UkPigeonRacing

Something I tried near the end of the old bird racing. Every week I was getting a bird home with claw marks on the breast. I was told about the hawk deterrent spray. I purchased this, sprayed the birds under the wing (it’s a pink colour) had a few nationals and never once had a bird come home after being attacked. Tried in on my hens were training for these races, not once were they broken up. Cocks were going up in 3’s, 1 batch was always spit up, taking hours. Sprayed the cocks and all started dropping together! It won’t stop the perigrines taking out tail flights and secondaries but does stop the bird being killed. Sprayed all the youngsters and not 1 has had a claw mark on it. Guys using it are scoring in nationals.

Mistake earlier -line 3 never once had a bird come home with claw marks on the breast

If you keep on making the same mistakes year in year out your going to get the same result.
Ob racing should start much later starting to early when it's cold winds just to please members who want to fly the Channel & sending pigeons that haven't had adequate training to start with in Classic, BICC NFC or cub races after being used for breeding to fat & to slow.
Yb racing should say have a 3/4 week break from the end of ob racing before they start, give fancier's the chance to get yb going, 1 thing I have learnt this season is those pigeons that are bred in December January don't run or range & that's another problem with the darkness ybs. We breed far to early every year, I've come to the conclusion that yb needs to be bred around April/ May time all natural & they run at a very early age also when weaned & up in double quick time the longer you leave them on the ground that's not a good thing. I've decided not to race this season 1 because of the heat this year.
2, to many fancier's sending ybs to races (fat eye, ybs it goes on) & it just spreads every year, so many losses.
3, make your ybs think for themselves if you don't split them up at an early age say in groups of 3/ 4 from the baskets can only help in the long run make them think make them use there heads, if you continue to release in big groups then all your doing is going to end with a loft full of dummies that just follow. I said at the start of this topic if you don't change things you'll get the same result.

Yes we had same issue so we had the new yorkshire middle route fed created and now we are in similar place with lib decisions and lib sites chosen and lack of willingness to move the season later or start libbing old and yb together and push the whole season back further to account for the bops feeding young

Some of it is down to the pigeons. Pigeons instinctively fear hawks, it's a preservation thing. But some fear them more than others.
I think this is why some blokes always have a shocking run with losses and others seem to get them home more.
I have a family of pigeons I have bred over the last few years, small blue chequers with white flights. They are a bit of this and that blended together. They are not as quick as the fancy Van den Whatevers, but they get home.
I think I know why.

There is a little brown hawk lives around here. It's smaller than a Goshawk but it's a savage little brute, it chases them and it's very fast. They are terrified of it. Except for the "Free Beers" as I call them. Yesterday I was in the loft when all of a sudden they all rushed in from the aviary with their eyes sticking out. All except the Free Beer, her brother 580 and the late bred sister. They were sat out there with their heads on the side looking for it.

I think some strains have lost the escape mechanism to a degree. The moment they see a hawk they run for cover. They are diving into trees, often hurting themselves, and sit there for hours while the rest move on and they are left behind.

As an experiment I'm pairing some of the Free Beers to more speedy types with the aim of breeding fast pigeons with a bit more courage. We'll see how it goes.

Johnbee wrote: Wed Aug 26, 2026 7:54 pm Mistake earlier -line 3 never once had a bird come home with claw marks on the breast

Yes the ones with the claw marks have been killed.

king wrote: Thu Aug 27, 2026 12:00 am

Johnbee wrote: Wed Aug 26, 2026 7:54 pm Mistake earlier -line 3 never once had a bird come home with claw marks on the breast

Yes the ones with the claw marks have been killed.

Yep, a pigeon that arrives home with claw marks is a very lucky pigeon.

There's another factor that we don't like to look at very much.
A lot of pigeons are simply not good enough. Mainly, I think because in order to breed plenty they are bred off pigeons that aren't good enough.
The OLR in Melbourne that Devo and I have a couple in lost a lot of pigeons in the training and the first race. That's a fact.
But yesterday they trained exactly 900 pigeons to keep them going before the second final race. Right now there are 897 home.
There are 3 missing from 900.
What has happened is the ones that for whatever reasons were not good enough are no longer there. And when you look through the individual fanciers you see that some have lost most or even all of their birds and some have lost hardly any.
The hawks are a massive problem, but some of our worries are of our own making.

In the last couple of minutes another one is home at the OLR, so there's 898 from 900, they might get them all. And there are falcons everywhere.
Make of it what you like.

899/900