Time to reflect
Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2025 9:50 pm
With the final race yesterday in the german classic OLR. The racing season as a whole is finished for me and my father.
Weve managed to finish the season off with a 23rd and 87th in the final with only those 2 birds beeing raced in the final on a hard 410km race and only 107 pigeons returning home on the first day.
Now its time to reflect and learn from misstakes and the positives from this season.
Its hard for me to judge my first old/yearling racing season due to the small size of the team and not racing them total widowhood as i wanted to. I can say im not pleased with the results my own birds had but what i am pleased with is the small ammount of losses i had through all 12 races compared to the rest of the combine in % i had by far the least losses for yearlings which told me that besides maybe the motivation and a few other things i had the birds healthy at the least. Maybe next year with total widowhood a bigger team and a few other changes i can finally also get some top results in.
The youngbird season was once again perfect. and a new all time high with my win in the FG against 1019p. overall we won 2x1st club 2x1st combine 1x1st FG. 2nd club youngbird champion 4th combine youngbird champion. And 6th on the horst aldhoff cup in the whole federation. We have done a huge change this season for youngbirds which raised alot of doubts at the start racing the youngbirds on total widowhood and the only time they would see each other would be on arrival day. We trained this very well with alot of training flights letting them be togehter for 1-2 hours then seperate again before the races so they understand when we get home we get to be together. But i guess my doubts got proven wrong with top results.
Now it is time to change up the complete loft system. Starting next week we will be reconstruction the complete inside of each loft that we got trying to optimize the space better and airflow/temperature. We are building new aviaries. 20 new widowhood boxes for the male side of my old bird racing team. and a perch box? with closeable doors for the hens (Im not sure if thats the actual name for it if not im sorry).
But there is always also a downside to everything good going on. unfortunately i will have to let go over 20 breeding couples because we are downsizing our breeding alot for the needed space of the old/yearling teams. This for me personally is a very hard thing to do because i spend alot of time with my breeding pigeons and for me thats where everything starts. So to have the hard choice of who to sort out and who to keep when you basically cut it in half hits me hard. But I understand that it is something that needs to be done in order to pursue my goals.
Once again a last thanks to devo. Hes the only person right after my dad and uncle that keeps me in line. I am super grateful to have you on my path and i hope we can continue the path for as long as possible.
Weve managed to finish the season off with a 23rd and 87th in the final with only those 2 birds beeing raced in the final on a hard 410km race and only 107 pigeons returning home on the first day.
Now its time to reflect and learn from misstakes and the positives from this season.
Its hard for me to judge my first old/yearling racing season due to the small size of the team and not racing them total widowhood as i wanted to. I can say im not pleased with the results my own birds had but what i am pleased with is the small ammount of losses i had through all 12 races compared to the rest of the combine in % i had by far the least losses for yearlings which told me that besides maybe the motivation and a few other things i had the birds healthy at the least. Maybe next year with total widowhood a bigger team and a few other changes i can finally also get some top results in.
The youngbird season was once again perfect. and a new all time high with my win in the FG against 1019p. overall we won 2x1st club 2x1st combine 1x1st FG. 2nd club youngbird champion 4th combine youngbird champion. And 6th on the horst aldhoff cup in the whole federation. We have done a huge change this season for youngbirds which raised alot of doubts at the start racing the youngbirds on total widowhood and the only time they would see each other would be on arrival day. We trained this very well with alot of training flights letting them be togehter for 1-2 hours then seperate again before the races so they understand when we get home we get to be together. But i guess my doubts got proven wrong with top results.
Now it is time to change up the complete loft system. Starting next week we will be reconstruction the complete inside of each loft that we got trying to optimize the space better and airflow/temperature. We are building new aviaries. 20 new widowhood boxes for the male side of my old bird racing team. and a perch box? with closeable doors for the hens (Im not sure if thats the actual name for it if not im sorry).
But there is always also a downside to everything good going on. unfortunately i will have to let go over 20 breeding couples because we are downsizing our breeding alot for the needed space of the old/yearling teams. This for me personally is a very hard thing to do because i spend alot of time with my breeding pigeons and for me thats where everything starts. So to have the hard choice of who to sort out and who to keep when you basically cut it in half hits me hard. But I understand that it is something that needs to be done in order to pursue my goals.
Once again a last thanks to devo. Hes the only person right after my dad and uncle that keeps me in line. I am super grateful to have you on my path and i hope we can continue the path for as long as possible.