to me racing pigeons are all the same.ive looked at pigeons with all sorts of usually belgian names of breeders and racers of these birds.for talking sake van reets are just a racing pigeon raced and bred by this man.so if i bought 20 birds from him and bred them and sold them as van reets then its not actually true is it?so why do yous guys still call them after the belgians ive not seen any jimmy purphies or frankie barkers.is it the belgian names sound better?i know their are long distance racers nd short sprint racers but what else is their.ive never raced pigeons before so i dont know much about them.

The strain of racing pigeon is named after the man who cultivated them over many years, so if you like you say buy 20 van reets and keep the strain to gether then uyes they are still van reets, but its not only strain name from the belguims there are other names closer to home ie kirkpatrics these are basicley long distance birds, what i will say if you look into the very base pigeons of most strains of pigeons you will find the blood off the Janssen brother, now this strain to me is the most famouse of them all
Ken

agree with you about jansens ken, van reets are also 50% jansen

Agree Steve dont think there are many strains about without there being a janssen some where down the line
Ken

a lot of very good reading in jansen bros write ups

Yes steve, you can go back to the write ups time and time again, and each time u seem to find something u missed, also the janssen brothers kept everything simple
Ken

so what happens then if you cross 2 strains?or do you tend to stick to one strain?

I have the meldert strain and the soonjten strain, so when these are paired together its Meldert crossed Soonjten, as ur are putting two different types of blood together
Ken

ive got some wildermeesch x sootjen and v.d.b x soontjen, jansens and van reets but 3 pr van reets going after breeding just keeping 2 pr

That is the biggest problem, if staf van reet had pigeons from Janssen, we say they are janssen but as soon as they go into staf's loft they become staf van reet pigeons

In belguim were ever the pigeons are winning at that persons name is what the pigeons are called or i should say that strain of pigeon

I agree with what Ken and Steve say the best pigeons ever are the janssen strain and every pigeon fancier in belguim has had pigeons from the janssen loft

A good read is book "The Janssen Story" also you can obtain the janssen video which is over 3 hours long from boddy and ridewood

The best advice i would give anyone look at the way the belguim fanciers obtain pigeons, in this country we are all pure strains of pigeon no mixture or as a lot of people say "Hienz 57" just pure strain pigeons

But in belguim they are only interested in performance pigeons the winners and a lot of the winning pigeons in belguim have different strains of pigeon in there pedigree

We in this country should have the same approuch and follow the belguim fanciers and breed from your best and pair winner to winner

Ken and Steve from what i see with your breeds, you have sprint families which when i was racing i was only interested in sprint racing down to the coast 135 miles weymouth

Must say though Ken the Meldert and Soonjten would be the family for me at sprinting upto 200/250 miles, must i bet they are going to take some beating

Do alot of people no that pigeons were sent to the continent from England
Sir Gordon Richards sent some, their is not many if any pour strains of
pigeons in the world if you read any book you will see he or she bought in
this bird or that bird.

when i restarted two years ago i originally bought some lefebre dhaenens which ive raced successfully in the past, and up untill this year was going to just race just these strain of birds but as there was a clearance sale at the local club i decided to buy two pairs of janssens.......then there came the yb exchange being run on this site which came from ian and are soontjen crosses, then lastly ive recently got a pair from ken which are also soontjens x melderts......

so with all these different birds im happy ive the chance to maybe do ok when yb racing starts..