I . CLEAN LOFT

               To have healthy birds you need to have plenty of dust-free air. A clean loft will give you dust-free air. You need to clean your loft at least once a week.

                When I am racing, I clean the loft almost every day. This keeps the race birds in their optimum health. It gives them a better chance of winning.

                You can have the best birds in the world, but not win a race, because they are not healthy. Good birds will win races only when they are healthy.

                Health is the number one to winning with racing pigeons. After I cleaned the loft, I use chlorine bleach to clean my water jugs and trays every two to three days as well. Especially during the race season, I want to prevent germs and bacteria from getting to the birds.

II. QUALITY BIRD

                For many years, I flew pigeons that I obtained from local flyers in my club and from friends, for free. These birds were helpful to me in getting started in racing pigeons

                If you want to win, you need to add some new breeding stock to get quality bird.

III. BREEDERS

                When I am breeding, I give the birds a 22% protein

 whole corn, oats, vetch, saff, mongo, green peas, dun peas, mapple peas, yellow peas, sorghum.

IV. YOUNG BIRDS

                When I am racing, I use high quality grains. Most of the time, I feed the birds individual grains separately, so they get all the different grains, not just what they like. I use four different types of peas,  Maple Peas, Yellow peas, Dun peas, Green Peas. I also use whole corn, wheat, milo, millet, safflower, Oats, Vetch, Mongo, Sorghum and barley. This keeps them in balance and form.

                 On Thursday night, I throw in some raw  Peanuts, about a cup per every 25 birds, after all the grains have been fed. They love the peanuts and even if they have stopped eating the grains, they will gobble up the peanuts.

                 You have to teach the birds to eat peanuts when they are young or they won't eat them when they are older. I just put them in and let them pick at them at first. I do this when they are very hungry. Once they start eating them it is like candy for them. They go nuts when I feed peanuts.

                  What I feed always depends on the condition of the birds after the race. If it was a tough race, I feed differently than if it was an easy one. I also look ahead to the upcoming race and what I expect the conditions to be like for that race. Most of the time, I feed correctly for the race conditions, but occasionally, I mess up and feed too heavy or too light.

                    Most of this is learned from experience. You have to feel the birds regularly to see how they are doing. You have to develop a feel for what weight a bird should normally be and then you will be able to tell if a bird is too light or too heavy. Look at the condition of feathers, the activity level in the loft, the droppings of the birds. All of these are signs that tell you how to feed and how much to feed. Watch the birds eat their feed. Do they attack it with gusto or just nibble in a bored way.

                    Proper feeding takes time and attention to detail. You can't just walk in the pen, dump a can of feed in the trough and walk away if you want to win races. On average, I spend three hours each night out at the coops taking care of my pigeons. That time that I am regularly investing is bringing me the results I want on the race result sheets.

                   

V. VITAMINS AND MEDICATION

          I feel they need plenty of vitamins to help in the production and growth of feather and body structure (size). I give vitamins 2  times per week to all my birds, breeders, old birds and young birds, all year-round.
 

VI. TRAINING

               You need to start training rather slow. A lot of short tosses. I had eleven tosses this year within 25 kms. of my home. My losses were very low.

                I gave the birds fifty or more tosses before the first race. I did about eight tosses from fifty kms., two from seventy kms. and one from ninety kms. My first race station is a 200 kms. station. Altogether, the birds had around 25 tosses before we started racing.

                During the season, I train two times a week on Tuesday and Thursday. I do 45 or 50 kms. tosses for races up to 200 kms. After that, it depends on how hard the races have been and the forecasted weather. If it looks like it is going to be a fast race, I will train more. For a hard race, I will train less.

 VII. TRAPPING

                Trapping is a big part of the race. If the bird comes home, but does not go in, the race is not over. To win races you have to have birds that will trap on command. This takes conditioning. You have to train over and over when the birds are young, so that it becomes a natural habit for the birds. They don't even think about it, they just do it.

                I start this training soon after the birds are weaned. I put them on the landing board with the front closed. I let them look around for a while, then I begin pushing them into the loft. I use a push stick that I made. It is just a long pole with a square piece of plywood attached. The corners are rounded and I made it smooth so it wouldnt' hurt the birds. I use this push stick to maneuver the birds to the trap. They soon learn to go through easily.

                I will push them inside, then put them back out on the landing board again and repeat the procedure. I do it several times the first day and repeat it several times each day for a week or two. I want the birds to know what is expected and I want the birds to get accustomed to me pushing them in, so that they don't fly off the landing board on a race day.

                All the time I am pushing them in, I whistle and talk to the birds. I use the same command words, "Inside. Come on, inside." The birds learn to associate these words and the whistling with the behavior of going inside the loft. They are rewarded when they get there because their food is waiting for them. Soon the birds know that if I whitstle they are going to get fed. They rush to the trap and enter the coop. Then they get to eat.

                When I let the birds out for the first time and every time I train them, the birds are hungry. I only feed once a day and I do all my training before I feed. Because they are hungry, the birds are anxious to trap and get inside the coop. The birds that don't trap on command, find that the food is all gone when they finally do go inside. Next time I let them out, these birds will be the first into the loft because they are really hungry. They will learn the lesson that to eat they have to trap when I give the command.

                On race days, I rarely have a problem with birds that won't trap. About the only time my birds don't rush into the loft is when another flyer's bird comes to the loft. The strange bird is not used to the routine and it will sometimes throw my birds off and confuse them. This happens only once or twice a season, and isn't a great problem.

                Another thing that I feel helps me, is that the only place for my birds to land is on the landing boards. I don't have any power lines for the birds to land on. On top of my lofts, I have run pickets with string back and forth to prevent the birds from landing on top of the lofts. I never allow them to stay there if they do it as young birds. After conditioning them for this, they are good to land and trap immediately on race day making it a breeze for me. I don't lose the race because the birds wouldn't trap.

VIII. HANDLING THE BIRDS

                I feel it is important to handle the birds often while they are young. This lets them get used to being held and helps to tame them so they are easier to work with later when you have to catch them for shipping and training. I spend a lot of time holding my birds both when they are young and when they are older. I can tell a lot from the way a bird feels in my hands. By holding them often, I notice what they normally feel like and then on a day when they feel different, it is very apparent to me that something is wrong.

                If you never hold your birds, they will not know what to expect when you do. It is important that they feel comfortable being held, because on race nights they have to be handled by other flyers who may not hold them exactly the same. If they are not used to being held, they will be stressed over it and they will not fly well the next day. My brother, my daughters and my sons all hold the birds. I think this is good for them. Each person holds the birds differently and it is good for the pigeons to get used to different styles of handling.

                Another benefit of handling the pigeons is that they become accustomed to different people being around them. If on a race day, some of the family wants to be in the yard to watch the race, the pigeons are not spooked by them being there. It is also good to have people in the yard when I am training the pigeons, so they get used to normal activity around the yard. Then if the neighbor happens to mow his lawn when they are coming home from a race, they are not spooked by it.

                Pigeons will become accustomed to things just like humans do. If you have a baby and you always keep the house quiet while the baby is sleeping, the baby will learn to sleep only when it is quiet. Any noise will awaken the baby.

                If you take the same baby and you let it sleep while the normal noise level is going on in the house, then the baby will learn to sleep while there is noise and will end up sleeping through normal amounts of noise and even loud noises like thunder. It is all in the conditioning.

                Take the time to condition your birds so that they will endure the normal kind of handling that they receive in the coop and on race boxing days. Your birds will be much less stressed and better prepared to race.

IX. REGULAR ROUTINE

             A basic routine for pigeons is very important, especially for the young birds. They like things to happen at the same time each day. When they exercise and eat, make it simple for you and the birds. Be in the coop to get them used to you, but also give them time alone to rest.

            My birds know when I get home. You can tell. They are out in the aviary looking for me. They look forward to seeing me because they know they are going to be let out to fly and they are going to get fed.

            Just as human babies like to be on a consistent schedule to eat, sleep and play, pigeons respond well to this same kind of treatment. They come to expect the same things to happen every day near the same time. My birds become conditioned to eating and flying at about the same time each day.

            There are times in my young bird handling when it is necessary for me to change the schedule for my birds. When I have to do this, I do it all at once. I don't think a gradual change works well for the birds. It is usually a shock to the birds for the first day or two, but then they are over it and they get used to the new schedule quickly. The important thing is that they still get fed and exercised every day. The basic routine doesn't change, just the time of day that I do it.

X. VACCINATIONS

             Young birds need to be vaccinated for PMV,  four weeks before you start training. This will give them plenty of time to recover from any side effects of the vaccinations before you start training. Young birds need this chance for their immune system to recover, so they can handle the young bird races.

            All the birds in your coops need to be revaccinated for PMV two weeks before you start breeding. It is a big expense every year to do this, but the risks are too great without it. Years ago, the risk was small, but with breeders and flyers shipping birds all over the world now, the chances of your birds being exposed to disease are much greater.

            I have spent a great deal of money to acquire the excellent stock birds that I have in my loft. Many of them could not be replaced. I would not want to risk losing any of them to disease when it can be so easily prevented. It is worth it to me, to spend the money on the vaccines and the time to administer them. In return, I prevent any problems with my birds.

            I have been vaccinating my birds since 1998. The year before this, my young birds got sick right in the middle of a great winning season for me. I had to stop flying my birds. I ended up losing almost all of the birds to the disease. The few that did survive never really flew well after that and I have culled them. I never want to go through another season like that one, so I vaccinate regularly.

            Once others in your club and combine start vaccinating, you almost have to do it. The birds that have been vaccinated become carriers and can transmit the disease to other pigeons. You put your birds and your whole investment at risk if you don't vaccinate.

            Since the season that my birds got sick, we have had several more seasons when lots of flyers lost their whole team to disease. They didn't understand the information they had been given and put their birds at risk by not vaccinating them.

            It is expensive and a pain, but if you want to fly pigeons, vaccinations are part of the game now. You won't win for long without them.

XI. BATHING PIGEONS

                With the way I have setup my flying pens, it is easy to let the pigeons bathe. I place a metal bath pan on the landing board and level it with a wood block. Then I fill the pan with water and let the birds out on the landing board. There is plenty of room for the birds to bathe and relax in the sun. I like to give the birds a bath each Sunday after a race.