Guess who is back

As Darren has said - I have been really busy designing, fabricating and putting together (with the help of my lovely wife Hil) what will be our primary racing loft for old birds for the years to come.

Everything has been built by ourselves, except for a couple of bought-in things.  I have lots and lots of photographs that I can put up as the weeks go by.  I think you saw a photograph of the concrete block base and wood platform that the whole loft sits on.

The dimensions are 4 m wide, 3 m deep, 2.5 m at its highest from floor level.  It has a single sloping roof, two nice spacious sections, and a metre wide corridor across the front.  It has a 90 cm sliding door at the front and an 80 cm sliding door at the side, which you can't see in the photographs because of the little extension I built after the main loft was finished.  We call this little bit 'the annexe'.  The annexe is there to give protection from the prevailing wind and also as a small storage area for things like buckets, scrapers, etc.




I have tried to design this loft as 'PIGEON friendly' as possible, as I believe a lot of lofts are built solely for man.

The floor and back of the loft are made of 18 mm marine ply, the roof is 15 mm marine ply, and the sides and the front are all made from treated ship-lap/tongue and groove, which is 24 mm thick.  It is made in sections using something like 70 mm x 60 mm stud-work (sorry if I am not using the right words).  The framework for each panel in old fashioned terms is something like 3 x 2 and a half inches and came in 5.10 m lengths.

The roof is covered with a thick felt that is supposed to have a 15 year guarantee but working with it was a real pain in the bum, as it would tear if you were heavy handed with it.  I would normally use Torch On Green Mineral but you can't get it over here in Frogland.

My wife brought back from England a huge 1 ton trailer filled to the brim (and above!) with timber, mostly ply, that we got from T & P in Stroud.  The rest of the timber we bought from a massive DIY hypermarket which is about an hour's drive from us.

As you will see from the photographs, the two internal sections are all done with dowelling panels and 80 cm sliding doors for each section.  Both sections have a false ceiling to aid ventilation.

I have installed a sputnik on the front, as you can see from the image.  It is set quite low, and there have been a couple of comments about why I didn't put the sputnik higher, the reason being mainly because I wanted total access to the sputnik, so if need be I can encourage the birds in.  If the sputnik is set at eye level, it is more difficult to manage the birds.

All in all, it has taken us four weeks and four days to get this far!  The loft isn't 100% finished but we have the cocks we bred this year in one section, and the hens we bred this year in the other, and they are just settling in.

It would have take quite a bit longer if we hadn't bought the dowel doors and nest boxes in flat-pack form, from the UK.






I will be back with more photos and more up-dates in a day or so.

Let me know what you think so far, but please be kind - I am feeling a bit precious about the loft right now, but constructive comments are always welcome.

I trust everyone is in top form.

Yours in Sport
Phil (blueskylofts)

I think its a super job phil and hil when doing such a large project theirs always some things you would have done differently but all round its a good job phil well done you can always tweek a few things if need be ,good to hear from you

good to see you back on the forum phil, I think you've done a great job building and designing the loft...very impressive and also looks very practical.

looks like a very nice spot you have there for the birds, good luck for the 2017 season.

Well done!!

Good to have you back .lofts are looking great .well done

Cracking loft mate , well done

A good job done Phil and hil hope the birds settle in OK and nice to have you back on the site

markevans wrote:

A good job done Phil and hil hope the birds settle in OK and nice to have you back on the site

Thank you so much to everyone who has commented on our new loft. It is good to be able to start our day "After" it has got light and finish jobs "Before" it is dark. We have been working such long days recently, that every time I stopped, I fell asleep.

All the work and stress of getting everything to fit and work together, has taken its toll on my poor old back. Still, never mind 'jobs a good-un' as they say. We can take our time finishing off the remaining jobs and enjoy the fruits of our labours.

We treated ourselves to a lovely Chinese meal this lunch time, then went shopping for wood preservative, and hasps and staples for all the loft doors, so we can lock everything up if we want.

With a bit of luck our new Unikon ETS will be here by the end of the week and I can set all that up. Does anyone know what one has to do after you have plugged in the wires etc? Do you have to ring Unikon to get a signal or set-up code?

OK - off to bed now, we are both Christmas crackered.

Phil

when will the first inmates be in the loft phil...?

David wrote:

when will the first inmates be in the loft phil...?

They are in already David.

The cocks went in on the 15th Nov and the hens went into their section on the 24th.

The cocks have been flying out twice a day for exercise for 3 days now and tonight was the first time all the birds came into the new loft without any problems.

I am very surprised at how quickly they have caught on to the new regime.

As stated before, I have put in a false netting ceiling on a wood frame, to aid ventilation. This afternoon, I put up some 'twill-weld' like materiel in the gaps made by the roofing joists, so no 'nasties' can make their way into the back of the loft. Next job - making some mesh doors, to stop sparrows and other wind birds from eating all my expensive corn.

Phil

excellent, glad to hear they are settling in well......sounds like they like their new surroundings.

well done Phil on getting the birds settled in so quick it helps when they Cotton on what's happening

Lot of work in a short time! Looks good so far, can tell you put a lot of thought into the loft. Good luck with the pigeons.

Excellent!!

Thank you to everyone who has made comments about our new racing loft for next year.

Following the advice of one of our members (name withheld but he has a lovely little boy and lives in the South West of England) I have now fitted screen type, secondary doors to both loft doors to stop wild birds and other 'nasties' entering the loft.

It has now had two coats of preservative on the outside and we are going to paint the inside walkway white this week.  The cocks' section is already a very light shade of Blue and the hens' section is very light Pink. "How twee", you might say, but we wanted to paint the sections some colour and we had already painted all the stacks of nest boxes different colours, so blue and light pink had to do.

Cocks Section


Hens Section


I will take some pics of the secondary doors in situ, this weekend (if my fingers haven't frozen off) and post them.  For now, here is an image of the loft as it was before the mesh doors went up.



More soon - have a great weekend all.

Phil

its coming together very nicely phil and hils cutting in is superb I see you are constructing a nice walkway to the loft too ...great work ,you must be really looking forward to the year ahead now

oldstrain wrote:

its coming together very nicely phil and hils cutting in is superb I see you are constructing a nice walkway to the loft too ...great work ,you must be really looking forward to the year ahead now

Yes I would be - but the season over here is crap. We found out this week that the season does not start until the 2nd week of April and finishes at the end of July!

It's hardly worth it really - 9 months prep' and 13 weeks racing. That is for Old and Young birds together.

I spoke to Karen at the RPRA yesterday and she was saying that this area of frogland is notoriously bad for racing pigeons. One needs to be towards the north of France to get better racing.

Anyway we will push on. We are trusting by the end of next year's racing season, we can move back to England forever - yippee.

What we really need is someone to race a few of our birds over in the UK but, if getting pigeons to England is as hard as getting birds from England to here is, then we might be hitting our heads against a brick wall.

There is a one loft race in France run by an English couple, John and Lou McGee, and I have spoken to Lou several times about entering some of our birds but, even to get our birds from here to their one loft race would be problematic! And right now, the only way we can think of doing it is to drive our birds to their loft, which is a 6 or 7 hour drive each way.

Anyway, watch this space.

Phil