Young birds, yearlings and old birds.

[Murray]

The good theing is, Andy has pigeons getting home. The Muzzaboy arrived a day or two late recently. I think the pigeons must be in good health since they keep coming instead of just giving up.
Andy is in not the best location, as he has no local club racing. He is doing it alone. I commend him.

[George and Morgan]

ok lets be honest who sent Andy birds that could fly Barcelona not me i'm talking in race time , i also fail to see from your results this year how any of your birds are fit to fly 400mls on the day but correct me if l'm wrong i think the birds need to be kept going not one race then stopped for the season unless it has put up a good performance and i don't see that either what i hope is that you don;t lose too many ybs of course you are building a team i just can't see it in the birds you have you must be ready to send to Barcelona next year no matter what i've said i do hope you have a good yb season and you prove me wrong i will be happy , the other thing i did not read a post were you had sent my yearling hen to a national only when i ask about her did you tell me she was lost in a national

[Buster121]

The good theing is, Andy has pigeons getting home. The Muzzaboy arrived a day or two late recently. I think the pigeons must be in good health since they keep coming instead of just giving up.
Andy is in not the best location, as he has no local club racing. He is doing it alone. I commend him.

So do I

[Buster121]

ok lets be honest who sent Andy birds that could fly Barcelona not me i'm talking in race time , i also fail to see from your results this year how any of your birds are fit to fly 400mls on the day but correct me if l'm wrong i think the birds need to be kept going not one race then stopped for the season unless it has put up a good performance and i don't see that either what i hope is that you don;t lose too many ybs of course you are building a team i just can't see it in the birds you have you must be ready to send to Barcelona next year no matter what i've said i do hope you have a good yb season and you prove me wrong i will be happy , the other thing i did not read a post were you had sent my yearling hen to a national only when i ask about her did you tell me she was lost in a national

In theory they should but who knows none of us are perfect and mistakes will be made both good and bad, Andy does his best under some difficult circumstances and I fully support him

[Murray]

I think George is a bit strong in his tone, but he is quite right.

Andy is training a team of pigeons which have been sent to him to form into a marathon racing team. I obviously don't know the background of the fanciers who have sent the youngsters. Perhaps an honest look at the long distance successes of the members who sent the pigeons is in order.

It doesn't matter what Andy does, pigeons that can fly Barcelona to England in race time are a different breed.

Like any trainer, he can only work with the stock he is given.

[Andy]

If you look at the race results and then the BICC Guernsey post George you will see that I put on there that your pied hen was our 3rd pigeon back. Yes she was later lost from Wakefield 184 miles when turned North.

[George and Morgan]

when were the 3 pigeons back in race time also Andy you never said she had gone to another race and lets see the result to that race were the other 2 birds on the day you just cannot walk into the loft pick up a bird sent it 184 mls in a national and think someone else does it i'll do it it don't work like that and as i also said those who send you birds should give you some idea of there breeding however i don't think we will ever agree on the need to train good luck with the ybs i do mean that

[Andy]

ok lets be honest who sent Andy birds that could fly Barcelona not me i'm talking in race time , i also fail to see from your results this year how any of your birds are fit to fly 400mls on the day but correct me if l'm wrong i think the birds need to be kept going not one race then stopped for the season unless it has put up a good performance and i don't see that either what i hope is that you don;t lose too many ybs of course you are building a team i just can't see it in the birds you have you must be ready to send to Barcelona next year no matter what i've said i do hope you have a good yb season and you prove me wrong i will be happy , the other thing i did not read a post were you had sent my yearling hen to a national only when i ask about her did you tell me she was lost in a national

Barcelona is 700 miles to me. No members are sending me pigeons out of birds that have flown this distance as the object of this venture was for me to test birds from members in races that they would otherwise not be able to test their birds in. These birds are fir enough to fly 400 miles on the day and probably actually do more than that in this type of racing. I have stopped the birds I have this year because of the race program available and I have no more races that I could send to. Where do you think I could have continued sending birds too? All this messing around with the race programs hasn’t helped the last couple of seasons. I still can’t see me sending to Barcelona for a couple of years yet.
I’m not interested in the breeding of any of the birds sent to me. They are all treated the same and if they are good enough they will still be here. I have birds coming in from different members and are trying to found a distance team on these birds. It’s going to take a long time but I will get there. The good thing is that I have pigeons at least down from every member who has sent me pigeons.

[Andy]

when were the 3 pigeons back in race time also Andy you never said she had gone to another race and lets see the result to that race were the other 2 birds on the day you just cannot walk into the loft pick up a bird sent it 184 mls in a national and think someone else does it i'll do it it don't work like that and as i also said those who send you birds should give you some idea of there breeding however i don't think we will ever agree on the need to train good luck with the ybs i do mean that

I don’t understand what your asking George? From the first Guernsey I had 3 on the day, 1 next day and 1 three days later injured. The first 2 were having their first race. From second Guernsey I had 7 on the day, 2 next morning, 1 eleven days and 1 twenty three days. From the third Guernsey I had 2 on the day, 3 next day and 1 after 4 days. I then switched them North to Wakefield. I had 1 on the day 1 early next morning, 1 after 2 days and 1 after 10 days. Finally from Hexham I had 1 on the day, 1 early next morning and the other after 9 days.
The birds lost over these races were mainly birds that had been late from previous races or out of the stock birds of last year.
It’s not a problem jumping birds and am quite happy to do so. 2 years ago my first race was 178 miles. I sent 21 and got 18. Provided the birds are fit there’s no reason why you can’t send them 184 miles in a national. Also all the ones I sent had flown Guernsey once or twice in the weeks before going to this race. I see the yearling that won the Lerwick national was only trained 15 miles as a youngster and not raced.
I will keep the updates going and will hopefully soon start training the youngsters.

[Andy]

I have lost 17 old birds over 5 national races this year. I lost 16 last year in one 18 mile training toss. So what’s better, training or giving them a race?