What a Line of Pigeon this was

[Buster121]

Good birds with impressive results, congratulations

[PeteDerby]

Coincidentally I had the opportunity today to buy some great grandchildren of Vandenabeele winners that I’m mulling over to establish my new loft. Ideally I wanted some long distance birds but these were described as ‘all rounders’. Is that correct ?

[PeteDerby]

The Gaby can and do win all distances

The NFC Tarbes winner thus year has a lot of Gaby in it


All depends what distance you wanted to race

Me, if i were setting up a distance orientated loft I’d go for a ‘distance pigeon’

Sure, that’s been the train of thought in the back of my mind since I’ve been planning restarting in the sport. It was something of a coincidence having that convo yesterday and coming here to check out the latest threads and seeing the same line referenced.

One of the things I’m trying to get my head around is what constitutes a ‘distance’ line these days as the strains that were winning a lot back in the 70’s have naturally fallen away and there seems more of a trend towards sprint and middle distance?

[PeteDerby]

To me Pete, "Distance" starts at 500 miles (on the day) and then beyond

There's no end of different "families" you can choose from now

One of the best and most proven in the UK are these Marshall pigeons that Ian Stafford has

The likes of "The Machine", "Big Smithy", "Mukin Fagic" etc - all vastly proven racers at almost 600 mls - all proven breeders

They aren't as expensive to buy now as they once were

That's just fashion that's all - they remain a hell of a pigeon

Thank you that’s good info.

Forgive my naivety but what does “aren’t as expensive” mean these days? I’m out of touch and trying to get an idea of how much it’s going to cost to start the basis of a good distance family? I’m getting on a bit now and can’t afford 20years of trial and error if you follow me. I know buying quality is only part of it, but I’m hoping to at least restart knowing I’m in with a chance

[PeteDerby]

I think if I flew 500-700
I would look at 2/3 strains
The Marshall pigeons look excellent my mate Mark Bulleds family and something like Gaby that can still do it. It also give you fun on the races leading to the target races
Mark has distance pigeons but he has told me he had slight variations in his family that he gets from 450-500 in certain maybe faster days then his other family that will fly all day and go again at 1100/1200

Thank you. I will check these out

[PeteDerby]

the cock from the pair i bought as ybs 13 years ago still have the cock not filling eggs now free to a good home give all ybs from him away

I’ve been reading a lot about this line. Seem very successful. Can I ask why you gave all of his offspring away and do you know if they performed for those you gave them to?

[Steve Howells]

Those 3 cocks I metioned above were all superstars in every way

Great racers and they've left a legacy of winners behind them including 1st Open NFC and 1st Open UNC (both from France)

Buying Direct from them is not easy - I "think" only "Big Smithy" is alive now out of the 3 (but stand corrected)

For sure though Direct children of them become available rather rarely

If you're lucky you can pick up G.Children of them for around the £100 mark

In September 2023 I sold a G.Daughter of "BIG SMITHY" and "MUKIN FAGIC" for £110 - That struck me as being a good buy


Goose1 on here has some very good distance pigeons - inlcuding pigeons carrying the lines mentioned above as well as Mark Bulled's best lines and Alwyn Hill's best pigeons. He'd be a good place to start your enquiries I would say.

I think I'm right in saying they had a lot of Marcel Albrecht in them. I had 10 off Marcel before everyone went crazy for them and started adding a lot of 0's onto the price he wanted, they could do a turn on the short races but really came into their own at the distance. They were beautiful pigeons to boot!!

[PeteDerby]

Those 3 cocks I metioned above were all superstars in every way

Great racers and they've left a legacy of winners behind them including 1st Open NFC and 1st Open UNC (both from France)

Buying Direct from them is not easy - I "think" only "Big Smithy" is alive now out of the 3 (but stand corrected)

For sure though Direct children of them become available rather rarely

If you're lucky you can pick up G.Children of them for around the £100 mark

In September 2023 I sold a G.Daughter of "BIG SMITHY" and "MUKIN FAGIC" for £110 - That struck me as being a good buy


Goose1 on here has some very good distance pigeons - inlcuding pigeons carrying the lines mentioned above as well as Mark Bulled's best lines and Alwyn Hill's best pigeons. He'd be a good place to start your enquiries I would say.

Thank you very much for your advice

[PeteDerby]

the cock from the pair i bought as ybs 13 years ago still have the cock not filling eggs now free to a good home give all ybs from him away

I’ve been reading a lot about this line. Seem very successful. Can I ask why you gave all of his offspring away and do you know if they performed for those you gave them to?

no one every told me even Dev this was his bird of him

Very nice

[goose1]

First thing I would say with distance pigeons, in my opinion is you've got to have speed in there. Putting slow pigeons to slow pigeons just breed slow pigeons. Since we went into the distance pigeons we haven't really been able to test them as we would have liked due to covid and Brexit. But this year we got back into France for only the second time in 5 years we were first and second combine (combine entry was low) but we were liberated with the Scottish National Flying Club, were around 28 mile short of their boundary but had we been able to compete our winning hen would have won the national by 18ypm our second bird flying 13hrs 53 mins would have been 6th national. Both these pigeons were 75% of what you'd call distance blood but crossed in with faster pigeons. In fact the winner was 5th combine 189 mile 3 weeks before the win at 497 mile. To me no matter what the distance you want racing pigeons. Due to not being able to test them at the distance for a few year we started to cross them with some faster pigeons we brought in and feel we now have pigeons we can work with and we will hopefully be pushing on to Pau NFC at 800 mile.