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 Not long ago I was talking to a few pigeonfanciers. At one moment one of the guys said to me: “Name three things that pigeons can do and man cannot”. I only came to one answer: “Fly”. Then the man gave me all the answers: 1) Pigeons fly; 2) they can find the way back home without reading a roadmap, and 3) they can make love to three different hens without one of them yelling at him and throwing him out.
At home I told the joke to my wife. She said if I were a female pigeon I would know which male to choose. I would prefer the strongest, healthiest and best looking male in the loft.
She then asked me what pigeons would do if they could choose their partners for themselves. I know that the strongest and healthiest cocks often have the most desirable places in the loft and that this would attract the hens. So if you have no time to study your pigeons well, and you want to find the optimum partnerships, it may not be so bad to let the pigeons choose for themselves. Only of course the results of this mating will decide if the next generation would come out of the same pair. ‘Is good breeding only for specialists’? Breeding in pigeonsport requires dealing with a lot of aspects of pigeon genetics and selection. Some people with a basic interest in breeding just buy pigeons that have proven race performance records. However, their breeding results with these pigeons are often poor. This is because their are many more aspects that one needs to look at in order to get a good result. When you select your ideal pigeons you have to look for at least the following:
• Check the type and body size of the pigeon. Don't go for too small or too big, because this will give you problems on your loft. Your loft has to be a team, every pigeon has to fit into it. The harmony of a loft is very important. If your pigeons are fighting all the time and they are nervous and have no rest, most of the them will not be able to produce a good result in racing. • Naturally, you will need to check whether your pigeons are vital enough • You will need to check for the right muscle quality for the distances you are racing. • You will also need to check whether there is intelligence and character in your pigeon strain. For example, you have to look what they do under pressure. Are they mentally strong enough to deal with some bad influence on your loft or during a race. I test my youngsters always by throwing a big bal into the loft and when I take it out the pigeons that after five minutes are still nervous and looking scared go out of my loft. The only thing that is important are the results of your breeding. Youngsters need to stay in excellent health. When you are breeding less healthy pigeons you need to find different partnerships. When even from these new couples the offspring are still not healthy enough consider to take the cock or hen out of your loft. Then the other important thing is to keep youngsters on your loft. If you have good, healthy youngsters that are gone from your loft before you have even raced them, make a note from which pair they were produced. If this happens often you must change this pair. The result after changing pair is the selection again for this cock or hen. Then starting up with racing. First of all, the youngsters need to be 100% healthy, so should be no trace of cancer, nor of any kind of ornithosis, no coli or other negative influences on racing results. I think that ornithose is the worse thing pigeons can be suffering from, because when one of the channels in the pigeons’ head (the one from nose to eye, to ear, to throat) is blocked, pigeons cannot orientate themselves anymore and most of the time they get lost. And then you cannot say it was a bad pigeon, because you did not fly him on a healhty basis. Only make your selections out of the results from 100% fit pigeons. Then you are selecting wisely. In Holland we are getting to the end of the racing season. Just one month to go (it is now August) and we know how we have done over the total season. So far it has been going very well. Results are very good. Many 1e prizes on different types of races. On national NPO races I have managed to reach three pigeons among the first ten of Holland. That is a very good result. These results are shown on teletekst. Teletekst is a site on Dutch television which shows only the best ten of Holland from a special race. Several times I have been just outside the teletekst range - on the 11th and 13th place. In the district where I am active, I have reached some excellent results with 20 of my pigeons in the first 26 in total, among others. The weather in Holland has been terrible this racing year. We have had lots of rain, thunderstorms and lots of inversions. This has resulted in a lot of fanciers losing more than 70% procent of their pigeons - and some have lost even more. Luckily I didn't have that many losses. I think this is related to my training and feeding methods. I made sure that I knew what kind of weather it would be on racing day, and I would set a feeding and training schedule related to the expected weather. On heavy flights I would feed the pigeons 5 or 6 times instead of 2 times normally. I would feed them in small quantities, but with a lot of fat and carbohydrates. A pigeon that must fly well over five hours needs a lot of fat. Don't underestimate this, because if you give too little fat the pigeon will burn his muscular tissue to come home and then will be out of competition for many weeks. On the racing day I will be early at my loft. If it had been raining recently and the water is lying on the roofs nearby, I will clean it and get the water off the roofs. Because when a pigeon is thirsty from a race and he can drink nearby his loft, maybe he will stay there for many minutes and maybe you will lose an early prize. When I estimate for myself that the birds will arrive at, let’s say, 14.00 hours, I will only provide new water with vitamines, electrolytes and carbohydrates into the loft fifteen minutes before this estimated arrival time. Otherwise it would stay there too long and the power will go out of it. Of course I check the electronic system early enough if it is set up properly. Because racing is very important for me, I always make a copy of the electronic system - a MEGAsystem (from Basch Holland). So I have two systems with the same flight details and normally nothing can happen with the results of the flight, because it is stored in two electronic clocks. I like this system very much. Then I select the food given on the racing day. If a pigeon has to fly another race a week later, I store him directly with protein-rich food to rebuild muscles and tissue. If the pigeon is not racing, I could give him a diet mixture and build him up later in the week. For motivation, I always give some peanuts. Most of the pigeons like that, and it will give them already some fat for next flight. http://www.jaapkoehoorn.nl/
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