Succesfully breeding with old pigeons.

Are you flying natural?

i agree with you ray, when ive paired early all the ybs want to do is pair up and chase the hens around the loft roof........they dont want to fly and do become lazy.


ok some will say this is down to my management but i dont think it is because they are treated exactly the same as the later birds and ive also found the later ybs range better and i dont loose any training.

so all in all better ybs if paired later. JMO

i found they get lazy around the loft when paired to early more interested in eachother than flying so i am going to pair towards the latter half of jan

totally disagree each to there own they only get lazy if you let them down to management

i found they start to pair up ian and are more interested in mateing maybe you should split them up but i like to keep them together

I have over the years adopted a system, that slowly brings the birds on. There is no pressure on them until they start start exercising well. this I find keeps stress levels down to a minimum.
Once they start to range, this is when training starts.
Any losses that do occur are generally off the loft.
Once the young cocks do start to become interested in the hens, this is usually coming close to the racing season.
Then I fly roundabout, because once you get these youngbirds going, you can't stop. You have to keep on at them. The sexual maturity is part of the motivation for both the cocks and hens.
The only time that they do get together is the day of the race prior to basketting and when the arrive home from a race.
To keep both sexes interested in each other, I have a mesh slider that gets opened at certain times of the day.
Any lazy pigeons are bagged.

oldstrain wrote:

i found they get lazy around the loft when paired to early more interested in eachother than flying so i am going to pair towards the latter half of jan

i agree darren i had this last year so i split them up, but to me it only makes more work for yourself............

of course they become lazy ,nothing to do with management ian ,once the mature they want to mate ,they ca,nt mate in the sky can they ,so they want to be down,same with widowhood cocks they want their hens,when my cocks want to be down i know they are right,but like you say each to their own,we believe in what we do same applies to you but not mangement really.i wish it was as easy as that,i have a nightmare keeping mine up when they are pairing up as ybs.i had most of my ybs going for a hour plus away from the loft but the paired up ones always returned after about half an hour to be with their mates,this is what i wanted to see and it made no difference on race day what so ever

the 2010 ybs i had were bred early, all they wanted to do when i let them out was to land and chase the hens.......they would do a quick 5 mins around the loft then land, they never ranged so all they got was training and they raced terrible and as yearlings i lost the lot of them apart from two.......

this season i paired up later and altho they did start pairing it was nothing like the previous year as they had already ranged, trained and started racing by this time......the birds were doing 2 hours exercise around the loft and ranging and i never lost one yb training and only lost three out of the few races they had, one of them being a disaster for the whole fed.

All to there own all my ybs paired up and flew around loft for 2hours and did there chasing after they flew I even had stock birds out flying with them

It's like I always say David, horses for courses. Whatever works for you may not work for the next man. That's what makes this whole hobby/sport so great.
I just like to see that loft hatch open and the birds fly through like they was racing.
I treat them all like athletes and expect them to perform like athletes.
Like I have said in previous posts, every bird earns it's perch.
I hear too many people, make excuses for poor performing youngsters.
If they are not up to the job, they go and that's it..
I know it may sound a bit harsh. But places in the old bird loft are limited.