If any of your birds are still unhappy with the baskets or seem unhealthy then don’t risk flying them. It’s better to make sure your pigeons are healthy enough to fly home than risk flying them because you were impatient. Before the start of the training, the carrier pigeons must be given a wing stamp (association regulations) and vaccinated against paramyxovirus (legal regulation). Give the birds a practice cast from the other end of your yard, within sight of their attic, just to get them used to being basketed and released. From here you can start your further training. Your first proper practice clearance should be approximately 3 miles from the field and should be as follows:
- It should take place in the morning to give them enough time to return home before dark.
- Fed half their normal rations and not given morning exercises. By limiting the amount of food they eat, you increase their desire to come home.
- The weather should be clear with light winds and minimal cloud cover.
- At the liberation point, take the basket out of your car and place it on the ground. Leave it for about fifteen minutes to allow your pigeons to calm down and orient themselves. This is a very important step because as soon as the basket is placed on the ground, the released birds are startled and excited and fly away with no idea where they are.
- Make sure the carrier pigeons on the loft have to get through the trap.
During the first training flights you will find that your carrier pigeons take longer than expected to return home. If you have followed my instructions, then there is no need to worry, each time they will return faster, and the number of lost carrier pigeons will be minimal (however, you must accept that carrier pigeons are sometimes lost and, unfortunately, do not return ). Keep throwing your carrier pigeons from this point until they get back to the loft in time; At this point, increase the liberation distance by 10 km. If they return in time from that new distance, then add another 10km and so on and so forth. When the homing pigeons are trained from 20km upwards, I start introducing them to bad weather by taking them out regardless of the elements (except gale force winds of course!) because I think it’s a mistake to just hoist pigeons to fly train in the sun. When they face all sorts of weather conditions in a racing situation, I think they should at least have seen something similar while training!
Thanks to Elliott Lang | #race #pigeons #training #throw
