Our club made a few proposals to try to make the combine more viable in the future. Last season the combine lost over £7,000.
One proposal is to charge all members £250. For this members would be able to send 30 birds per race with no additional cost. Any birds sent over 30 will be charged a fee to be determined. Doesn’t sound like this will be agreed though.
One proposal by our club that looks like it will be agreed is that the whole season will be for any age racing. In the past members have been able to send youngsters with the old birds and old birds with youngsters but only as trainers. With this proposal all birds sent will compete. So in theory a young bird if sent could win the combine from the first race of the season and an old bird could win the last. They will be basketed separately. A few of our other proposals look like they will be accepted.
It does sound though that our race program will be East to West. This means that the longest race for me will be Brighton 102 miles. Not particularly testing but could be interesting. I will see how it goes but may have to think again as to whether I rejoin the nationals and classics in the future to get a bit more distance with channel racing. Not next season though.
Although the distance isn’t there for the coming season it could work well for me if the mentioned proposals are agreed.
With racing widowhood I will be pairing up at Christmas with youngsters hatching end of January. These youngsters could start racing in May and not having to wait until July as would have been. It would mean that the youngsters would have a lot of races available to them and could easily be stopped for a couple of weeks if moulting heavily and then restarted. The cocks also could race a long program and when starting to slow could be repaired and I could then race the hens.
