Breeding a successful strain of racing pigeons, is not as easy as it may seem on the surface.
There is not, in reality, such a thing, a pure bred pigeon. But there are carefully preserved lines of pigeons.
To the ignorant, this may well not become apparent.
Developing a successful strain of racing pigeons, in all honesty takes decades of breeding, line breeding, in breeding. Then outcrossing, then integrating these outcrossed pigeons back into your original families.
On paper, it would be so easy to achieve. In reality, it takes years of breeding.
Years of racing, separating all the good from the bad. As well as all the selective breeding programmes.
The masses of paperwork and record keeping that is involved, is unreal.
Developing the the right system, for racing is a must. Feeding programmes. In fact the list is endless.
Unless you have deep pockets and ten years or more, of full commitment to spare then I would suggest just buying birds in.
Our story starts back in the late 90's when we began to trace the humble beginnings of the famous Janssen brothers.
We spent over a year researching the origins of the Janssen lines of pigeons.
This search took us right back to the Janssens Father, Henri. There's very little information about him, but he died in 1949. He had seven sons, Fons, Frans, Jef, Vic, Adriaan, Charel and Louis and two daughters Irma and Marie.
We began to trace the Janssen bred pigeons, our search took us far and wide.
We discovered that their breed of pigeons, went into Gus Hofkens who crossed them into the birds of Van Rhijn Kloeck, he bred a fantastic racer/breeder called 'The Eenoger, his grandson The Dreibander which played a huge part , in the success of another two fanciers, namely Karel Meulemans and Jan Grondelaers.
Their pigeons were then later bred to two top pigeons belonging to Gus Hofkens.
All these birds were the direct descendants from pigeons which originated from Fons Janssen.
It is also alleged, though no records can be found, that the brothers supplied birds to no other, than Louis Van loon.
It was said that these pigeons set him off on his road to success.
Viktor Fabry also bought birds from the brothers and he produced an outstanding pigeon Trage B52. The bird did so well for Viktor, that Viktor by way of appreciation gave the brothers a cock from him, which bred the brothers an outstanding winner.
The lineage of the dams pedigree showed that the dam was bred by no other than Jos Van Den Bosch.
A bird which came from Karel Meulemans lines.
Many other great fanciers owe their gratitude to the outstanding lines originating from the Janssen Brothers of Arendonk.
These include Hans Eijerkamp, Bert Camphuis, Maurice Verheye, John and Gary Squibb AKA The Planet Bros. Also Staf Van Reet, Felix Pauwels Herbot Brothers, Van Hee Brothers. Amongst many others.
It is as a direct result of these findings, that we have managed to blend together the Van Den Bosch, Janssen and Van Loon pigeons with much success.
Much of this success has to be attributed to other such fanciers who must have spent years tracing the ancestry of these pigeons, such as Mr & Mrs Litherland, The Planet Brothers and the TBO partnership.
It is years of their selective breeding results, that have indirectly bred us our best pigeons.
So it's not surprising, judging by their ancestry that these birds, when bred to right lineage, produce some outstanding pigeons.
That most certainly will stand the the test of time and compete at all distances

find this a very strange post as no mention of the houbens or maybe your findings never went that far and please note the jannsen hen was an intruduction into the muelemans sean

Why do you try to insult me Sean and insult my intellect. I this is a quick synopsis. as you will read near the end if you choose to read read it properly, it says amongst many others. Houbens are of no consequence.I don't keep Houbens, so why would I mention these.
Are you from Skem Sean, Geds mate.
Because I think Ive met a similar attitude before.
If you read the post properly, you will see it takes on a direction to my breed of pigeons.
I've spent over 40 years in pigeons mate and believe me I aint an idiot. A year researching pigeons mate back in the 90's, wasn't as easy as it is today. The internet wasn't as up to date.
I would be interested to see your pigeons lineage and how you bred what.

Very interesting, When I started back with the pigeons, I only bought at first birds that were janssens or based on them so that I had a good base for the family. I bought van loons, meulemans, v.d.b , deklaks, pau brothers, brasspening and of course janssen brothers. these I have blended together mostly because I like the look of these type of birds and visually they suit me.

Just recenlty I have bought current families in and will now introduce these into the janssens, these are koopmans, hermans ceusters, reynheart, and kees bosua. the results last year were very incouraging and Im pleased with the blending results, I agree totally with your article as this is exactly what I have been doing, lets hope it works..lol

We still have an original family of Janssens. A few I got from Massarella back in the late nineties, direct descendants, from the big purchase he made from the Janssens back in the seventies.
Some came from Clwyd Lofts and some indirectly from another famous loft in Wales, whom I will not mention, but was once recognised as the best racer of Janssens in the UK.
The point of this post mate, and I think you have picked up on it.
Is that you have to have a good solid foundation, the outcrosses are all a case of trial and error, it takes a full years work to find out if it was successful or a failure.
In any successful race loft, the outcrossing process is a vital part of remaining successful and competitive.
Ok sometimes you will get it wrong. But this is all part of the course.
You will have successes as well as many failures. Knowing the ancestry of your birds lineage, does help you in choosing which line to take to develop your future racers.
Well done mate, I wish you every success.

Sean, all this is not really relevant to my birds ancestry, there are many other great fanciers whom I could have mentioned such as Tist Eyssen, but it's not really relevant to this post. As I said this is just a quick synopsis an extremely shortened condensed version.

well Gary i wish you well but as i say i have only touched on the tip i could dig out my old books from the early 70s as yes i visited many of the belg and dutch greats before many new their names
but i will tell you i had the janssens in the late 70s and they all went in the blk bag as they could not live with our family but sadly they are all gone now
but i will tell you the last graet racer for janssen bros was the 019 great racer crap breeder in fact the only reason they held onto him was because he broke his wing and thats for another day sean

you should look for the storces ideal cross

The point that I am trying to make, is that if you delve into the ancestry of the birds. Then you begin to see a pattern emerge.
All these roads lead back to Arendonk.
Before my partnership, back in 2000, I was a fanatic for the old strains. To be honest although the strains I had were good, they just could not compete with the Janssens. I thought at first that these birds would never ever survive my training regime. How wrong was I.
The harder I trained them the better they came.
For me this was an end of an era.
Although the true Janssens were good, better birds were beginning to emerge.
These came about by some clever outcrossing, which put strength into the original inbred Janssen strains. Not until I did lots of research, did I, find that these outcrosses were too Janssen based and these seemed to ressurect the Janssens once again. This is the point I am trying to make.

Good post Gary and something for everyone to think about even myself who is janssen mad

It's amazing what you can discover when you do your home work Don.
Apart from feeding, training and racing systems.
This is the secret behind any successful loft
Doing their homework on their lines of pigeons.
Pedigrees are the clue to producing future winners.
I too am Janssen mad.
We still have a good line of the old originals.

just want to add that i was told janssen is a popular name in belgium, and not all janssens we hear and read about are from the famous janssen bros of Arendonk

In 1975 Maserella went to the Janssens and bought birds some birds from them directly. The three main originals were Arjaan B71 6103507, his nest hen Irma B71 6103521 and Firske B74 6696301, just to name a few. I still have somewhere some of the original Louella pedigrees, that gave a little write up about what their parents were and why they were selected.
There's no denying that Louella bred some outstanding birds from his early stock.
But Janssen pigeons came from the original brothers. Their father Henri first kept pigeons from the late 1800's.

thats an excellant catch phraise...all roads lead to arendonk...like it. Mine do for sure. lol.

It just seemed applicable mate. I look at my pedigrees as a map. So why not.