There are about 100 young birds training around the loft at this time. This week, a few males and a few females will be selected to race on a unique young bird widowhood system while the remaining young birds will either race to the perch or be eliminated from the group of potential racers. The young males and females that are selected to race on the Belgian widowhood system will usually be those that are the most sexually advanced; although there are several that will be selected based only upon their pedigree and road training performance whether they are sexually active or not. The unique widowhood method of racing young birds that I learned from Antoine Jacops is one in which young males are coupled with old females and young females are coupled with old males. It is critically important that the old males and old females are very amorous and extremely accepting of new mates. There are many older pigeons that do not make good widowhood mates. Over time, I have selected a small group of older pigeons that are excellent widowhood mates with young birds. These pigeons do not race themselves; but are invaluable to a young bird racing specialist who races young birds like old birds on the widowhood system.

The process of choosing the right couple is usually tedious and time consuming and often takes up to a couple of weeks to complete. In order for the system to work at its optimum level, there must be instant and passionate chemistry between the new couples. Young males are usually extremely aggressive. Consequently, the older females are protected from the young males by confining them in one-half of the nest box where a young male cannot hurt a potential mate by pecking her too severely in his excitement of being coupled for the first time.

At first, I select one particular young male and confine an older female in one-half of his nest box and watch their reaction to each other. If it is explosively passionate, I leave the couple together in their perspective sides of the nest box and record the ring number of the older female next to the ring number of the young male on the Mating Record. If the reaction between the newly paired couple is indifferent or does not have the required passion, the older female is exchanged for another one. I often try 5 or 6 females on a young male before I find a "natural" or optimum fit. Most celibate males and females will display with each other. But there will usually be a particular mating that displays a much more passionate chemistry than other pairings will show.

Pigeons are not dumb!!!!! Pigeons are incredibly smart. Fanciers are dumb when they treat pigeons like chickens or like some other inanimate object. Great fanciers who have learned the intricate nuances of coupling or mating have a tremendous advantage over fanciers who think that they can throw any two pigeons together and create a good racing couple. Wrong - Wrong - Wrong. Do people react the same when dating? Are there women who couple better with one man than another? Are there men who are more attracted to one woman over others? Of course!!! The very same relational chemistry is true in pigeons.

I have often heard that fanciers have tried the widowhood system and did not have the results of other fanciers who use the widowhood racing method. It may be because widowhood is a game that must be practiced and learned in order to play well. Pigeon will race home much faster if they feel extremely passionate about their mates. The greater the passion - the faster the pigeon. IMPORTANT!!!! Please understand my following statement if you remember nothing else at all. Speed is predicated upon a racing homer's intelligence and passion more than any other aspects of racing pigeons - more than wing theory - more than back strength - more than eye sign - more than any type of grain or additive to the water - more than any type of racing tonic that anyone formulates. Speed is first and foremost a function of the intelligence and passion of a homing pigeon. when you throw in heart and stamina - you have created a great long distance champion like DeSinta.

DeSinta - the white male that is an Antoine Jacops cross and that has recently scored 10th in the state 400 mile race and 2nd in the 600 mile long distance special race has intelligence, tremendous passion, heart, and stamina. when he enters the loft after 12 hours on the wing, he immediately looks for his box and his mate before he looks for food or water. He is a true long distance champion and will enter the breeding loft after the 600 mile race this weekend.

Pigeons are not a flock bird. Although they do tend to group in flocks, they will only act like a flock bird if they are treated as flock birds. If they are herded into small lofts with small perches, they will adapt to their environment and mirror their surroundings and often race poorly. If only a few special young birds are kept in spacious loft sections with plenty of room and an adequate nest box for each racer, they will adapt to their environment and mirror their surroundings and often race very well. IMPORTANT!!! The reason that I advocate the Belgian system of only racing a few excellent pigeons is not because I have something against racing a lot of pigeons. It is because it is nearly impossible to treat racers as special individuals if there are 50 or more pigeons in the loft. Each fancier would need to become a professional pigeon racer and spend 12 to 16 hours per day in the loft in order to adequately house and train 50 or more racers adequately on the widowhood racing system. I have absolutely nothing against racing large teams of pigeons as long as each pigeon has a nest box, a mate, and is trained as an individual with multiple short single-tosses from many directions. What I am against is flock managing 50 or 60 or more pigeons hoping that one or two of them will get lucky each week and race well. That type of racing is not consistent with the Belgian racing model and represents a cruelty to racing pigeons that I do not support. As a sport, we cannot dump thousands of pigeons all over the US each week of the race season to die or become wild because the pigeons were flock trained and weren't ready to fly the races in which they were sent.

In conclusion for today, this week I have selected what I consider to be a few very special young males to race on widowhood. After each young male has claimed a nest box, each will be presented a bevy of older females. At some point in this mating process, I hope to discover the most passionate older mate for each young male. The time spent on this discovery this week in June will usually pay big dividends when the young bird race series commences in September in Oklahoma.

In the next Blog, I will discuss the unique reason why young birds are coupled with old birds in order to race the young bird race series at the top of the race sheet.

when determining how many young birds or old birds to race, it often helps to do the math. Let's say that it takes 5 minutes per day on the average to properly care for each racer. Five minutes is an average amount of time per day based upon the time it takes to scrape and clean each racer's nest box and nest bowl twice a day, the time it takes to medicate each racer, the time it takes to handle each racer to inspect it for broken flights, overall feather condition, bumps and bruises, etc., the time it takes to manage each racer's mate and to clean the mates perch or open box, etc. Based upon this estimate of time to completely manage each racer on a daily basis, if the old bird or young bird race teams consist of 12 pigeons, the daily amount of time it would take to properly manage the team would be 5 times 12 or 60 minutes (one hour). If there are 24 racers, the daily time estimate would be 2 hours per day. 36 pigeons would require 3 hours per day to properly manage and 48 pigeons would require 4 hours per day to properly manage.

If the racers are treated as an indiscriminate flock, however, 48 pigeons could be managed in far less time. If it is much easier to care for a team of pigeons as a flock, the question then becomes do pigeons race best as unique individuals managed as separate entities or do they race best as a flock or group in which all pigeons are treated the same? Belgian widowhood is primarily practiced by most fanciers such that each pigeon is a unique and distinct racer - managed and cared for one racer at a time. Belgian widowhood is not a flock management system. The only Belgian fancier that I ever met that practiced widowhood in mass was William Geerts. Geerts would race up to 150 widowhood males. But Geerts was a professional pigeon fancier and employed several fanciers including his son to help manage his game. He certainly did not manage his racers strictly by himself.

In my experience, pigeons race faster and are more accountable and dependable when raced as distinct individuals rather than managed as a flock. And, due to my physical restraints, it is not possible for me to properly manage more than about 24 pigeons at a time on a race team. Less than ten pigeons would be ideal.

In the case of young birds, the only time the young birds are managed as a flock or as an indiscriminate group is from weaning until the first week of June. During the first week in June, a race team is selected from the total pool of youngsters in the loft and moved into the widowhood loft. June is the time when young birds begin training as distinct individuals. They are given a nest box, a nest bowl and a mate. Since the young bird race series begins the second week of September, the young birds have about 3 months to learn the widowhood racing system of motivation. One of the best ways to maximize the time it takes to teach youngsters the widowhood system is to couple them with old birds who have raced previously on widowhood and know the system well. Older mates will teach younger mates how to act and behave in the nest box. Youngsters will observe the behavior of their mate and mirror it in their own behavior. For instance, young males will follow their older mates into the nest box and will stay with them in the nest box and will learn to become very attached to the nest box because of the knowledge and passionate behavior of the female. This type of learning is called "vicarious" learning and is one of the fastest ways to modify behavior in animals and people. By using older mates to teach youngsters how to behave in the widowhood motivational racing system, youngsters can usually learn very quickly the nuances of the widowhood motivational racing system and can be ready to race on widowhood in early September. If two youngsters are coupled together rather than a youngster and an older mate, both youngsters are new to the widowhood system. In this case, both youngsters will need to learn the system from scratch. This training method takes far more time and energy by most fanciers to perfect. Mating youngsters to old birds is an easy and very effective short cut to racing young birds on a very productive motivational system, i.e., the widowhood motivational system.

Since the old bird race series is nearly over, we can now turn our complete attention to the young bird race team. We can decide how many youngsters to race and on which motivational system. I completely understand that racing all of the young birds that were raised to the perch and to feed is extremely easy. Fanciers that utilize this method avoid the risk of personally selecting their best pigeons and managing them as unique competitors. But its not the Belgian way to race young birds and it is a system that is rather easy to beat for those fanciers who have good pigeons and who get the most out of each pigeon on the race team with a superior motivational system.

If personally selecting the best young birds is hard to do, then crate them up now and take them 2 miles - 5 miles - 10 miles and 20 miles in different directions. By the fourth toss, many of the best pigeons will become self-evident. If they do not become obvious, keep road tossing until they do. Why is this so important? Because less than 20% of the young bird race team will win most of the young bird prizes. Pigeons tend to perform at the level of the poorest pigeon on the team. when the poor pigeons are eliminated from the team, the other better pigeons perform better. That is why fanciers often perform best towards the end of the race season. Why? Because the poorer pigeons have been lost and eliminated from the team and the better pigeons perform best when they do not mirror the behavior of the worst pigeons. I try to select the top 20% of the young birds in June rather than wait until the races commence in September. This way, I can spend much more time with fewer pigeons and I think that it will make a difference when the young birds are raced this fall and particularly when they are raced as yearlings. As yearlings, young birds raced as widows during the young bird race series will be racing the widowhood system for the second time while other fanciers are trying to teach some type of motivational system for the first time or practicing no motivational system at all.

Dr. Robert Zoellner is a local optometrist in Tulsa and a former pigeon fancier now turned thoroughbred race horse owner. when Robert is training his horses at the race track, I wonder if he houses all of his horses in training in one giant stall or indoor corral? I wonder if he leads his horses onto the track and races them around the track as a rider less herd? Do you think that he hires several wranglers to chase twenty horses in training around the track like a remuda on a trail drive? Instead, I bet Robert keeps each horse in an individual stall and employs one or more exercise jockeys to saddle each horse on the race team and exercise them around the track individually. Although the thought of stalling 20 or 40 or 60 prize thoroughbred race horses together in a large indoor corral or training 60 race horses on the race track as a remuda or rider less herd by a group of wranglers may seem ridiculous, so does training 60 racing homers strictly as a flock animal.

In the wild, horses like to be together in a herd. In the wild, pigeons like to be together as a flock. But when they are raced in a competitive game created by horsemen or pigeon fanciers, what happens in the wild is no longer applicable. Instead, like prize thoroughbred horses, prize young birds must be housed separately and trained individually. Racing pigeons is a game in which the fastest bird to its loft is the winner. Pigeons will win because of superior management or blind luck. However, they win more often and they generally earn more points to become AU Champions because of superior management. June is the month I choose superior individual management over blind luck. From this week forward in my loft, each youngster selected for the race team will be treated as a distinct and worthy individual with a separate nest box and bowl and a separate mate. Each young bird will be single tossed over and over from every direction imaginable. The preparation and hard work it takes for pigeons to perform at the top of the race sheet in the young bird races in September begins this week in earnest.

Last Thursday night the West Tulsa RPC entered birds in the races for the final weekend of the Old Bird Race series. Three races were flown on Saturday: a 500 mile A race (5 bird limit) and a 500 mile B race (unlimited) from Victoria Texas, and a 600 mile race from Kingsville Texas. I entered one pigeon in one race: the 600 miler race from Kingsville I entered DeSinta, the amazing white widowhood male that has successfully raced 600 miles and 400 miles at the top of the race sheet only a few weeks earlier. I wanted to see if he could make the top of the race sheet one more time from Kingsville. when I awoke about 7:30 am Saturday morning, I knew that DeSinta was in the air racing to come home one final time before entering the breeding loft. I silently urged him on in the recesses of my imagination as I wondered where he was and what he was doing. I do not know if I can adequately convey the thrill I felt as I imagined DeSinta racing through the skies over Texas to come home to his loft, his mate and his nest box - and most of all - to me. Because I feed each race bird individually in the nest box, it is very easy for me to develop an intense relationship with each racer; especially the ones that manifest my efforts by scoring at the top of the race sheet. I appreciate every one of their herculean efforts to enhance my own personal enjoyment of the mysterious hobby and the exciting game of pigeon racing. I am deeply indebted to each champion for adding to the quality of my life through their perseverance and by their sacrifice. It is hard to explain the emotion that I felt on Saturday. The joy, the satisfaction, the love, and the respect that I felt for DeSinta as the day went by was overwhelming from each time that I thought of him. Morgan and I spent most of the day at a baseball park in Bristow Oklahoma about 30 miles southwest of Tulsa where our grandson Mason was playing a high school baseball game. Our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter were there also. Although I enjoyed their company and Mason's game immensely, DeSinta and the 600 mile pigeon race was always prevalent in the thoughts in the back of my mind.

The wind was blowing steadily from the south southeast at about 25 miles an hour throughout the state of Oklahoma. My friend Larry Adams from the Durant Oklahoma area about 150 miles south of Tulsa called to tell me that the birds were trapping in his area in southern Oklahoma at about 55 mph. Based upon Larry's information, Morgan and I left the ball park about 4 pm to watch DeSinta's arrival home. Sure enough - right on time - after 11 hours and 15 minutes on the wing - DeSinta dropped onto the loft out of the north at 18:06:21. Evidently, the race birds looped into Tulsa from the northwest due to the significant influence of the southeast wind. That is one of the reasons that I train the race birds in all directions around the clock rather than strictly to the south on the line of flight. DeSinta is one of the most dependable pigeons that I have ever raced. If the distance of a race is 400 miles or greater; he races home like clockwork. In Saturday's 600 mile race, DeSinta ended up 5th in the club - 7th in the Combine - and 10th in the Federation - another impressive performance to add to his fabulous record in the long distance portion of the 2009 Old Bird Race Series.

If I had sent 10 or 20 pigeons to the races, I know my feelings about Saturday's races would have been much different. I believe that I would have experienced a more generalized enjoyment of the collective performance of the race "team" rather than the more intense singular enjoyment of the performance of one great pigeon. That difference is the essence of the Belgian racing system: the difference in the enjoyment between racing a "team" of birds and the enjoyment of racing one or two champions in each race. The Herbots' motto is "Always Looking For Number 1." My motto is to say that I always want to "race number 1." And, on Saturday, DeSinta was definitely number 1 for Morgan and me. Playing the game from the Belgian cultural perspective is not simply racing a large team of pigeons "hoping" that one or two pigeons will race at the top of the race sheet. The Belgian cultural perspective is racing one or two champion pigeons "knowing" that they will perform near the top of the race sheet depending upon the wind and other weather-related conditions.

when my pigeons score at the top of the race sheet, it is usually not a surprise. As I have been taught by numerous Belgian Masters, the difference between "surprise" and "knowing" is the difference between someone trying to race pigeons as a weekend hobby and a true racing pigeon fancier playing the racing pigeon game with skill and precision. It is the major difference that I have been blogging about for the last two years.

At one time earlier this spring, there were about 150 young birds in the general pool of young birds in the loft available for the young bird race series that commences in early September. Today, there are about 45 young birds in the general pool. Since February 1, 2009, over 100 young birds have been eliminated from the 2009 young bird race team for one reason or another - by me or by the basket. I have selected about 25 of these youngsters for the A race team while there are an additional 20 or so that make up the B team. The B team is made up of pigeons from the second and third rounds of youngsters. Each young bird on the A team is sexually active. Each male has a nest box while each female has a box perch. Each young male and each young female have older mates. As young males and young females from the A team are eliminated, they are replaced by males and females from the younger B team. All 45 young birds are perfect in the hand and are robustly healthy; and all of the youngsters were trained to 25 miles by the end of May.

June is the month that I especially try to lose and/or eliminate young birds. Consequently, each young bird is single-tossed throughout the month from multiple directions in different types of weather: sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, calm, windy, head winds, tail winds, cross winds, early in the date, late in the day, in the middle of the day regardless of the temperature. Today, the afternoon temperature reached the mid 90s with relatively high humidity. The males are trained one day and the females the next. The A teams are trained on separate tosses from the B team.

Each toss is never more than 20 miles; except on Saturday when tosses are much longer. Since we race on Saturdays in my area, it is prudent to begin setting up the racers mental and physical expectations and conditioning to peak on Saturdays starting in early June. Young birds receive many short tosses; like wind sprints. Short tosses allow young birds to develop their orientation skills - and if they make a mistake - 20 miles or less is a relatively short distance from which to recover before the afternoon heat fatigues them and forces them to seek water and a cool perch on which to rest.

I try to lose young birds through an intense daily regiment of multiple short tosses. In addition, arrival times are meticulously recorded. Choices for the final young bird race team will be made primarily from these records. By adequately training pigeons during the summer months, it is relatively easy to find the best pigeons long before the young bird race series begins. Here are a few suggestions that I follow when I select young birds for the race team:

These are a few suggestions you may want to consider. Don't be afraid to select or choose your best racers and especially don't be afraid to eliminate undesirable or non-conforming pigeons. They will only make you work much harder in the loft and may turn a joyous hobby into disgust or anger. Above all, please select those pigeons that make you happy.

Developing and training a super pigeon like DeSinta is usually not a matter of luck. Both his father and mother were excellent racers. DeSinta's grandfather bred DIAMOND JACK, the 4th National Ace ARPU in 2006 and DIAMOND JACKIE, Kirk Hardin's super breeder that has produced more than 12 children and grandchildren that have won races. One is just now an AU Champion. DeSinta's grandfather, DIAMOND RIO, is a son of the WHITE DIAMOND and a grandson of the DIAMOND ACE, the 1992 1st Long Distance Ace in the Antwerp Union Belgium for Antoine Jacops. The DIAMOND ACE is a son of the infamous DIAMOND COUPLE. The best way to accumulate AU points toward a Championship on a great pigeon is to race pigeons that are dependable. Dependability creates confidence. Great performances at the top of the race sheet should not be "surprises." In Antoine Jacops loft, champion pigeons are expected to race well. In Oklahoma, these expectations begin and are developed in the early days of June and are planned rather than accidents or surprises that occur sometime during the race season in September and October.

I recently received the following email:

I raise white homers for weddings, etc. My question has to do with routing. My birds really do not route very far out of site, they never have. They tend to fly in circles and figure 8's; but hardly ever out of site. I have tried reducing feed and their activity seems to cease. They stay really close to the loft until it is feeding time. I have tried increasing feed and it only makes trapping more difficult. Also I tend to lose a lot of birds when I start training my young birds and feel like it is due to this lack of sustained routing. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

While it is impossible for me to pin point the exact source of your concern, perhaps the following points may be of interest.

Young birds do not necessarily need to route away from the loft to be healthy and well-trained. If young birds can fly one hour twice a day around the loft, they should be relatively healthy and ready to train and release on the road. If young birds cannot exercise two hours per day, there are factors that are preventing them from freely exercising around the loft.

In order to fly freely around the loft and route for extended periods of time, young birds must be "robustly" healthy. I often use the word "robust" to describe the level of health that is fundamentally necessary for quality young birds to maximize the genetic potential. It is not enough to simply medicate young birds for the basic maladies, i.e., canker, coccidiosis, respiratory problems, and worms and assume they will become "robustly" healthy. After medication, young birds should be forced to exercise continuously and fed accordingly. Weak pigeons will usually influence an entire flock to land on the loft relatively quickly. Consequently, weak pigeons should be removed from the young bird team until their malady can be determined and remedied.

Second, young birds often require forced exercise in order to have the physical strength to home from many miles away from the loft. There are many methods fanciers use to accomplish this goal. There is the flag system in which fanciers use a flag to keep young birds in the air for a prescribed amount of time. Some fanciers throw or kick a ball in the air to keep young birds flying. Whatever method is used, the intended outcome is to teach young birds to exercise for an hour twice as day. Young birds often require flying lessons to teach them to fly for a full hour. Even when young birds learn to exercise for an hour at a time, as young birds become sexually active at from 4 to 6 months of age, they will often attempt to minimize their air time and try to return to the loft to play the mating game with other young birds either outside or inside the loft. That is why it is often necessary to separate the sexes when the race team reaches approximately 6 months of age in order to reduce the interaction between the sexes (This assumes that most of the young birds are about the same age).

Under feeding and over feeding can influence young birds to cheat on their exercise time. In the case of under feeding, the young birds try to return to the loft because they are hungry. In the case of over feeding, young birds often put on unnecessary weight, become lethargic, and struggle to continuously exercise for extended periods of time.

Finally, heat and humidity will cause young birds to return to the loft before their exercise period is over. Also, raptors can often cause young birds to seek shelter and want to hide in the loft rather than freely exercise in the air; although at my location, hawks help keep the racers in the air.

As you can see, there are a number of environmental factors that will influence the amount of time young birds spend exercising around the loft. Perhaps I have inadvertently left some important environmental factors out of this discussion. But there are also genetic factors that will contribute to the same negative result as much or possibly more than environmental factors alone. when fanciers select future breeding stock on any other factor but racing prowess and success, they run the risk of breeding racing homers that will not fly enough to adequately perform the tasks for which they are kept. Whether its releasing white homers at short distances for weddings - or releasing racing homers at longer distances in order to play a game - the selection criteria for breeding young birds should be the same. It should be superior performance on the wing. when the selection criteria is strictly color, i.e., white pigeons whose color is essentially vital to the success of a business, one runs the risk of raising white homers that cannot or will not fly due to their physical structure or condition or their mental predisposition.

Even though racing homers are designed and intended to fly in the air, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will do so "on command." Although it seems odd to say, flying ability is not always a given in racing homers. As I have indicated, flying is influenced by a combination of several variables: the I. Q. or mental capacity of a pigeon, the body structure of a pigeon, and the management variables that influence a pigeon's everyday life. I fear that there are many white homers that have been bred strictly for color and not for their performance ability - consequently, they have lost their stamina, their zest and their passion for flying - even around the loft.

May I suggest that you begin a rigorous road training regiment up to 25 miles around your loft. Feed your homers well; but not too much. when the birds return from an afternoon or evening toss, hand feed them on the loft floor (after scraping and cleaning it). Slowly hand feed the team until about one-third of them go to drink. when this happens, stop feeding immediately and measure the amount of food they have consummed. The next morning after proper exercise or another short training toss, hand feed the team one-third of the amount of food they consumed the evening before.

May I also suggest that you add about 30% safflower and 10% good barley to the feed mix. The safflower will give them extra energy and the barley will keep them from over eating. I don't know the type of grain and grit the birds are eating, but these factors will also control the flying ability of the release team. You may want to add pickstone to their diet and of course, always provide your homers with fresh clean water. Try to purchase a grain mix with a variety of small seeds in it: hemp, oat groats, kaffir corn, sun flower seeds, millet and/or canary seed, safflower, wheat, rape, flax, etc. that are added to the standard mix of peas and corn.

Ultimately, your release team may need a complete make over. I understand that reconfiguring a release team or a race team is a very difficult task because we often become emotionally attached to our birds; regardless of their performance. However, selection is the single greatest positive or negative in a racing pigeon loft. Only keep those white homers that actually do what is asked of them and eliminate those that won't perform as required. In the future, may I suggest that you only add performance-bred white stock birds to your breeding loft. when I say performance bred, I mean white pigeons that were selected on their ability to stay in the air for extended amounts of time. Not all pretty white homers are good flyers - even for short releases. Only select those white homers that not only meet your color criteria; but also a rigorous performance criteria as well.

More revelations to follow......................................................Thank you......................................................Dr. John and Morgan Lamberton