Young birds being put away until yearlings.

[Devo1956]

So what are member thoughts on stopping young bird racing, having a longer old bird racing season. At the right time of the year, and youngsters being trained up to race has yearlings.?

[George and Morgan]

not much Dev like ybs to have been raced there are 2 types of yb racing 0ne or two races and that will do if i was racing they would have all the races they done it in the 50s and 60s then i was told to dig a large hole in the garden now days they keep any think last week the ybs i bred for myself same as those lost in olr are gone could not take a chance so have most unflown birds to be replaced with raced birds what happens now useless birds are bred from each year just to make up the numbers

[George and Morgan]

here's your answer i think he only kept 10-12 birds and was very successful

[Andy]

Another good question. I will give my views later when I have a bit more time.

[Buster121]

here's your answer i think he only kept 10-12 birds and was very successful

Very successful indeed with such a small amount of birds as the saying goes quality over quantity

[Andy]

I have mixed views with my experience. Years ago I would race most youngsters through the whole season but would stop the odd ones. Lately I haven’t raced youngsters much. I must admit that I don’t think I have done the birds justice over the last few seasons. Manly because of the races I have had available with no club racing. I have found over those years that it made very little difference to their racing as old birds if they were raced as youngsters or not. I think I have more old birds here that weren’t raced as youngsters than those that were. I didn’t race youngsters at all last year. They just had 3 training tosses at 10 miles. I did lose a fair few this year as yearlings but of course I may have lost them as youngsters if raced then. My best yearling this year was actually a latebred hen that had no training before her first race but ended up having 8 races this year and was my first bird from the 2 longest races. This year as I am now in a club and not racing in any national/classic races I decided to give this year’s youngsters the whole program of 8 races if right. I have 9 youngsters that had all 8 races. 2 more that were raced but missed a few races due to going missing during the season. It will be interesting to see how these perform next year.
It is something that we have spoken about down the club. Some members have only had the odd race, partly due to YBS, whilst myself and a couple of others have had every race. One member reckons that you could give them 100 trainers but nothing would be as good as even one race where they spend a night in the crates and are liberated with hundreds of other birds. One member was questioning about racing youngsters and isn’t sure whether he will next year.
I know that doesn’t really answer your question Dev. I still don’t think you can attach much importance to young bird results but I’m glad of the experience that my have had this year.

[Andy]

I had said to Dave Staddon at the beginning of the young bird season that mine would get every race and if I only had 2 left at the end so be it.

[George and Morgan]

how many had you left Andy

[Andy]

how many had you left Andy

I started with 23. Lost none in training. Lost 1/23 first race, 1/21 in second race. Had a bad third race where I lost 6/20 and 3/14 from the fourth race. I then had 10/10 from the next 2 races. I lost 1/10 on the seventh race and finally 9/9 from the last race. I also have 2 others that have raced but were missing for a couple of weeks during the season. So ended with 11/23 after some tough young bird races.

[Devo1956]

At one point i would say it was around 33% of loss of birds through a season. not sure what it is now to be honest.