Loft Flying or Training for Young birds

[worm]

Would you say that darkness ybs don't go off ranging compared to natural ybs.
Do you think they should be trained at say from 9 week of age or when they have still got yellow down still on there heads, better to have them thinking early & up flying.
Would you agree that ybs bred in December don't range & pigeons bred around April more naturally are better for racing, just thought with the heavy losses over the last 2 weekends you all might have an opinion.
Are we as fancier's causing the losses because we are breeding to early, & from inferior stock ( paper pigeons) not from tried & tested pigeons, just don't think it's all down to bop any thoughts could of been atmospheric conditions, & I'm not sure or how we can avoid these issues moving forward.

Hi Dave.
My main youngsters are bred from my widowhood team paired up on Boxing Day. No darkness here.
They had 5 tosses at 8 miles before the first race. No more training since.
Our club has had good returns from the first 2 races with the 3Cs. I lost the odd ones the first race but got all mine last week.
A good race controller makes a big difference.

if you had 5 at 8 miles here you wouldn't get 90% of them home

[Rdhd Danny]

@worm where are based?

[king]

Would you say that darkness ybs don't go off ranging compared to natural ybs.
Do you think they should be trained at say from 9 week of age or when they have still got yellow down still on there heads, better to have them thinking early & up flying.
Would you agree that ybs bred in December don't range & pigeons bred around April more naturally are better for racing, just thought with the heavy losses over the last 2 weekends you all might have an opinion.
Are we as fancier's causing the losses because we are breeding to early, & from inferior stock ( paper pigeons) not from tried & tested pigeons, just don't think it's all down to bop any thoughts could of been atmospheric conditions, & I'm not sure or how we can avoid these issues moving forward.

Hi Dave.
My main youngsters are bred from my widowhood team paired up on Boxing Day. No darkness here.
They had 5 tosses at 8 miles before the first race. No more training since.
Our club has had good returns from the first 2 races with the 3Cs. I lost the odd ones the first race but got all mine last week.
A good race controller makes a big difference.

How far is your first race Andy? You wouldn't get away with just 5 tosses at 8 miles before the first race around me. We start at 70+ miles. The majority of fanciers will have trained 25 - 35 many times before the first race.

[Spieker-Loft]

Would you say that darkness ybs don't go off ranging compared to natural ybs.
Do you think they should be trained at say from 9 week of age or when they have still got yellow down still on there heads, better to have them thinking early & up flying.
Would you agree that ybs bred in December don't range & pigeons bred around April more naturally are better for racing, just thought with the heavy losses over the last 2 weekends you all might have an opinion.
Are we as fancier's causing the losses because we are breeding to early, & from inferior stock ( paper pigeons) not from tried & tested pigeons, just don't think it's all down to bop any thoughts could of been atmospheric conditions, & I'm not sure or how we can avoid these issues moving forward.

No. We darken and use light on our yb's and we also breed our yb's in december even whilst we still darken they do 2-3 hours on the house. Every year we are the people with the least losses in the fed.
With this i dont wanna say that you did things wrong or did something wrong but atleast in my experience darkening or early breeds have no effect on the losses etc. And for me if you wanna take YB racing serious darkening etc is necessary.

[Rdhd Danny]

@king it's crazy what some do as prep and get away with in our fed he would not get a return with training like that but it seems to work for him

[Rdhd Danny]

@leon