Secret #2: Quality over Quantity
DO NOT OVER CROWD YOUR LOFT (Racing or Breeding). Quantity offers only cost and wasted time. Quality is profitable and rewarding. Once you learn the advantage of quality above quantity, put it into practice.
People are creatures of habit. The easiest thing to do is repeat the same past mistakes. Those fanciers who raise and train 100-200 squeakers every year with the hope of getting one or two good pigeons in their lofts take the longest and most costly road to success. Many times there is quality in an overcrowded loft, but because the birds are overcrowded, their health and performance is poor. What qualities do we look for in a good pigeon?
Secret #3: Quality Over Quantity By Bob Prisco
The Leading Online Pigeon Racing and Racing Pigeons Magazine – The Pigeon Insider
I agree, overcowding is the biggest cause of losing young birds, the clever birds will go look for other lofts where there is ample space less stress and less fighting over perches.
They natural instinct when weened is to find a place of is own, so if the clever young bird those not feel confy in the loft I’m convinced that they will stray to oyher lofts.
Seems like a no brainer. John & Andy have it right,quality will be more enjoyed and cheaper to boot. I propose you get to know your birds better, and it is much easier with a small quality team than a bunch of hopefuls. We have gotten away from having fun here and only thought about the money we could win with the larger team, DAM the money, enjoy your birds, they deserve it.
The writer of this articles assumes that if a fancier produces 100-200 youngsters that they are over crowded. This may, or may not be the case, but it also implies that those who produce less then 100 youngsters are not overcrowded. Overcrowding is a very important issue, and perhaps the number #1 mistake that fanciers make. I am thinking that an overcrowded loft has to do with too many pigeons in the available space, and one can have a very manageable ideal number of pigeons for the amount of available space and still not address the issue that the space is filled with very average instead of high quality pigeons.
I agree with both the last comments that some of the fanciers can handle raising 100-200 birds and never be over crowded but others have such small lofts that raising over 10 birds would be crowding the loft for space. I also agree that after the young birds go into the flying loft that there should be a min of 5 squar feet ber bird so they are not overly crowded. That sounds like a lof of space but it really isn’t as a 4x8x6 loft for flyers alone would be able to hold about a 20 bird team. This is plenty for most all flyers and we all have a tendency to raise more than what we need and that is when you make the decission as what goes and what stays, or you can let the training flights cull for you if that is easier for you to do. Some flyers are doing nothing but raising an extra rd to sell as they have a highly inbred or line bred loft of breeders.
AGREED it’s like trying to sleep in the same bed with 3 brothers and 2 sisters sooner or later your going to sleep on the floor no soon after the floor your going to find somewhere else to sleep,You’ll be sleeping on the job, Even late to and from work SAME THING WITH YOUR PIGEONS that’s why they don’t come home on training tosses and if they even show up on race day there to late to win anything and to tired to eat IF YOU HAVE PIGEONS ON THE FLOOR YOUR LOFT IS OVER CROWDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hear in Australia we have Large Teams, As i do mot think Widow hood would work.
I wish we had it as it would krrp the cost down
The major role played in specially raining season . . . .i agree
Raj(India)
Spot on I could not agree more,I beleive at least 95% of the fancy are guilty of overcrowding which does not give the possable stars of the loft to shine through.
Also they keep breeding off the same duffers every year,telling themselves oh one more chance,you are only kidding yourselves.
Remember pigeons are like marines,you only need a few good ones.
there are a lot of us that are guilt,of overcrowding!
QUALITY over quantity; HEALTH is better than quality: HEALTH is always NO.1.
THis is true in old birds with a 11 bird team my loft won 6 first out of 9 races two 2nds and one 3rd at 500 mile 8 day birds in combine sent 5 got 5 so dont overcrowd your loft take time to know your birds