Culling the weak
If you don not race your pigeons with a club, it is still very important that your train out your youngsters. You must weed out the “duds” or else you soon will have pigeons overflowing out of your loft. Too many pigeons in the loft costs extra money for feed, extra work and raises the chances of having diseases spread through your loft. Is it worth keeping to many? The answer is no !
By training your birds down the road, you will lose those that are not smart enough to find their way home. You will also lose the ones that are not strong enough or do not have the courage or will to come home. These are the pigeons that you do not want or need. If you do not train out your birds, you will have no way of knowing the good ones from the bad ones.
You may not always agree with the way the basket weeds out the duds, because it is easy to get attached to favorite colors or looks. We feel sad when our favorite fails to come home. This is a natural part of life. The weak pigeons have got to go, otherwise they will breed more weak pigeons. Then, you will have a loft filled with duds. Saver your good pigeons and raise some more good ones next year. Get rid of the duds, and you will be much happier. You will save more money and work too.
shame on all of you!
in my experience,the sooner the better,ok as soon as they start to rang,before your competition start to train,as this is when you may loose them.two weeks of hard training,will set them up for racing,you will not loose many,good luck
SORRY I WAS ANSWERING,SOMEONE WHO WANTED TO KNOW ,WHEN TO START TRAINING HIS YOUNG BIRDS
to cull out unwanted birds, at what age should i start training young birds, in months, and how far should it be? as i understand, there is a limit to the distance for training young birds. i read in one book that you should never race your birds earlier than 7 months
I understand what there saying at a young age when I first started flying I was more into the looks of the birds being their color. I allways liked the grizzels or splash birds so every now and then on a road toss of Y/B my favorite ones would not return to the loft. I would be sad but my uncle would tell me if they don’t come home you don’t want them.then he would tell me when you get older you will understand and now 25 yrs later I understand what he meant now I am telling my 6 yr old the same thing.
I am new to pigeon racing but not to animal husbandry, this is one of the most important practices and from what I have seen in these pigeons so far from close area fanciers this is not practiced at all in most cases and I think it is a injustice to your loft not to “cull”. One thing I don’t understand is breeding of non-winning birds! If you have decent birds and compete competively at least in your club, why would you keep 10 birds or more than don’t win at YB or OB racing? I just don’t understand this as new fancier to racing. I have 20 YB and I hope to have at least two from this group by the end of the year that are worth of breeding? Am I setting my expectations to high, because I truly feel they are to low. Secondly, why breed birds at such young ages, why not wait till they are winners at 2 or 3 years and then breed instead?