racing pigeon strains.

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..

Welcome to the site ginger, yes i agree there is no such thing as a pure breed of racing pigeon, great fanciers of the past like the osmands, barkers etc use to borrow pigeons that were exceptional to pair into birds of their own, with offspring being shared between the fanciers, i also read that durring the war a lot of pigeons were hid in belguim barns then after the war ended these ended up in belguim lofts, as they wee highly sought after birds as the english strain of birds
Ken

I will back you up there Ken, don't know if you know Billy O'Neil of Dudley Port here in the midlands he always said that the belguim fanciers had all our best pigeons during the war and it is from these's pigeons that they are racing birds from today

yes don, ive read something similar to what ken says about them being hid in belgium during the war..........

so were we think it is belguim pigeons that are the best, it may have been our british pigeons which started it all of

in a jansen bros write up jansen bros said, most of birds in war were taken by germans from belgium and holland for food

think i read somewhere that after the war pigeons were handed back to fanciers, but what they got was a mixed bunch of short and long distance birds which no-one knew what was what........when they all bred ybs they just became the fanciers own breed and took their name. (something like this anyway...)

That is something new David nice to know

very good david ,find some more information on it please

theres some posted on jansen bros much more about to post never ending stories about them all brilliant

steve1952 wrote:

theres some posted on jansen bros much more about to post never ending stories about them all brilliant

youv a few different families steve, have you any janssens.....?