THE RACING PIGEON 19 APRIL 2024
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JOHN & ALICE BELL of Catrine in Scotland
In spite of the Covid and Bird Flu prob- lems looming over the 2022 show, there was only one thing guaranteed when the fanciers travelled to Blackpool for the 50th British Homing World ‘Show of the Year’ was that they would have a great time! Although it was a great success and good fun, the 2021 live event had to be cancelled and had to go ‘online’ because of the Covid restrictions. Well done to the Blackpool Show committee on making the pandemic restriction workable for our favourite show this year and getting the birds back in the pens for the 50th anniversary event. With the show being staged in the North West of England in January, some years the weather is a bit cold and wet, but this year’s show weekend was treated to blue skies and wall to wall sunshine, which made this year’s event even more special. Thousands of fanciers made the drive up to Blackpool in mid- January for the main event of the Show Racer calendar, the British Homing World ‘Show of the Year’. Everyone anticipates and looks forward to this wonderful weekend in Blackpool, not only for their annual fill of ‘pigeon fun’, but mostly to meet up with good pigeon friends.
winner, now named ‘Gracie’, was their yearling mosaic hen competing in her first show ever and she is a daughter of ‘Mervanic’, the winner of Best in Show RPRA Southern Region Show for Nicole Bell in 2016. Now the wonderful ‘Gracie’ has gone on and become the Supreme Champion at the BHW Blackpool Show. John and Alice won Best in Show at this year’s Blackpool event with their good four year old mosaic heh, ‘Alice’s Dream Girl’ and she is a full sister to ‘Gracie’. What a fantastic family of Show Racers! John and Alice have two 24ft x 8ft lofts, which have a nice 3ft wire flight running along the front so the birds can get out in the weather and bath, and these are cleaned out by Alice twice a day. John works long hours and says a lot of loft management is down to his partner, which includes cleaning out the lofts as many times as ten times a day on the build up to big shows. He maintains this cleaning out is very important as the birds don’t have to be lifted and pulled about to clean their feet on basketing for the shows. Alice told me that if the bird’s feet are not cleaned on basketing day
John & Alice Bell.
Alice, a brilliant performance! Their seventh Blackpool Supreme Champion was their wonderful two year old mosaic hen ‘Gracie’ and she previously won Best in Show at the RPRA Southern Region Show in High Wycombe last November. John & Alice travelled the 400 miles from Ayrshire for the High Wycombe Show and won six classes, Best in Show, Best Opposite Sex, Best Show Racer and Best Points. A wonderful performance by the partners and this year’s Southern Region Best in Show is their fourth in recent years. The Best in Show
they look nice and powdery and not an unnatural pink. The birds are bathed at the beginning of the week and no litter is used on the loft floors. John mixes his own corn and this has a big maple pea content, and the birds are never fed condition seed. The pigeons are never fed maize prior the going to show, as Alice maintains it makes the candidates loose and messy in the pen. The twelve pairs of birds are mated up in late February as the partners like to enter two open Society shows which are after the Blackpool show at the back end of January. No stock birds are kept as all birds are shown and about 60 young birds are bred each, which are brought down to about twelve just before the show season begins. John told me, ‘I enjoy judging and have no favourite colour, when judging or in my own loft. I just love good quality Show Racers, whatever their colour. Showing is very hard work and to get a team ready for a big National event it can take up to a month to get them right. Our best ever Show Racer is the Darren Gibbons blue chequer cock and although we don’t keep stock birds, he is our main breeder, being the sire of many winners. I’ve lost count of the many open shows he has won and he has also won several times at the RP Old Comrades Show and the BHW Blackpool Show. John & Alice Bell enjoyed yet another great show season in 2018 and kicked off with a Best in Show with 641 birds entered at the NEHU Show in South Shields. The partners had a 340 mile round trip to this event and won BIS with a mosaic cock, which qualified for the Supreme Champion class at the 2019 BHW Blackpool show. The day after the NEHU Show, John and Alice had another long drive down to the Midlands to win Best in Show at the Black Country BSRF Show and the winner was the Mervin Hosking mosaic cock, which previously won BIS at the RPRA Southern Region Show for Nicole Bell. A brilliant weekend! John and Alice next show was the Clydesdale Open Show, where they won Best in Show with a yearling blue chequer cock and with 532 birds entered, he also qualified for the Supreme Champion class at the BHW Blackpool Show. This cock went on to win Supreme Champion Show Racer at the
The 2022 event attacked a show entry of 2,000 birds and Supreme Champion and Best in Show was won by John and Alice Bell of Catrine in Scotland. John tells me, this is the third time they have won the double at Blackpool, winning Best in Show three times and Supreme Champion a record seven times. They have had five open shows this season, including the BHW Blackpool Show and have won Best in Show three times, plus Best Show Racer. Well done to John and
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