Looks like we are going to get a break in the cold weather and the long range forecast for next week is relatively warmer temperatures. That means tomorrow is “P” day (Jan. 27), that’s pairing day. The birds act like they are ready. The cocks have been on the longer day length since the beginning of the month and when I enter the loft they are cooing and turning in their boxes. They are beginning to act like springs here. The hens have been on extended day length just over a week and from past experience I know they will be ready. The hens have also had the quality of their ration increased a bit as described in “Preparing for Pairing Two.
Despite all the preparation, planning and hoping, I know that not everything will go smoothly. At least one of the yearling cocks will be overly rambunctious and get too aggressive with his hen. At least one of the cocks will try to take an extra box and cause havoc with another pair. At least one of the hens will refuse to pair and turn a cold shoulder to the mate I chose for her. This means that for me the holidays are over and I will be spending more than a few hours a day in the loft keeping an eye on the birds. If a young cock gets to aggressive I usually lock the hen in the back of the box for a day and allow him to get used to her. If his attitude still needs some adjusting I lock all the other pairs up and let him and his hen the run of the loft. Now the hen has the room to get away from him and he has to court her to get her to enter his box. Surprising how quickly he changes his attitude towards the opposite sex when the hen plays hard to get. Most of the time in a day or so they are sitting on the edge of their box billing and an aggressive young cock has turned into a regular Romeo.
Often locking up the cock that is trying for an extra box for a day or two and allowing the other pair to start setting up house will solve the problem. When fully paired the hen will fight harder for her box than a cock and often it is the hen that drives of the intruder. Getting his butt kicked by a female a time or two will quickly discourage the intruder, after all how many males want their egos destroyed by a girl in front of the other men in the loft. He’ll never live it down. Better to admit defeat and act like nothing happened. A really stubborn male can have his feet tied together with some string so he can only spread his legs a few inches, be careful not to tie them too short he still has to be able to walk. With his feet tied he can’t get plant them firmly enough to get leverage when fighting and the other pair will have an easier time pushing him out of their box. He’ll soon get the message. It is surprising though how stubborn some of them can be and that’s not only the cocks, hens can be just as obstinate.
I wrap my nest bowls in newspaper, four full size sheets of the “Toronto Star” and then put a nest pad in the bottom. I cut the pads myself out of used carpet I scrounge up. The newspaper wrapping helps insulate the bowl and sure makes it easier to clean after weaning the youngsters. I also place the bowl on a plastic grill; this raises the bowl up an inch or so allowing the air to circulate and keeps the nest dry and warm while the squeakers are growing. Tomorrow I’ll take some pictures of the bowls and add them to this post.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Club Mid Winter Show
Yesterday our club the "Tillsonburg & District R.P.C." held a show. It has been some years since a racing pigeon club sponsored a show in our area. Considering most of the planning was last minute and we had little chance to publicize the event it was very successful. All those that attended a small amount for a entry ticket. For this they could show 12 birds and were eligible for doorprizes. Coffee, softdrinks, doughnuts and lunch were provided at no further cost and the winning birds in each class recieved an attractive ribbon. Best in Show won a small cash prize as did the second and third place winners.
A big Thank You to our hard working judge Mr. Jim Grightmire. Good job Jim!!!
Everyone seemed to enjoy the afternoon and anyone going home hungry only had themself to blame. The club covered all costs and had a bit left over. A perfect day. Plans have already been made for next year!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Preparing for Pairing Two
Planning and preparation are two important tools used frequently by all successfull racing pigeon fanciers. To plan properly you should have goals if not on paper at least in the back of your mind. Goals can be as simple as " I want to win X number of old bird races this year". As soon as we establish goals we determine which path we should follow to attain our goals. Perhaps switching racing systems from flying to the nest to flying widowhood, or for young birds researching and using the darkening system. Without goals planning will be unfocused.
One of my main goals is to attain more consistent and predictable breeding results. My path in attempting to reach this goal is the use of inbreeding and linebreeding. The emphasis is definitely on linebreeding for the first three rounds of youngsters out of the breeding loft. These youngsters will race on the young bird team this year and the pigeons that come up to snuff will be promoted to the old bird racing team the following year.
All the pairings for the breeding loft have been finalized this week, birds were paired according to body type and pedigree. Past breeding and or racing results were the overriding factor when the birds were selected for the breeding loft last fall. This only left body types and pedigree as determining factors.
The pairings for the race team are more flexible. Some will be test crosses and others will be bred within the family, some will be used to float breeder eggs. When you set goals or standards for your birds your pairing (planning) is simplified. You know what you want.
The temperatures this week have been bone chillingly cold, it's much colder then last week. For our part of the world these temperatures are not unexpected. The pigeons seem to thrive during these cold spells. The wattles are snow white, down feathers keep falling like snow and their feathering is sleek and tight. Bacteria can't grow at these temperatures, the stress levels are very low, no racing, no pairing, no feeding youngster, as a result the pigeons immune systems are not over taxed.The birds exude health.
Monday Jan. 26 is the planned pairing date. This date is flexible. It depends on the weather forecast, if the long range forecast ( 14 days ) is for warmer weather the lights will go on the hens this coming Monday ( 7 days before pairing) for 14 hours and the lights on the cocks will be increased from 12 to 14 hours.
I will add moulting mix to the hens feed ration. That is they will get 50% light winter mix and 50% moulting mix. Everything else will remain the same. The moulting mix will up the protein slightly and add some more variety to their diet. Watch them! With the extra light and slightly richer diet they will pair. If they do get them in with the cocks pronto!
One of my main goals is to attain more consistent and predictable breeding results. My path in attempting to reach this goal is the use of inbreeding and linebreeding. The emphasis is definitely on linebreeding for the first three rounds of youngsters out of the breeding loft. These youngsters will race on the young bird team this year and the pigeons that come up to snuff will be promoted to the old bird racing team the following year.
All the pairings for the breeding loft have been finalized this week, birds were paired according to body type and pedigree. Past breeding and or racing results were the overriding factor when the birds were selected for the breeding loft last fall. This only left body types and pedigree as determining factors.
The pairings for the race team are more flexible. Some will be test crosses and others will be bred within the family, some will be used to float breeder eggs. When you set goals or standards for your birds your pairing (planning) is simplified. You know what you want.
The temperatures this week have been bone chillingly cold, it's much colder then last week. For our part of the world these temperatures are not unexpected. The pigeons seem to thrive during these cold spells. The wattles are snow white, down feathers keep falling like snow and their feathering is sleek and tight. Bacteria can't grow at these temperatures, the stress levels are very low, no racing, no pairing, no feeding youngster, as a result the pigeons immune systems are not over taxed.The birds exude health.
Monday Jan. 26 is the planned pairing date. This date is flexible. It depends on the weather forecast, if the long range forecast ( 14 days ) is for warmer weather the lights will go on the hens this coming Monday ( 7 days before pairing) for 14 hours and the lights on the cocks will be increased from 12 to 14 hours.
I will add moulting mix to the hens feed ration. That is they will get 50% light winter mix and 50% moulting mix. Everything else will remain the same. The moulting mix will up the protein slightly and add some more variety to their diet. Watch them! With the extra light and slightly richer diet they will pair. If they do get them in with the cocks pronto!
Friday, January 9, 2009
Brian Long Sale
I found this the other day. The report was published in the "De Duivengazet" a Belgian website. Real quality birds are rare and certainly draw a lot of attention from other top fanciers.
Click on the image to go to the site.Nadira won Carcassonne and Perpignan International long distance races in barely two weeks time.
Unbelievable!!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Concoction
This is the concoction that I mentioned in the Jan. 05 08 post “Preparing for Pairing” .
It is based on a recipe published in the internet magazine “Winning” for a commercial product called “Prange Suppe” provided by Eddy Noel. Prange Suppe is a product first concocted by Gunter Prange, Germany and is now commercially available in Europe.
The recipe as provided below is a guesstimate as to the ingredients. As in most commercially produced products, Coca Cola for example, the true formula is a closely held "secret". There is very likely a secret something missing.
Prange Suppe
1 bunch green celery
6 large onions
2 bulbs garlic
100 gr. White alum powder
1-3 branches of thyme
Approximately 3 litres of water
1.5 kg dark brown sugar
100 ml. lugol solution
It is pretty straight forward to make the Suppe (Soup). Chop the celery and onions coarsely. Peel the garlic and chop coarsely. Add to the water and also add the alum powder. Bring to a boil and let simmer slowly for a half hour or so. Strain then bring the liquid back to a boil, add the brown sugar, stir till fully dissolved. Take off the heat and add the lugol solution. It should be slightly syrupy in consistency, if it isn’t add more sugar.
I store it in 1qt canning jars in the back of the fridge after it has cooled. If, when still hot, you put a new canning lid on the jars, the jars will seal as the suppe cools.
Add 1 tbsp to 1 litre of drinking water several times a week.
It is based on a recipe published in the internet magazine “Winning” for a commercial product called “Prange Suppe” provided by Eddy Noel. Prange Suppe is a product first concocted by Gunter Prange, Germany and is now commercially available in Europe.
The recipe as provided below is a guesstimate as to the ingredients. As in most commercially produced products, Coca Cola for example, the true formula is a closely held "secret". There is very likely a secret something missing.
Prange Suppe
1 bunch green celery
6 large onions
2 bulbs garlic
100 gr. White alum powder
1-3 branches of thyme
Approximately 3 litres of water
1.5 kg dark brown sugar
100 ml. lugol solution
It is pretty straight forward to make the Suppe (Soup). Chop the celery and onions coarsely. Peel the garlic and chop coarsely. Add to the water and also add the alum powder. Bring to a boil and let simmer slowly for a half hour or so. Strain then bring the liquid back to a boil, add the brown sugar, stir till fully dissolved. Take off the heat and add the lugol solution. It should be slightly syrupy in consistency, if it isn’t add more sugar.
I store it in 1qt canning jars in the back of the fridge after it has cooled. If, when still hot, you put a new canning lid on the jars, the jars will seal as the suppe cools.
Add 1 tbsp to 1 litre of drinking water several times a week.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Preparing for Pairing
January in my part of the world is usually cold and snowy. The days are short, to-day the sun was up less then 10 hours. Getting the pigeons in a mating mood will take a bit of planning. The birds look good, I handled some a day or so ago and they are in good shape, they aren't fat. The droppings are perfect, which means the intestinal tract is healthy, and they are shedding down feathers everyday. So far so good!
The days being short all the cock birds were put on 12 hours light at the beginning of this week. For this I use timers and last year I installed new fluorescent fixtures, the ones with electronic ballast and the thinner light tubes. I managed to find a source for the true daylight bulbs, the only downside was I had to buy a case at a time. The cocks will benefit from longer daylight for a longer period of time than the hens. It takes a few weeks to reactivate the testes in cock birds. They should be on light for a month or more before pairing. As the days shorten in the fall the testes shrink and sperm production is greatly reduced. Many times I hear fanciers complaining that their early round of eggs had a very low hatch rate and they suspect the eggs were frozen. Perhaps, the cocks weren't ready and their sperm production was to low, which resulted in infertile eggs. We can't blame all our breeding problems on the hen. The cocks have a 50% responsibility for fertility and some thought has to go into preparing them for the breeding season. About the middle of the month I'll increase their photo period to 14 hours. When paired up the first of February, they will go on 16 hours till the first eggs are laid and then the lights on the race team will be turned of.
The hens will start 14 hours of day-light a week before pairing. In my experience this is all it takes to have them ready. In the past the extended day-length for my hens was started two weeks before the planned pairing date. Year after year I had to pair earlier than planned because the hens were beginning to pair with each other, they were more than ready. Shortning the extended day-length to one week has solved this problem and has not resulted in any problems getting the hens ready.
This manner of lighting has been used on my race team and breeders for several years now and I can honestly say that I have seen no effect on the moult. The race birds don't moult any faster or slower, but I do think it is important that when those first eggs are in the nest bowl to put them back on natural day-length immediately. The breeders are a different story, they aren't raced, they can be left on 14 or 16 hours of light if you wish.
Feeding this time of year is pretty straight forward, I don' want them fat. Fat birds take forever to mate up and fat hens will have more difficulty laying. They have been getting an easily digestible, high fibre mix for a month now. I use 1 bag of Baden's Diet mix and add 1/2 bag of good quality barley, 10 lbs of corn and 5 lbs of roasted soybeans. No peas in this mix, not one. The protein in this mix is complete, the soybeans assure that they have all the essential amino acids. The high fiber will clean the intestinal tract and put it back in condition after a long season. They also get a hand full for every 20 pigeons or so,of Candy mix every day. This is made up of two parts flax, one part rape seed, one part cannery seed and one part hemp. If the weather gets very cold I give them a little extra corn before they go to bed, this keeps their internal furnace smouldering all night. Normally the birds get an ounce of feed plus the candy mix each day. Of course you have to use common sense, when it gets cold feed a little more(some corn) and if you get several warmer days cut back a bit. Keep them lean, fat birds have lower fertility rates.
They don't drink much water when the temperatures are low. I keep it simple, they get plain water 5 days a week and for two days I add a home made concoction, the recipe for which I'll post later. I don't use vitamins very often and often go months without them. They do get a good handful of fresh grit everyday, they eat the red stone in it like candy. The grit is made by Natural and I get 10 kg bags of it. Only keep 60 birds or so this time of year and probably went through 100 lbs of grit last year. They eat what they want each day and the rest I throw out. They won't eat stale grit anyway.
Mineral powder is put on the feed once a week, add a couple of table spoons of vegetable oil and a tablespoon of mineral powder to the days ration and stir well.
This post will the first of many. An honest effort will be made to post at least once a week. It is my intention to make them useful, educational and sometimes entertaining. If you have any questions or comments don't be afraid to leave them in the comment section. I will vet all the comments before they are published. I will not edit comments but do reserve the right not to publish comments. Keep them positive, I don't mind disagreement but insist on civility.
Preparation for the breeding season began last November. The the birds were vaccinated against PMV and last month, December, the birds were put through a 14 day treatment against salmonella and then vaccinated with Sal-Bac. Next week I will take some droppings to the vet to have them checked for worms. I don't worry about cocci at all, as I haven't had a problem with it for many years. My experience is that cocci is easy to control, keep the lofts dry and no drafts.
The days being short all the cock birds were put on 12 hours light at the beginning of this week. For this I use timers and last year I installed new fluorescent fixtures, the ones with electronic ballast and the thinner light tubes. I managed to find a source for the true daylight bulbs, the only downside was I had to buy a case at a time. The cocks will benefit from longer daylight for a longer period of time than the hens. It takes a few weeks to reactivate the testes in cock birds. They should be on light for a month or more before pairing. As the days shorten in the fall the testes shrink and sperm production is greatly reduced. Many times I hear fanciers complaining that their early round of eggs had a very low hatch rate and they suspect the eggs were frozen. Perhaps, the cocks weren't ready and their sperm production was to low, which resulted in infertile eggs. We can't blame all our breeding problems on the hen. The cocks have a 50% responsibility for fertility and some thought has to go into preparing them for the breeding season. About the middle of the month I'll increase their photo period to 14 hours. When paired up the first of February, they will go on 16 hours till the first eggs are laid and then the lights on the race team will be turned of.
The hens will start 14 hours of day-light a week before pairing. In my experience this is all it takes to have them ready. In the past the extended day-length for my hens was started two weeks before the planned pairing date. Year after year I had to pair earlier than planned because the hens were beginning to pair with each other, they were more than ready. Shortning the extended day-length to one week has solved this problem and has not resulted in any problems getting the hens ready.
This manner of lighting has been used on my race team and breeders for several years now and I can honestly say that I have seen no effect on the moult. The race birds don't moult any faster or slower, but I do think it is important that when those first eggs are in the nest bowl to put them back on natural day-length immediately. The breeders are a different story, they aren't raced, they can be left on 14 or 16 hours of light if you wish.
Feeding this time of year is pretty straight forward, I don' want them fat. Fat birds take forever to mate up and fat hens will have more difficulty laying. They have been getting an easily digestible, high fibre mix for a month now. I use 1 bag of Baden's Diet mix and add 1/2 bag of good quality barley, 10 lbs of corn and 5 lbs of roasted soybeans. No peas in this mix, not one. The protein in this mix is complete, the soybeans assure that they have all the essential amino acids. The high fiber will clean the intestinal tract and put it back in condition after a long season. They also get a hand full for every 20 pigeons or so,of Candy mix every day. This is made up of two parts flax, one part rape seed, one part cannery seed and one part hemp. If the weather gets very cold I give them a little extra corn before they go to bed, this keeps their internal furnace smouldering all night. Normally the birds get an ounce of feed plus the candy mix each day. Of course you have to use common sense, when it gets cold feed a little more(some corn) and if you get several warmer days cut back a bit. Keep them lean, fat birds have lower fertility rates.
They don't drink much water when the temperatures are low. I keep it simple, they get plain water 5 days a week and for two days I add a home made concoction, the recipe for which I'll post later. I don't use vitamins very often and often go months without them. They do get a good handful of fresh grit everyday, they eat the red stone in it like candy. The grit is made by Natural and I get 10 kg bags of it. Only keep 60 birds or so this time of year and probably went through 100 lbs of grit last year. They eat what they want each day and the rest I throw out. They won't eat stale grit anyway.
Mineral powder is put on the feed once a week, add a couple of table spoons of vegetable oil and a tablespoon of mineral powder to the days ration and stir well.
This post will the first of many. An honest effort will be made to post at least once a week. It is my intention to make them useful, educational and sometimes entertaining. If you have any questions or comments don't be afraid to leave them in the comment section. I will vet all the comments before they are published. I will not edit comments but do reserve the right not to publish comments. Keep them positive, I don't mind disagreement but insist on civility.
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