So this weekend I was just racing with the 3 counties from Maidstone, 128 miles to me. I could have also sent to Brighton with the combine but as I am only racing 8 widowhood cocks I decided to send them all to the one race.
The day didn’t start well. It was rather misty at both the liberation site and along the South Coast so the liberation was delayed. Whilst waiting for news of a liberation we were informed that 4 crates of pigeons had escaped from the transporter. 3 crates from Crewkerne and one from our club Glastonbury. It was agreed between the officials and Crewkerne that the Crewkerne birds would all be disqualified from the race. With the Glastonbury birds it was decided to re-crate all our birds that were still on the lorry and write down all the ring numbers of ours that would still be in the race. It prevailed that 32 of our clubs birds had escaped leaving 101 still in the race. Finally after re-crating all our birds they were finally liberated at 12.00. The escapees had escaped at 9.15 and the returning ones were taking just under 3 hours. With this in mind we were expecting the race birds to do similar. But it turned out that they were a fair bit slower. Of course the escapees were all returning to the same sort of area without the drag down into South Devon that the race birds would. Also of course the pull for our club was depleted by the 150 odd birds in total that had escaped.
Returns were rather sporadic for everyone from both the escapees and the race birds. The crate from ours that had escaped were a crate full of hens. I had only sent cocks so all mine were still in the race. I had my first one at 3.36 and a second at 3.47. By 4.20 I had 5 of my 8. I had one more when I returned from the club and the other 2 were both on the loft first thing this morning.
Problems this weekend
Crikey that was a bit of a performance then, Andy.
At least you got yours home and not a bad result after all that.
At least you got yours home and not a bad result after all that.
Greetings from the land down under. 
Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for verily, he shall not be disappointed.
Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for verily, he shall not be disappointed.