THE RACING PIGEON 26 APRIL 2024
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Winning Naturally by Alf Baker WINNING THE NATURAL WAY
they are reported, and nine times out of ten they are no good after having flown themselves out of an empty stomach. My motto always has been to “feed them well and fly them hard”. My second and third birds in the 300-mile Combine were sent back to the same race point on the following Tuesday in the two-bird club. They dropped together taking 3rd & 4th. On the Friday the hen was sent to Selby, 1st NL Fed, that’s 750 miles in a week. This was evidently a good yearling that thrives on work, and was one of the two hens that I had paired together. For the record the blue cock ‘Alfred the Great’ 18739 – that I went to Holland to get, blown over from the Thurso race – the year after was 26th Open LNR Combine Berwick. The next year he dropped two points, 28th Open Berwick (300 miles) 6,684 birds. He had not raced like he did last year, winning seven 1sts in a row before the Berwick Combine. I have only myself to blame putting pigeons like these to 500 miles which takes the edge off them, but he certainly knows his way from Berwick. While I was writing this chapter, I recalled waiting for my birds to be liberated from our 400-mile old bird race. The birds had been away for five days and I’m afraid my confidence of getting a good one had faded. Long holdovers do not suit pigeons, fit or keen, when sent. They can be beaten by some pigeons which will benefit from the rest and which perhaps get better or more corn than they have been getting at home. The Prices Paid I well remember the words of “Tich” Coker who convoyed the Combine pigeons for a number of years telling me how he had seen birds deteriorate in the baskets each day while being held over. Those that are sent sitting 14 days will start to make soft food during the holdover and this will not help them when they are liberated. That’s why I try to send my hens sitting eight days or on a young- ster the same age, then there is no worry of the soft food going sour. I am sure the longer they are in the basket the keenness and edge you put on them when sent wears off. It’s like a pair of shoes that have been left out in the rain, the polish has gone off them. But it helps the prize money to go round. Look at the amount of eggs that will be found in the basket after the birds are liberated. They come from those that were sent with a youngster about 14 days old. This is a bad condition to send hens for the sole reason of their being held over on the long races. I know some hens put up their best performance at this stage, but one must always bear in mind the possibility of a long holdover and it is most painful for a hen which has laid in the basket to fly 428 miles, especially if the going is hard. I have heard fanciers boast of a hen coming home from a race and going straight into its nest box and laying. I am sure none of the eggs left in the baskets will be from my hens, not under the condition I send them. When birds are confined in the baskets for a length of time there is a chance of some of them getting “wing lock”. These will be mainly those birds that have been jumped from 200 miles; that’s why I like to fly my pigeons each week and not rely on jumped pigeons. My birds do not fly around home for ten minutes at most when they are first let out in the morning. I have never believed in making them fly around home and sometimes I get birds come home with wing-lock. If I do I get a bucket of hot water and move the wing up and down making sure the wing is well in the water. This has always done the trick. Going through some of my old pigeon papers, I came across a 1936 RP which made me think how much prices have gone up: Brand new Benzing printing clocks immediate delivery, £5.50 each; best polished Tasmanian peas 80p cwt; Captain W P Ahern’s Stassarts from ‘Flying Fox’, ‘The Duke’, ‘Squadron Castle,’ just to quote a few £7 a pair. I only wish these birds were available today, not because of the price, but because the bloodline of ‘Flying Fox’ ran through most of my best pigeons in those days. Even so the price was more than the average man earned in a week. My money as a top class glazier in those days was under £4 a week, but the price of pigeons has gone out of proportion. Take the price paid years ago by my old fishing and shooting pal Jimmy Biss for the ‘Scout’. I’m sure the offspring of this could not fly better than his old family which he flew with the LNR Combine. He purchased these for almost a song compared to the price of the ‘Scout’. Even that price is nothing today but the price of pigeons today should not worry the novice with a keen eye, or one who is gifted with the full amount of stock sense. There is always a good pigeon to be obtained at a fair price if you know what you want and don’t rely too much on pedigrees. There are some novices you cannot help; those you give a pair of youngsters to and next you hear they have lost them off the top or training. Once a novice asked me if I knew where he could get a good cock. I had some birds sent down from Scotland for an auction sale for me to take to the sale for this friend. I went through the cocks with the novice and found a nice chequer cock that I said I was sure would breed winners. I told him to go to the auction and bid for it. My novice pulled out. I’m sure to this day he let a good one get away for a work- ingman’s price. As I have said, it is not what you pay but what you know as regards stock sense when obtaining your stock or outcross. It’s not because it is out of pigeons which have been long since dead. I can’t remember the last time my birds went fielding, but my hens decided to do so after I had wired off all the flower beds where they had been picking about through the early spring. From this I knew they were craving for soil, so I went out to a nearby field, kept a watchful eye out for the farmer, dug half a dozen nice clean turfs and turned one upside down for them to eat the soil. Before long
Chapter 18 After a Bad Race
I have written many times about birds meeting a bad race early in the season, and finishing them for that year. Ever since I have kept pigeons, I have always sent every bird that is fit to our 200-mile race, then I could pick and choose or jump them whenever I liked, with confidence. With all the years behind me as a pigeon man and I have flown in some very bad races, there was one May race which was the worst I had ever competed in. From my 20 entries I had four on the day, and by the following weekend I was still ten down, among them some of my best pigeons. Then letters started to arrive from Birmingham, Wiltshire and Colchester, all with the same message, “picked up injured”. In addition four homed in the same condition, one of my best blue cocks homed with only four tail feathers, cut across the back and chest, with the metal ring embedded in his leg. Yet when he dropped he still had the guts to coo. We sit in the garden and when they don’t arrive call them everything or look for a flaw in their breeding! I was most grateful to the lad of 13 from Brum and the good lady who kept one for two weeks before finding a fancier to report him, also to both the fanciers from Stourbridge and Colchester. Although they would never race again was always pleased to see them, even if their racing days were finished, as I have found when pigeons are sent back in these conditions the stuffing has been knocked out of them, and they will never race the same again no matter how good they were in the past. They are best put in the stock loft. Although the seasons are going from bad to worse weatherwise a lot of bad races could be obviated, if convoyers were to get down the line of flight and find out what the weather is, and not rely solely on weather forecasts, which to my mind are only 40% right. One week our two-bird club was at Berwick. The weather forecast was none too good. It was pouring rain in London, but they told me it would spread up north, as the wind was a strong NNE. I felt this rather strange so I phoned down the line to friends from Berwick onwards and found that the rain was only 60 miles outside London. I advised the liberator to let them go at 11.30, estimating a 6 1 ⁄ 4 hour fly to do the 300 miles. The winning pigeons were clocked at 5.46, and there were eight pigeons nearly on the same minute, but according to the forecast this could have been a holdover. Bad weather in the middle of the season makes it hard to keep or get pigeons fit for the coming Classic races, especially if one’s loft is like mine, well open, and the rain can blow in. Some wet years I had to put plenty of sawdust down to dry out the loft. There is nothing worse than this type of weather for giving the youngsters the snuffles or dirty wattles which, if not taken in hand, will turn to a cold and will soon spread to the old birds. When there is a deep depression over the country youngsters won’t run out like they should. I have let my youngsters out on an excellent morning for flying, yet they have come back within half an hour, and I have wondered why, but within an hour or so it has come over bad with heavy rain. This they have sensed and is the reason they have not wandered too far. Get a few mornings like this and it will stop youngsters from putting in two hours’ flying and it does not take them long to get into the bad habit of making it only half an hour, which is not enough to keep them fit apart from what they learn when they are away for two hours. Getting Youngsters Running One year my youngsters were running for two hours each morning like most other youngsters I saw coming over, then for three mornings running they were back within half an hour, so I kept them in for three days while the bad weather was about and then got them doing two hours again each morning, but had not seen the number of youngsters that were running before the bad weather set in. I am sure this is the reason, confirmed by many of my friends, who say their youngsters have stopped running. Late youngsters that have not started running with the others should be got straight back into the loft, and let out again when the youngsters have come back from running, otherwise they will drop them if the others come back too early. Youngsters should be encouraged to put in plenty of flying before the first race. When youngsters fly well they eat well, and that’s what you want to win young bird races, and put them in good stead for the rest of their lives. Hungry young- sters won’t run, if they do and get too far adrift you won’t see them again unless
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