4/24/2005

No new birds arrived this week. I have spent much of the time training Old Birds, giving them a few tosses as far as 35 miles. This Saturday is our first race; I would like to at least have a strong showing within the club, if not the combine. I have the Old Bird on a pre-race med program. I have treated them for Canker, coccidiossis, worms and respiratory.

I have been basketing the young birds and taking them to my garage roof for a release. It is about 60 yards away, well within sight of the loft. It has a flat roof, and an elevation quite a bit above the loft due to the ground slope, but only about four feet off the ground on the backside. This has helped in getting many of them to loft fly. While some make the trek right to the loft roof, most of them are now circling at least a few laps. Some I believe are in the early routing stages, but so far they are never out of sight except for a few minutes.

By my count, I may be missing two birds. It may be due to the garage roof training, but all of the newbie’s are still here. I will do a physical inventory to determine which ones may be missing. I know for sure the latest birds received are still in the loft. It would have to be either a miscount, or birds that should have been relatively settled. Or I need to recalculate how many I should actually have. Lately there have been a couple of birds that continually stay out late, but I have no idea where. They arrive 4-5 hours after the rest of the flock is in. It is the same two, both of which are back now. Both crops are empty, so I know they are not hanging around a grain mill. I will keep an eye on them and see if they wind up the best of the bunch, or get lost on the first toss. I would like to think that they are just being adventurous.

I found the remains of the missing bird from the first loss. I am not sure if it was an aerial predator, or a mammal that may have taken it from outside the loft as a late arrival. I assume the aerial variety, and as luck would have it, I have now evened the 2005 score to 1-all. Actually I am up by one, but it was a pretty early score. (This is a mythical scorecard; no actual harm is ever done to anything…;)

I had a long-winger fly over this past week. It tried a couple of times to take a bird.  Flew towards the flock once but didn't catch a bird.  Then got elevated, maybe 200 yards up.  Went into a stoop, but I gave it a “Howard Dean” scream as it was getting about ½ way down and distracted it.  Had a few birds come in late, but all were back that day (at least by my count, not inventory). It eventually flew towards the east, hopefully never to come back.  I believe it was a peregrine.

I am getting behind on my vaccination program, but when my last two birds arrive this weekend, I will get the last several birds and my droppers vaccinated.

4/17/2005

I received four birds from “Crazy” Al this week. The birds looked great and as always appeared to be very healthy. They are with the rest of the team. These birds are ones that I bought at an auction last year, so they do not have Gold Bands. I will race them in the regular season, and some of the special races. On the day of the Gold band race, there is a 4 for 50 race. Only one team is allowed, so if I have four birds left, without gold bands, I may ship a team.

For those of you that subscribe to the digest, on page 123 of the 4/1/2005 edition of the Digest, my loft was listed.

The bird that went missing last week has not returned. I suspect it was either hawked while flying, got a bit far and lost, broke a bone in one of the trees while flying or something similar. It had been trapping fairly well, and for some reason disappeared. I noticed that right from the start it was a bit adventurous, going across the yard from almost the first time on the landing board. If it is still alive, I wish it well. The manual inventory this week showed all present and accounted for. All birds have my phone number stamped on both wings.

I have started to separate the older well-settled birds from the younger ones. I am going to start to be a bit more aggressive in getting them to loft-fly longer. I think some of the younger birds are holding them back, and they need to understand that they can actually fly. I have purchased a lot of tennis balls to toss at them if they land on the building next door. Ebay has some pretty good deals on used tennis balls, only a quarter apiece. Why I need 80 of them I don’t know, but the dogs will like them too.

I picked up two pair of Satinettes for droppers. After I settle the first pair, I will try the second pair. From what I hear, they are easy to settle. If I have some bad luck with the first pair, the second pair that will be prisoners, until I breed a round of youngsters.

I did some work on my darkening setup. I plan to darken next weekend. My exhaust fan is running, slightly slower than the 1500 CFM it is capable of. All I have left to do is re-program the light switch to only allow eight hours of light. Since I work from 8 – 5 mostly, I will darken them from Sunset until about two in the afternoon. My lights will wake the birds up, and when I get home I will open the loft and they will get loft flown. I plan on alternating the teams, with the strong flyers getting short tosses from across the yard until they start routing. Eventually I want to wind up with one team again, until it is time to separate before the races.

I treated all birds with Ivomec wormer, and will repeat again in about 10 days, to make sure that all birds are parasite free.

My old bird team is beginning to take shape. I thought I was going to lose most of them after a 10-mil toss on Saturday. The weather was supposed to turn better, but instead almost right after the release, turned bad. It rained fairly well for most of the day. All birds waited out the rain, and returned when it stopped. Some of them were pretty wet, but glad to get home. I can only hope that they will be better for the experience. I will be training them throughout the week, getting them in as good of shape as possible.

Now if I can just get them to trap better.

So far, I have been feeding both teams the same, a no-corn mix. I will be switching to a corn mix feed that will hopefully provide more energy. My old birds should come into shape nicely for the beginning of the race season with the added carbohydrates. My current mix of feed is a higher protein mix, with pellets, grain, black sunflowers, and peanuts.

4/10/2005

I received birds this week from Don Lowe of Minnesota and another pair from Bob Boltz of Ohio. I picked the four up from Don directly, and got a good tour of his loft. He has several Ganus birds is his stock loft and flies mainly Old Birds.

My first two youngsters from my World of Wings pair went into the young bird loft today. Only two more left to wean and two more to be taken in from other flyers.

Most of the birds are flying with some encouragement. I flagged them once today to get them off the loft roof; the ones who want to fly generally take to flight. I am not too aggressive; just want to let them know that they can fly. One bird is still out, #0970 (Sorry Bob). It could also be in my other loft, I will double check tomorrow. It is a bird that has been flying, so I am not really sure where it could be. I would suspect that it would be back.

I will let out a few Calvary birds tomorrow AM if I don’t see it around to help bring it back. It could also be if I inventory the birds again it may be there, but I thought I did a pretty good job. (Of course I thought two were missing at first, but checking my notes again it really wasn’t)

I let them out around 1 PM, based upon their response today they were slightly overfed. It was a fairly good day weather-wise. It rained just a bit, so they all took showers and were pretty lazy and unresponsive.

I suspect that some of the younger birds are holding the older ones back a bit from routing. That is OK for now as it is a long way to the races. I just want them in reasonable shape now, no need to have them in competition form yet.

I had a call from a gentleman from West Virginia looking for a handler for the Gold Band race. He saw my write-up in the Digest and called and left a message. Although I really have enough birds at this point, I would have taken maybe two more, to help the club and the race out. He was able to reach other flyers first, but it was nice to have the call. He will be placing two birds each in some of the better handlers of our club.

The Gold Band Race will be released on Saturday, September 24, 2005. If anyone wants to come up to my loft and watch the results, you are more than welcome. I have a guest bedroom for 1 couple and plenty of couches, space for motor homes and/or tents, and there is a nice hotel across the street if it is needed. I can grill some food, order pizzas, get some refreshments and have a good time while waiting for the birds.

I took my old cocks out for a 4-mile toss this AM. They all came back without issue. They have to learn a new trap, so it’s a bit frustrating getting them in. They are in good shape, just need to get some miles on them before the first race on 4/30. I have them on a pre-race med program and if I can get them to trap better I believe I have a good chance to be successful. My old bird setup is taking shape nicely.

4/03/2005

I received birds this week from both Craig Goode of Breakaway Loft and Tim Beard of Double T Lofts. All birds arrived safe and sound and looked well. The birds from Double T actually arrived Tuesday evening so they called at the main Post Office in St. Paul. They have never called me before for a pickup there, but I drove right down and picked them up. They were happy to see me!

All of the birds are getting out a bit now, with the exception of the new birds. Quite a few of them have taken spins around the loft and seem to know their way around. The quicker that they get their bearings, the less I worry about hawks. So far, other than the one bad day, I haven’t seen many hawks. Perhaps it’s my guardian crows keeping watch.

With daylight savings, I will be able to get the birds out even more. Normally I loft fly every evening. When I darken the loft, it will be light from 1 PM until sunset.

I purchased a ink stamp with my phone number on it. I am going to wing stamp all of my birds this year and see if I get any calls. I saw the idea in John Sampson’s lighting system video. It seemed like a good idea, and it didn’t cost too much. I got a couple of birds back from fanciers last year, but mostly flyers close by that knew me. One day I had a bird from a flyer that coincidently had one of mine the same day. It was sort of like a hostage exchange returning the birds.

I moved my old bird lofts back a bit to line up with my young bird loft. I also added a walk-in aviary to the front that will join the two old bird lofts together. I wish I had an easier way to move them, as every time I do it I think “never again”. But it should mean a bit more space and easier time to mix and separate the sexes. But I won’t be able to fly my cock birds for a few days until all is completed and enclosed. I feel a bit uneasy the way the loft is now, I will be glad when it is all closed in.

I have a beer bet going on for old bird racing. Since I have never raced old birds, I though it would be good to make a bet to give me some extra incentive.

I banded my last two youngsters from the World of Wings. I am anxious to see how the birds actually fly.

A new pigeon forum is available from Tim Beard at Double T Lofts. The link is located at http://www.doubletlofts.com/modules.php?name=Forums. I have posted a few comments and questions on the site and Tim has answered quite a few of my questions.

Next week I am anticipating birds from Don Lowe of Bystronic Loft and another set of youngsters from Bob Boltz of Ohio.