In my club, both races, A and B, were won by pigeons out of Lamberton Cuypers pigeons. Bill Kinyon, Top Gun Loft, won the A race with a male out of a Sapin/Mattens female, TEAM 58-06. TEAM 58-06, has the same mother as 331-07, my best young bird racer; and she is a super GOLDEN MATTENS breeder from Mike Ganus, GFL 1031. Tony Smith and Josh Cooley, TNT TITANS, won the Club, Combine, and Federation B Race. The Federation race had 1081 birds in it. They won the race with a Antoine Jacops cross. I have heard from other fanciers who have bred young birds from Lamberton Cuypers birds like Bob Roberson. I will try to post some of Bob's race results this week. My birds flew well in the A race; but I bombed the B race clocking about 28 minutes out. This one race may cost overall average speed. The males just didn't perform like the females. Plus, I held 3 of the best males for this next weekend's B race.

The following fanciers have excelled with Lamberton Cuypers breeders in 2007 young birds in northeast Oklahoma: Tony Smith & Josh Cooley, TNT TITANS; Steve King, FAST LANE LOFT; Kirk Hardin, TRI-COUNTY LOFT; Gary Williams, BULLYEYE LOFT; Tina & Derik Webster, WEBSTER'S WINGS; Bill Kinyon, TOP GUN LOFT; and Keith Ellis, K & J Loft; to name a few.

The Antoine Jacops; the GOLDEN MATTENS, the ROGER LAUTERMANS grizzles, and the Denis Sapin pigeons have been hitting this race series for these fanciers and for me.

Today, the birds exercised very well. I think the stress of the headwind race brought many racers into form. I heard from several friends that their birds are now handling the best they have all season.

Due to unplanned activities today, I am just now blogging at a little after 10 pm. I'm going to quit for tonight, but be sure to read tomorrow's discussion of John Locke's principles of Tabula Rasa. I promise you it will change the way you manage your pigeons.

Tabula Rasa is a philosophical theory about learning. Many writers going back to Aristotle have written about the contribution of nature versus nurture to learning and performance. Nature represents an inner genetic potential which is a part of every living animal, especially humans. Nurture represents the outside world of experience and the influence of "others." This philosophical argument has existed through time between those who think our psyche and our performance is formed primarily according to our genetic potential and those who think the outside world or external forces primarily form our psyche and defines our performance. Tabula rasa is a theory about nurture. Translated, it means "blank slate." This learning theory states that people's psyches are blank slates at birth; and that life experiences and the influences of significant others write on the slate to form the content of the psyche.

At this point you may be asking yourself what has this theory of learning have to do with the game of racing pigeons. Let's assume for the moment that the tabula rasa theory is correct. Under the theory, squabs are hatched into their environment with a blank slate in their brains that will be filled with their life experiences. Also, from early childhood learning theory, science now knows that the first few months and years are very critical in the development of learning. The earlier learning exercises take place, assuming they are age appropriate, the more profound the learning.

To summarize, if we accept these theories as true, then we understand that learning is a function of life experiences written upon blank slates and that the first few months of learning and development are the most critical and most profound.

To adapt these theories to squabs, squabs learn from the moment they hatch. What they learn is recorded upon the blank slates of their minds. Further, life experiences written especially during the first few months of life are more profound that at later times in life. Baby humans and baby pigeons soak up life experiences with the outside world very fast early in life like a sponge. Because squabs want to survive and because the will to survive is planted very strong from birth, squabs desperately want to make sense of their lives to learn and understand how to survive. They are born with an insatiable desire to learn because they have roughly 30 days to adapt to their new world and surviving after their parents have kicked them out of their nests. If squabs could speak, they might ask the following questions: Where am I? Who is sitting on me? Who is feeding me? What am I eating? Where does food come from? What's this I'm sitting in? Why am I uncomfortable? What is that strange creature lumbering into and out of my eye sight?

How do squabs learn to seize control over their lives? As most of us know, they squeak. If they're thirsty, they squeak. If they're hungry, they squeak. Squabs initially try to control their world through squeaking. Squeaking is a method of demanding satisfaction from parents. Squeakers learn to imprint the person or parents that meet their needs and keep them alive. If you've ever hand raised a youngster, they will squeak for fanciers just like they squeak for their biological parents.

With these theories in mind, let me relate my own adaptation to the loft management system. I begin training young birds to play the pigeon racing game from the day they are hatched. Yes, that's right - from the 1st day of their life. How does this happen? Squabs are hatched in a nest box constructed and arranged to teach them exactly how I want them to play the game. First, their padded nest bowl is filled with pine needles. I use round nest pads that can be purchased at most supply houses in the nest bowl for cushion and support of squabs. Parents are required to build nests by selecting pine needles from the loft floor to their nest boxes. Nests have to have enough nesting material to prevents developmental maladies like crooked keels and splayed legs. Nest bowls are adjacent to feeding cups that hold grain, grit, pickstone and water. At first, squeakers can only hear their environment due to their closed eyes. I call pigeons by saying: come, come, come, come, come - many times in rapid succession. I teach squabs to associate food with the word come repeated several times in rapid succession depending upon circumstances. Other fanciers use whistles. Frankly, blowing a whistle at my age gives me a headache and causes hyperventilation. So I stay away from whistles. Breeders are fed every day. Squabs hear and eventually see this procedure occur at least once a day. So once a day, starting at hatching, squabs experience the feeding procedure. when squabs gain their eye sight, they watch their parents scurry over to the feeding cup when I call. At about 17 days, many youngsters are walking around the nest box and climbing in and out of their nest bowl. Like their parents, they learn to run to the feeding cup when I call them. They learn this at about 3 weeks of age. Feeding youngsters in the nest box with their parents drastically reduces the impact and stress of raising youngsters on breeders. From the 1st day of their life, I write upon the blank slate of squab's psyche's teaching them to bond with me; to come when called; and to eat and drink before they are removed from the nest box. Because of a knowledge of eating and drinking written on the squab's blank slate during the first three weeks of life, my youngsters do not need to be weaned. There is little weaning since most squeakers learn the knowledge to keep them alive, i.e., eating and drinking, before they reach 25 days of age.

All of this information is recorded on a blank slate in each pigeon's psyche. All of this information is learned before squabs reach 25 days of age. After removal from the breeding loft, young birds live in a race loft similarly constructed to the breeding loft.

Each day after hatching, squabs instinctively soak up knowledge and information about their external world in order to survive. Squabs learn whether you teach them or not. Therefore, as fanciers you have 3 choices:

Once in the young bird loft, I continue to teach young racers every day. Twice a day, I let the young racers out of the loft to exercise for one hour. At the end of their exercise period, they are called in the loft and fed. While exercising, the loft floor is scraped and swept clean. Sitting on the floor, I call the youngsters into the loft spreading a few handfuls of grain on the floor in front of me. I expect and require all of the racers to enter the loft immediately when called. Stragglers are not fed. Youngsters are hand fed in the evening until 1/3 of them drink. then feeding stops and they are allowed to clean up the remaining grains on the floor. At the morning feeding, youngsters are fed 1/3 of the ration they received the night before. In addition, the grain mix contains 1/3 barley. This same exercise and feeding procedure occurs twice a day at the same times each day. Stragglers are not fed until they trap immediately when called. If several stragglers are stubborn and do not eat for several days, so be it. Birds who refuse to learn are separated from the race loft. The fancier is the teacher; not the young birds. when hand feeding, sprinkle grains over your legs and lap. Require the youngsters to eat from your hand, your lap, or from wherever you wish. It important to keep the bond between racer and fancier strong and re-enforced on a daily basis. If I raise January 1 hatches that are weaned at 25 days, by exercising and feeding them twice a day, by September 11, when the race season usually starts, I have called them into the loft and fed them approximately 460 times!!! This amount of repetition transforms potentially wild untutored birds into sleek well-trained racers. While in the loft, young birds are expected to spend most of the time in their box.

Antoine Jacops taught me to be very rigid with young birds, by teaching them on a daily basis from day 1, to respond instinctively and quickly to various components of the widowhood race system. I watch each pigeon learn and respond to my teachings. I initially identify future champions by observing and documenting their intelligence and learning ability. I want to write my game plan on the blank slates of pigeon's psyches. I write on their slates almost every day just through the routine act of feeding. Teaching is not necessarily fancy or exciting. It is often fairly mundane and boring; but incredibly important and fruitful.

Do you write on the blank slates of your young birds? What do you write? Will it help your young birds win pigeon races?

I asked last Friday, did your pigeons know it was Friday? I repeat the same question today. when I entered the loft this morning, the young birds knew that I was going to open up the nest bowl side of the nest box. As they went in their bowl, several of them displayed in various degrees. After about 30 minutes, I let in their mates. This procedure was written into the blank slates of their psyches over the past 3 or 4 months such that they learn to anticipate daily routines. Just as I want them to anticipate Fridays, I also want them to anticipate Saturdays and race home to see their mates. Anticipation is a building block of motivation. Motivation is driven by anticipation. Pigeons that have not learned a motivational system during the early months of their development will seldom become the type of consistent dependable racers that know a system, and are motivated by what they anticipate.

Let me repeat a point from yesterday. If we assume that at birth, pigeons' psyches are blank slates upon which life experience writes, then it is up to us as fanciers who want to win to see that their life experience is planned and orchestrated in every detail. Virtually everything that my young birds experience 24 hours per day seven days a week is focused towards learning the widowhood race system. Even bad things. For example, when the young birds are routing well, I fly open loft several times a week fishing for hawks. The fear of hawks often motivates pigeons to fly a little extra. I also like them to be keenly aware of their circumstances at all times in order to evade and elude all predators. Occasionally I will lose a slow or unthinking or unaware youngster; but nature has a way of culling itself.

During the week in the loft, youngsters sit in their nest box most of the day. They fly to the floor to drink; and on a few occasions, to glance outside. The loft floor is scraped and swept twice a day. There are no grains, no grit, or pickstone on the floor to distract them onto the floor or from finding all their conveniences and necessities in the nest box. Their nest box is their world. Essentially there are two daily activities: exercising outside the loft and living in the nest box inside the loft.

Tomorrow is the last race of the season - a 300 mile or 480 kilometer race. The mates were placed with the race team at noon. The race team was basketed at 4 pm. All week, everything in the young birds daily experience has been orchestrated to be successful on Saturday at the 300.

Within reason, every detail of the racer's life experience was designed to prepare the young birds to meet their potential on race day. After that, it's up to the birds.

Tomorrow I will write on the opposite side of Tabula Rasa or "nurture"; NATURE & GENETIC PREDISPOSITION.

Today is beautiful - bright blue skies - north wind at about 5 mph. The race is from Waco, Texas. Our Federation flip flops from east to west every weekend. Last week we had a 300 mile race south of the eastern side of the Federation membership. This week, Waco is west of Tulsa and should benefit the western side of the Federation like the Keystone Club and Ponca City Club. The slight headwind may offset the west side advantage slightly.

I sent all 14 racers: 6 females and 8 males. 331-07, THE TOTAL PACKAGE, daughter of TOTAL RECALL, the fantastic breeding son of the GOLDEN MATTENS, was held out of last weeks race. She was leading the Ace pigeon in the results. I thought last weeks race would be harder and that after 6 weeks of super racing, 331-07 needed a break. After last week, she slipped to 3rd in the club 1 point behind Bill Kinyon's bird and 3 points behind Joe Liu's bird. Although I probably should have sent her last week to try to maintain her points, I think she may be able to pick up the points on the first two Ace bird candidates.

I received an email from Mo and Byron Williams thanking me and my good friend Mike Schmidt for selling them the parents of a futurity bird that was one of 6 on a drop for first place in the Chandler Challenge Young Bird Race hosted by good friend Bob Roberson in Chandler, Oklahoma. Last year, Mo and Byron bought a half brother to 331-07 (TOTAL RECALL and BLUE REFLECTION - both sired by the GOLDEN MATTENS) that sired their futurity winner. Their futurity bird clocked 3rd in the race and received 1/6th of the first 6 places prize money. I have posted their email and race results below:

We are sending you these race results to tell you thank you for selling us terrific birds. They produced the bird that is in the 3rd place position. He really had to go tough some tough conditions to get to the final race. We are very proud of him. The sire is "Houdini" AU 06 Team 148 BB and the Dam is "Hollywood Halo" Au 05 SSL 5283 BB. Our win is your win, so thank you very much! You can view the parents on our website: www.williamsfamilyloft.com. Houdini is in the Elite section and Halo is in the Gold Breeder section under the heading Our Birds.

Bob Roberson also sent me the results from several of his races in the Oklahoma City Combine. His best young birds this year have been out of LAMBERTON CUYPERS pigeons - several of which are down from the SHADOW, the great breeding son of Mike Ganus's PHANTOM. I will post those results soon.

There is a reason why Mike Ganus promotes the GOLDEN MATTENS and the PHANTOM among other great new breeders. Their children are great breeders. Although I have written extensively about 331-07, 461-07, BLIKSEMS SHADOW, is 4th in the Ace young bird points and has raced very well given her moult. I just sold the mother of BLIKSEMS SHADOW, a granddaughter of Gaby Vandenabeele's BLIKSEM, to Dr. Warren Shetrone who has recently relocated to Hawaii.

The theory of Tabula Rasa discounts the contribution of nature in the learning process. Let's turn the tables now and look at Nature as the primary driver of learning. It is hard for me to believe that the genetic code of a person or a pigeon has little influence over learning. From my experience, I believe that aptitudes are influenced heavily by genetic codes. Some people have an aptitude for understanding mechanical things. At very young ages, there are those children that just have to take something apart to see how it works and whether they can reconstruct it. There are children with aptitudes for music, math, photography, horticulture, business, and on and on. Aptitudes are mental abilities in which people feel comfortable and excited learning about a particular slice of life. There are physical attributes also. Not everyone can play football or basketball or soccer. Some of this depends upon the height and weight necessary to play the game. Offensive linemen are very large; but also quick. Tall basketball players are centers and forwards. Small er players are guards. All basketball players have an ability for eye-hand coordination to handle the basketball and spatial gifts to shoot the ball through a small hole 15 to 20 feet from the basket. Many basketball players can jump.

The power of genetics is more easy to understand when we see that performance birds breed performance birds. Like breeds like. In people, blondes breed blondes. Redheads too. So is height, weight, hearing, heart problems, diabetes, breast caner, and an endless number of other characteristics. In pigeons, red checks breed red checks. Whites tend to breed whites. White flights breed white flights. Pieds breed pieds.

The idea that people are people, or pigeons are pigeons, is an over simplistic way of looking at the world that is far more dysfunctional than helpful. Pigeons are as varied as people. If you have 6 children in your family, do you think they are all the same? Do you think all of them will be actors; or athletes, or musicians. Well, the answer for those of us who have children is an emphatic no! Yet, when we breed 25 young birds, we think they are the same and treat them the same. Do you manage your children like a flock? No, you treat each one separately. The same is true for pigeons. The rub comes in when we breed more young birds than we can manage as individuals. How many pigeons can you manage individually given your time, energy, resources, work schedules, family activities, etc.? Is the answer 5? 10? 15? 20? 30? 50? 75?

Pigeons are as individualized as people and require the same individualized management as people to play the pigeon racing game at the highest levels. Those fanciers who believe that good or great pigeons will perform at the highest levels regardless of the race management system in effect have not studied the nuances of game throughout history. As important as nature is, it requires management to unleash its power.

In summary, nature provides every pigeon with a genetic code that predisposes sex, eye color, feather color, size, flight length, number of flights (have you ever had racers with eleven flights? I have. So have other Belgian fanciers. If you ever see the name elfpenner in a Belgian or Dutch pedigree, it refers to eleven flights or pins as the Flemish and Dutch refer to flights.), weight, aggressiveness, meekness, wildness, tameness, and a countless number of other attributes. MAJOR KEY POINT: The genetic predispositions of your pigeons should match your own idiosyncrasies and tendencies as well as match the requirements of your race management system.

Since I use the widowhood system for young birds and old birds, I try to select those pigeons whose genetic code predisposes them to fit the widowhood system the way I manage it.

These are only a few of the genetically-based criteria on which I select young birds for the race team.

I generally raise about 150 young birds in the first and second rounds. The first week in June, I choose 24 of them to the young bird race team. I use a selection process based upon training tosses, general observation, handling, eye evaluation, balance, pedigree and intuition. I can't manage 150 pigeons individually. I can't manage 50 young birds individually. Twenty four pigeons is a comfortable number of young birds for me to manage.

The young bird racing season is now officially over. It is now time to review and assess the young bird team over the past two months; and to turn our attention to the breeding season. Regarding the assessment, over the next week I will take a look at the overall performances of each young bird. Perhaps there will be young birds that will not make the cut for the old bird team. I suspect that 213-07 will not make the team. This was one of my best hopefuls; but just never hit his stride. While he may make a great old bird, he won't get the chance due to his young bird performance. I am also concerned about 328-07, 32-07 (one of my very favorites) and 352-07 (his nest mate performed much better). Overall the 5 A series females flew very well; although 331-07 did not come home on the day from yesterday's 300. In the B series, 351-07, 12-07, 58-07 and 312-07 performed the best. Because 461-07 was one of two A birds on the drop in yesterday's , she may have a shot at Ace pigeon in the Club. For some reason, I actually hurt 331-07's chances in today's race because I held her out of last week's race. It seems like the rigors of last week actually helped today's racers perform. Obviously, I didn't predict it that way. This is an example of weather circumstances negating management decisions. In other words, the rest last week seems to have hurt the birds rather than help the birds. In past situations, key rest periods make a tremendous difference in performance. Not so today.

The breeders will be coupled in my breeding about December 1. They are receiving an annual medication regiment for canker, cocci, respiratory problems, and worms. Each week, they are treated for each condition. I do not use 4 in 1 treatments this time of the year. The only combination drug used is Pegosan powder for canker and cocci. I would also start putting your breeders on a light system. Coupling is stimulated by sunlight. In the springtime, the amount of daily sunshine increases. As the sunlight increases, it stimulates the brain in such a way as to ignite the passion for reproducing. In all animals, coupling is stimulated by increasing sunlight. In November and December, we have to trick mother nature and make the breeders think it is springtime. We can do this by leaving the interior lights on in the breeding loft only for 16 to 17 hours per day.

I breed winter or early youngsters in order to race young birds using the widowhood system. In Belgium, young bird racing begins in May with the 4 national young bird races held in August. The Flemish breed early youngsters because the racing season begins earlier than most clubs start racing in the USA. The same is practiced in all of Europe. It is virtually impossible to purchase early youngsters in Belgium because they are raced. Belgian fanciers generally sell youngsters from the third round and younger. The first two rounds are kept for racing.

My young birds are mated in June and July when they are six months old. Youngsters that are six months old and who are not sexually mature will not be chosen for the race team. KEY POINT: I breed early youngsters to be competitive in the young bird race series held in September and October.

Are you studying your pedigrees? Are you making notes about new matings? Are there pairs you want to leave together? Are there new pairs you want to couple?

Study your pedigrees with a blank note pad. Write down pairings that occur to you while you are re-reading your pedigrees. In my loft, there are any number of couples that could form an interesting pedigree. In my loft, coupling choices are seldom simple. Notes help me create interesting coupling choices. After I make these hypothetical choices, I handle the potential couples. I want to complement each breeder in the coupling. I don't like to breed two large pigeons together or two small pigeons together. Complement your matings. Couples should look good together. By that I mean they should look balanced together. If a pair looks awkward together, they may produce youngsters that look awkward. KEY POINT: Couples should complement each other genetically and physically. Just because a couple could breed youngsters with a great pedigree is not enough. Couples must also breed excellent physical specimens. Occasionally, you will have a breeder that does not breed true to type. Some breeders breed much bigger or smaller youngsters than you would expect from the size of the parent. This type of breeder is difficult to couple because the youngsters turn out differently that you might predict.

BREED YOUNGSTERS WITH A GOOD PEDIGREE (GENOTYPE) & PHYSICAL STRUCTURE (PfemaleOTYPE) & HYBRID VIGOR

A good breeding program combines a minimum of three essential components: genotype, pfemaleotype and hybrid vigor.

In order to balance these three components, I like to breed together well built pigeons that are first cousins, aunt-nephews, uncle-nieces, second - third - or fourth generation cousins. These couples produce youngsters with a homogeneous genotype, good pfemaleotype and hybrid vigor. I seldom breed father-daughter, mother-son, and full siblings. I occasionally breed half siblings, primarily for breeders.

Antoine Jacops likes for his best pigeons to have a pedigree with 70% of his family ancestry and 30% of an outstanding outcross. If you study his pedigrees over the last 20 years, most of his outcrosses have been sisters to 1st National winners. The past 10 years, he has outcrossed a full sister to the KANIBAAL - 1st National Ace Belgium 1996, into his pedigrees. This full sister is an outstanding female that has improved his already excellent pigeons immensely. Below is her picture. This female accounts for much of the hybrid vigor in Antoine's pedigrees.

Antoine has also outcrossed to several key pigeons he received from Flor Engels before Flor's death several years ago. Flor Engels was one of the best fanciers in Belgium throughout his lifetime and is a Master in the Sport. Since his passing, Flor's sons have continued racing very well in Belgium. I met Flor Engels in 1990 and was the beneficiary of his wisdom. He showed a 1st National race winner to Antoine and me in the following picture. While I was at his loft, he turned down $25,000 for the winner in the picture from a Japanese fancier.

when you bring in an outcross to your breeding loft, make sure the outcross is the best possible pigeon you can obtain. The outcross can be an outcross or a line bred pigeon. Usually, two separate line-bred families make excellent outcrosses. But an outcross can be an excellent outcross. The main thing you should look for is an outstanding outcross from very successful racing pigeons. Outcrossing is not a time to gamble on your future youngsters.

Do not be afraid to try a new type of pigeon as long as it is a good one. Several weeks ago, I had an outstanding pigeon down from the excellent birds of my partner in Belgium, Jef Cuypers. TEAM 527 would have made an excellent outcross for just about anyone. I started the bidding at $150 and received no bids. This is outrageous!!! It costs over $200 just to import a pigeon from Europe. $150 for a pigeon of this caliber is a gift!!! The only reason I can come up with is that few people know of the super pigeons of Jef Cuypers. I received an email from a fancier in Trinidad who liked the blog. He said he had traveled all over the world and that I had one of the best breeding lofts he had known about and could not understand why every pigeon was not taken at the advertised prices. I thanked him for his generous comments and suggested that in time, people may become more familiar with some of these pigeons. Although he is one of my best friends, it is still remarkable the power GFL has on the American buying public. With a GFL band, TEAM 527 should have been priced at $750 and quickly sold.

Back to the subject at hand, bring excellent outcrosses into your best racers every third time you pair them. In other words, outcross, then line breed twice, then outcross again. This regiment will ensure that your best pigeons will have a good genotype, strong pfemaleotype, and excellent hybrid vigor.

when you purchase a pigeon online, it can be a scary proposition. Look at the quality of the pigeons in the pedigree. If the quality shows up in the first generation, it is probably a good purchase. If the quality is in the grandparents' generation, make sure than more than one grandparent is a good pigeon. Be skeptical of a pedigree in which a grandchild is for sale of an excellent pigeon and the excellent pigeon is the only good grandparent in the pedigree. What that means is that 25% of the pedigree is down from the excellent pigeon and that 75% of the pedigree is down from something else. Make sure that most, if not all, of the grandparents are outstanding pigeons either by performance and/or breeding.

Warning: Not every excellent pigeon offered for sale takes a good picture. If you like the pedigree but don't particularly like the picture, talk to the seller by email or telephone to get more information. Although my son Jeremy is a great photographer, not every picture is an outstanding picture. Young birds and old birds react strangely in a picture box and may not give the best possible pose for the picture. This should not stop the inquisitive buyer. when making a purchase, ask questions.

P.S. 527 was purchased for $150 by a former customer that saw her on my website.

Next time I will post several pedigrees and we will discuss them in detail and how the pedigree contributes to the breeding success of the pigeons in the pedigrees. Don't miss it.

I like European birds, specifically Belgian birds, because of the Belgian racing system. Belgian racing begins in May of every year. The last several years, France has temporarily blocked the onset of Belgian racing. Consequently, the last several seasons began by racing east into Germany instead of southwest into France. There are 4 national young bird races in August ending in early September. Racing generally ceases in October.

In my area, young bird racing begins the weekend after dove season opens and last 8 weeks. The local cultural logic has always professed to let the crazies shoot themselves out the first weekend in dove season. After the first weekend, logic lore purports that the danger to homing pigeons decreases significantly beginning the second weekend in dove season. That is why we wait to fly young birds. Many people also believe that it is too hot to race in Oklahoma in August. I think it all depends upon the distance flown in August. The truth is, 60 to 100 mile sprint races can be flown easily in almost any type of weather. In any event, we race an 8 week series in the Northeast Oklahoma RPF. The Belgian young bird racing series can be up to 20 weeks in length. Which system do you think is better? If you had to make a judgment about a young bird team, would you like 20 weeks to make your determination or 8 weeks? My answer is a resounding 20 weeks!!!

KEY POINT: In my opinion, the Belgian racing model is far superior to the system in northeast Oklahoma and most of the USA. Better systems produce better information about young birds. It is much easier to identify outstanding young birds in the Belgian racing system that most USA racing systems. So while I believe that excellent racing homers are located in the USA, my first choice is always to buy super youngsters in Belgium. Six or eight races are not enough to really evaluate young birds.

Sorry I haven't written lately. I'm finally getting over the flu. I'm better now. Here we go again.

I'm calling this section Chapter One - Introduction because we are now in the Introductory Chapter of the 2008 Young Bird Race series. Your success in next years young bird race series starts with the moult and vibrant health of your breeders. Hopefully, you are feeding your breeders a balanced feed that will contribute to a healthy moult. In addition to fresh grit, give them pickstone to make sure they get additional essential minerals. I add RED CELL Supplement to the feed several times a week. I have spoken of RED CELL earlier. It can be purchased in my area in feed stores for horses and cattle; although I think several of the pigeon supply houses may carry it. I'll check on its availability and let you know.

In addition to a healthy balanced grain, grit, pickstone, and Red Cell, you should be medicating your breeders for canker, cocci, respiratory, and worms at a minimum. If your breeders have other more specialized problems, medicate for them also. KEY POINT: By December 1, 2007, your breeders must be in vibrant health to raise quality young birds. Be sure to let your breeders bath weekly and treat them for external parasites on a continual basis. One last major point, if possible, it is best to let your breeders out in the sun as much as possible. Whatever it takes, let them have several hours per day of total sunlight at a minimum.

It is time to place your breeders on 16 to 17 hours of light per day. In order to help your breeders do their job raising babies starting December 1, we need to help them. We can help them by simulating springtime. This week, it is time to start simulating springtime. The sexual drive in animals is stimulated by light. Springtime is the time for the onset of reproduction. The days get longer. The temperature gets warmer. Seeds grow creating an increased food supply for what will now be a significant increase in population. Nature provides a tremendous support system for the process of procreation. The trouble is, springtime doesn't start December 1. Because of that, we need to simulate springtime inside the breeding loft. This begins with light.

Let's discuss light for a moment. There may be some of you that have experimented with different types of light more then I. If so, let me know your success or failure and I'll post it. I am not sure what difference it makes whether you use 60, 75, or 100 watts of incandescent light; but I would use the new energy saving light bulbs that use far less energy than the old ones. In addition, I have also used full spectrum lights. I have had success breeding winter young birds with both types of light. I believe that the function of light often depends upon the size and structure of the breeding section. I try to adequately illuminate the entire breeding section and certainly that area of the breeding section containing the nest boxes. I like the light to shine into the boxes rather than being placed overhead creating dark nest boxes. My lights are located on the ceiling at the top of the wall across from the breeding boxes. While I like the nest boxes to have light, I don't want to create a bright light in the boxes. In the springtime, sunlight usually enters the breeding loft indirectly creating lighting, but not glare. I try to simulate the same artificial condition with the lights in the breeding loft.

Although the breeders will not be mated until December 1, it is time to introduce artificial lighting to let the breeders begin to adjust to it. During this time, continue to study your breeders in order to mate the best pairs possible. Study your young bird race results if you raced this year in order to gauge the performance of the youngsters bred in 2007. This data will also help you know whether to leave certain pairs together or split them up in favor of new matings.

I have talked about the pigeon racing game. People play the game. Fanciers use pigeons to play the game. Therefore, people, or fanciers are the most important part of the game. In other words, you are the most important part of the game. Because of this, you should have a "business" or "management" plan with specific goals and a detailed strategy to obtain your goals. Begin to keep a plan in a three ring binder. Begin your plan with goals for next year. Think about your goals for next year. Write them down. If your goals include playing the game more successfully, then begin with your breeders now. Study race results, study pedigrees, and handle your breeders. The more time you spend pairing your birds, the better your results should be next young bird race series.

Currently, I spend several hours per day evaluating and reevaluating new breeding prospects to use in 2008. I like to handle prospective breeders from 6 to 10 times in order to really understand their physical strengths and weaknesses. After each handling, I rate each prospect on balance, muscle, feather, size, weight, wing, flights, back, vent, chest, form and structure, shape of head and wattle, and eye. Eye characteristics include iris color, iris structure, consistency or depth, circle of correlation, and inner muscle. After handling each prospect up to 10 times, their ratings and averaged. Based upon this average and a healthy dose of experience and intuition, prospects are labeled either widow or breeder.

Begin your 2008 Young Bird Race Series tomorrow by turning your complete attention to your breeders, your breeding program, and your management plan to accomplish your goals.

Example 1 is the pedigree of BELG 05 "6046873," a full brother to Antoine Jacops Ace Pigeon in 2004 in the Antwerp Union Belgium. "873" is breeding here in Tulsa, Oklahoma along with several other full brothers and sisters to the 2004 Ace. I hope you can read the pedigree clearly. Let's begin to analyze the logic of the breeding strategy. Most strikingly, the KLEINE CAHORS appears 4 times in this pedigree: once as a Great Grandparent and 3 times as a Great Great Grandparent. Twice the KLEINE CAHORS was bred to the SCHOON BLAUW (Beautiful Blue) female and two times he was mated to different females. Of the 16 Great Great Grandparents in the extreme right column of breeders in the pedigree, the KLEINE CAHORS appears 3 times. Moving left one generation to the Great Grandparents column of breeders, 4 of the Great Grandparents are children of the KLEINE CAHORS and 1 of the Great Grandparents is the KLEINE CAHORS himself. Moving left again to the Grandparents column of the pedigree, 3 of the 4 Grandparents are Grandchildren to the KLEINE CAHORS and the 4th Grandparent is a daughter of the KLEINE CAHORS.

The KLEINE CAHORS was an Ace Pigeon in the Antwerp Union Belgium in 1985 and won 1st Olympiade in Portugal in 1987 - a tremendous award and honor. He is one of Antoine's best racers and breeders. He is a "small" or "KLEINE" son of his great racer CAHORS that won 1st prize from Cahors among other great prizes. Each of the 4 times he appears in the pedigree, he was bred to a meuleman female bred down from Willy Van Berendonk's tremendous son of Karel Meuleman's Golden Couple, Den 78000. So in addition to the pedigree documenting that Belg 05 "873" is significantly line-bred to the KLEINE CAHORS, he is also line-bred to Den 78000.

There are 3 notable outcrosses in the pedigree. The first appears as the second pair of breeders from the top of the Great Great Grandparent column: a pair of Janssens direct from the Janssen Brothers. Antoine has been very good friends with the Janssen Brothers for many many years and has always been able bring home their very best pigeons. The other two outcrosses appear in the Great Grandparents column. The first is BELG 96 6286120, Antoine's tremendous full sister to the infamous KANNIBAAL - 1st Ace Middle Distance Belgium 1996 and one of the most prolific breeders in the Sport worldwide. Mike Ganus advertised a daughter of the KANNIBAAL several weeks ago on ipigeon.com and started the bidding at $15,000. We are breeding out of several breeders out of this female in Tulsa. The second outcross is Belg 88 6470721, a full sister to Tom & Karl Hufkens 1st National Ace in Belgium.

Let's try to summarize this information to make some sense of it for you, Antoine won a 1st Ace in 2004 in the Antwerp Union Belgium with a young bird whose pedigree is over 50% line-bred to an Ace Pigeon and Olympiade winner, a tremendous breeding son of one of the most famous breeding couples in pigeon racing history, the Golden Couple of Karel Meuleman, and 3 outcrosses: 1 from the Janssen Brothers and 2 sisters to 2 National Ace pigeons in Belgium. Just from the make-up of the pedigree, do you think the 2004 Ace pigeon was bred to be an Ace? Antoine tries to construct a pedigree that is made up of 70% his "family" of birds and 30% of outcrosses. The 70% line-breeding means that a young bird will probably breed very well. The 30% outcrossing means that a young bird will probably race very well. Antoine Jacops typically breeds a dual-purpose pigeon that will breed and race at a very high level if managed properly. His pigeons also race from 100 to 700 miles in fast, slow, hot or hard weather.

Please study this pedigree very carefully. Spend some time looking at it and compare it to other pedigrees of birds in your loft or on any auction site or anywhere else you can find them. Compare those pedigrees with this one. As that exercise will clearly and plainly show you, Antoine Jacops breeds some of the finest racing and breeding pigeons in the world - bar none. It's a fact. And this pedigree clearly proves it. Remember, this is a pedigree of an Ace pigeon in one of the hardest regions of the world to race pigeons that has also now bred excellent racers. A beautiful daughter of the 2004 Ace has been producing excellent pigeons in Tulsa.

Example 2 is a beautiful pedigree that demonstrates line breeding to an outcross. BELG 04 6466958 is a full brother to the NUDIST. The NUDIST won 2 1st prizes in the Antwerp Union in 2004. He since has been Antoine Jacops best racer over the last few years. He earned his name when he came home from a race minus many of his feathers from some type of accident during the race. Antoine, who has a tremendous sense of humor, dubbed him the NUDIST. The father of BELG 04 958 is a direct from Flor Engels. He is a son of the tremendous breeder, BELG 91 6615710, who is a grandson of the OUDE LICHTE, BELG 78 6084723, one of Flor Engels foundation breeders.

The mother of BELG 04 958 is 25% Engels and 75% Jacops "old family." Of the 4 Great Grandparents in the mothers pedigree, 1 is BELG 91 6615710, and 3 are down from the KLEINE CAHORS or is the KLEINE CAHORS himself.

To summarize, about 65% of the pedigree is the old family of Flor Engels and 35% is the old family of Antoine Jacops. The 65 to 35 ratio assures that the NUDIST and his brothers (there are 3 breeding in Tulsa) are both great racers and great breeders. In this case, the prepotency (breeding ability) comes from two sources, (1) the line breeding to the old family of Flor Engels and (2) the line breeding to the old family of Antoine Jacops. The hybrid vigor comes from the contrast between the two families in the pedigree.

These two fanciers are legendary racers in the Antwerp Union in Belgium and raise some of the best racing homers in the world. Although Flor Engels passed several years ago, his sons race very well and the Engels pigeons are in great demand in Belgium and all over the world.

Picture: On the Right: Flor Engels showing a 1st National race winner to Antoine Jacops (left) and Dr. John Lamberton (taking picture).

Very important!!! Example 1 is a pedigree of a full brother to the 2004 Ace Young Bird in the Antwerp Union in Belgium. In that pedigree, about 70% of the pedigree is the old family of Jacops which gives the pigeon prepotency. The other 30% is made up of 3 outcrosses which gives the pigeon hybrid vigor. In Example 1, the outcrosses are not related to each other. In Example 2, the pedigree of a full brother to the tremendous racer NUDIST demonstrates its prepotency by line-breeding two separate elite families rather than just one elite family as demonstrated in Example 1. While line-breeding two separate families adds to prepotency, the contrast between the two families creates hybrid vigor.

KEY POINT: The best dual purpose (racing and breeding) pedigrees are those which demonstrate prepotency and hybrid vigor. Prepotency comes from line-breeding. Hybrid vigor comes from contrasting or outcrossing.

In Example 1, the outcrossing was not line-bred or related. In Example 2, the outcross was line-bred. Super pigeons are built through effective line-breeding and effective outcrossing. Building a super pedigree increases the probability that pigeons are both prepotent and vigorous. Without this plan, pedigrees become random and niche pairs are discovered by luck or random chance.

In my opinion, to be the best breeder possible, you must decide if your breeding program is going to be based upon data and logic or random chance. Antoine Jacops breeds superior racers and breeders because he is a master breeder; not because he is lucky. Without a structured and purposeful plan to breed homing pigeons that reflects a superior physical structure, prepotency and hybrid vigor, your breeding success will be a function of random luck. The pigeons that I race, breed, and sell are all bred based upon a breeding plan that creates tremendous prepotency by line-breeding, tremendous hybrid vigor by outcrossing, and beautiful and powerful physical specimens through careful evaluation in the hand. As you can see by the first two Examples, there are many effective ways to accomplish this goal.

Before I go into another pedigree. let me mention that I suggest you handle your breeders, your late hatches, your young birds, etc. to become familiar with them through your hands. It will help you to develop the feeling in your hands so that you can get a mental picture of your birds through feeling. when you handle your birds, close your eyes. Develop a sense of each of your birds through your hands - without the benefit of your eyes. It will give you information that will improve your breeding program immensely!!! I handle my birds at night using a flashlight. I use the flashlight to catch each pigeon. I gently handle each bird in the dark. If you do this on a regular basis, you will find that the same birds can change from day to day. The change will generally be a function of food, water, exercise, and health. I can identify each widowhood male by handling them with my eyes closed. If you race 60, 75, 90 pigeons, it is impossible to develop this information for each bird. If you race 18 pigeons, for example, handling each pigeon is less difficult. KEY POINT: You will breed more balanced and structurally correct pigeons if you mate similar or complementary pairs together. Without proper handling, it is difficult to compare and contrast breeding pairs. Even those of you with a great eye will benefit from also using your hands to evaluate your pigeons.

Example 3 is a pedigree of a beautiful White Antoine Jacops male that has bred excellent racers. In 2007 young birds, he bred TEAM 58, a great young male that flew well during the season. The WHITE male'S father is the LAST DIAMOND,

the last breeding son of the DIAMOND ACE, a long distance 1st Ace in the Antwerp Union Belgium for Jacops.

The WHITE male'S maternal grandfather is the FINE CAHORS, a 1/2 brother to the DIAMOND ACE.

So, 1/2 of the WHITE maleS pedigree is from the pigeons of Antoine Jacops. There are two outcrosses in the pedigree: the excellent pigeons of Flor Engels and the outstanding pigeons of Gaby Vandenabeele.

With this pedigree, there are numerous ways to effectively breed the WHITE male:

The WHITE male'S pedigree gives me numerous options to create prepotency and hybrid vigor. TEAM 58 is another outcross between the WHITE male and the best long distance pigeons of the excellent Oliviers-Devos partnership the consistently scores at the long distance or fond races in Belgium.

Please click on the day of the month to read more blog. I have changed the format of the blog because this page was getting too big.

Stay tuned and thank you..................................... Dr. John and Morgan Lamberton

TABLE 1: The following schedule is based upon basketing Friday nights and racing on Saturdays.

DAY OF THE WEEK	FEED ADDITIVES	FEED AMOUNT	WATER

SUNDAY	Red Cell or Zell Oxygen & Optimix	AM - 1/3rd of Saturday PM Feeding	Medicate for Respiratory, Coccidiosis, and Canker.
		PM - *Hand Feed Until 1/3 Go to Water	**Worm every two weeks.

MONDAY	Red Cell or Zell Oxygen & Optimix	AM - 1/3rd of Sunday PM Feeding	Tea/Bronchofit & Bio Duif
		PM - *Hand Feed Until 1/3 Go to Water

TUESDAY	BMW(Brewers Yeast) & 4 Oils(Garlic Oil)	AM - 1/3rd of Monday PM Feeding	Vita Duif
		PM - *Hand Feed Until 1/3 Go to Water

WEDNESDAY	Red Cell or Zell Oxygen & Optimix	AM - 1/3rd of Tuesday PM Feeding	Aminovit or Vitamins
		PM - * Hand Feed Until 1/3 Go to Water

THURSDAY	Plain Feed Only	AM - 1/3rd of Wednesday PM Feeding	Plain Water
		*HAND FEED ALL THEY CAN EAT

FRIDAY	Plain Feed Only	AM - 1/4 of Thursday PM Feeding	AM - Vita Duif
		PM - Feed According to Race Distance & Weather. As a rule, feed until most of the racers go to water.	PM - Pure Water

SATURDAY	1/3 Depurative Mixture of Many Small Seeds - 1/3 Safflower - 1/3 Barley	Two Soupspoons Depurative upon arrival from the race. Two Soupspoons again with mate in the evening.	Electrolytes - PEDIALYTE

PLACE	LOFT	BAND NUMBER	COLOR/SEX	TO WIN
1	TNT TITANS	AU 07 TNT 109	female	00.00
2	LAMBERTON CUYPERS	AU 07 TEAM 461	BLUE WF PIED female	00.12
3	LAMBERTON CUYPERS	**AU 07 TEAM 26	BLUE female	00.13
4	LAMBERTON CUYPERS	AU 07 TEAM 331	BLUE female	7.18
5	TNT TITANS	AU 07 TNT 132	female	8.22
		**Pick Bird

December 2007
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday

				6	7	8
ICE STORM 9	NO ELECTRICITY DUE TO ICE STORM
NO ELECTRICITY DUE TO ICE STORM				20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

November 2007
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
				November 1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	December 1

October 2007
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
	October 1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

September 2007
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
September 2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
September 30

Series	Ring	Club - 49 birds	Combine - 151 birds	Federation - 264 birds
A	331-07	3	4	7
	26-07	11	25	40
	461-07	12	26	41
	162-07	23	49	74
Series	Ring	Club - 221 birds	Combine - 707 birds	Federation - 1272 birds
B	312-07	2	4	4
	352-07	19	47	68
	328-07	28	90	144

	Sincerely yours in the sport, Mo and Byron Williams Slidell, La.
	WinSpeed-1 CHANDLER CHALLENGE 10/30/07-08:24 Weekly Race Report Page 1 Open and Sportsman Category Name: WACOCC Young Bird Race Flown: 10/29/2007 Released: 08:00 Birds: 15 Lofts: 1 Station: WACO Weather (Rel) (Arr) POS NAME BAND NUMBER CLR X ARRIVAL MILES TOWIN YPM PT 1 R. GLINSKI 15 7243 AU 07 AAC NONE C 14:15:05 282.333 00.00 1324.789 0 2 MUSGROVE/CASSIDY 7707 AU 07 TULS NONE C 14:15:07 2/ 15 00.01 1324.672 0 --------------------------------- Above are 10 percent ------------------------ 3 WILLIAMS FAMILY 746 AU 07 WILL NONE C 14:15:32 3/ 15 00.26 1323.202 0 --------------------------------- Above are 20 percent ------------------------ 4. BILL RIXEY 22838 AU 07 ARPU NONE C 14:15:34 4/ 15 00.29 1323.084 0 5 HONG DE KUO 37106 AU 07 TIA NONE C 14:16:00 5/ 15 00.54 1321.560 0 6 RAY PERKINS 559 AU 07 PRO NONE C 14:16:01 6/ 15 00.55 1321.501 0 ABOVE ON FIRST DROP AND WILL SPLIT 6 MONEY PLACES. 7 MUSGROVE/CASSIDY 7725 AU 07 TULS NONE C 15:00:17 7/ 15 45.12 1182.313 0 8 LARRY ROTA 1716 AU 07 PAT NONE C 15:00:19 8/ 15 45.13 1182.219 0 9 MUSGROVE/CASSIDY 7708 AU 07 TULS NONE C 15:00:20 9/ 15 45.15 1182.172 0 10 WALT STAMMER 47 AU 07 DIAS NONE C 15:02:47 10/ 15 47.42 1175.322 0 11 DENNIS WEINREICH 1915 AU 07 POP NONE C 15:31:07 11/ 15 01:16 1101.503 0 12 A. THIBODEAUX 238 AU 07 CAJU NONE C 17:30:52 12/ 15 03:15 870.442 0