UkPigeonRacing

I tend to train my pigeons as I was taught to train race horses. Do what your experience tells you to do, and look, watch carefully. If it isn't working, ask yourself why?

As you know, I use Garlic and cider vinegar all the time, buy the red pigeon grit by the sack, and feed chopped vegetables every week. Then, I watch.

Two example of the pigeons telling me I am doing what is wanted happened to day. I have one pair with a big single youngster, ( the Crow snuck in and ate it's nestmate ). When I filled up the grit bucket today, I hadn't walked out of the garage and it's mother dived into the bucket and started attacking the grit. I carried her back to her box, which had plenty of grit in it, in the bucket.

Then I mixed some cider vinegar in water, 5 ml to the litre, and replaced all the fresh water. In the stock shed each box has a drinker. One old hen who hatched babies a couple of days ago started walking around behind me, she must have smelt the ACV in the water. As soon as I put the vinegar water in her drinker, and put it in her box, she jumped into the shed and was a happy old girl.

I think more than all the graphs and tables and theories in the whole world, pay attention to your pigeons.
They will tell you what they need.

Correct as always Murray

Well said Murray. You can learn a lot about the birds just by watching them. The last week when it was very hot the birds were drinking twice the amount of water. They have reverted back to normal the last couple of days.

The past week the birds have been showing me how they feel and what may have happened if I had tried to race them. For some reason after flying well one day last week when opened up in the afternoon not one came out when Roxanna opened them up. I went up to check a few minutes later and they were still all in despite the fronts being opened. They all looked relaxed and well so unlikely that anything had frightened them. They are heavy in the moult, especially around the head, so probably just not keen at present. I think that if I had tried racing them last weekend into a headwind I would probably have lost a good number. They have still been a bit sluggish to come out but once out they fly well. They are trapping and feeding well, and look great, so I have no concerns over them.
They are strange when flying in as much as they keep going off in separate different batches. Sometimes joining up before splitting again. They are flying high and sometimes the odd ones just break off completely flying on their own.

That's a similar thing to what happened here last week.
I tossed the cocks on Friday afternoon, they went Zoom, home, then had a big fly after they got home.
I tossed the hens on Saturday, same thing, very full of themselves.
On Sunday I was tossing up about going again, but the day was a bit dull, and I didn't go. Which was wise.
When I let them out in the afternoon quite a lot of the young birds / yearlings stayed in the loft. There was no obvious reason, they just were not keen. So I put the baths out on the lawn and eventually most of them went out, had a bath and a sit in the garden.
I can only think that while I am only tossing short distances to get them focused, they are working very hard around home, and after those very fast tosses the pigeons were just a little bit flat.
The next day they were back to normal, doing their imitation of the Red Arrows flying over Her Majesty on the balcony
It would have been so easy to put them back in the box, give them another short one, they would have come tearing home, and the damage would have been done.
They are like flashlights. You can only turn them off and on so many times before they go flat.