Feeding and stuff
Ludo Claessens was somebody else but you cannot take away from him that he was a good pigeon man.
And you better open your ears if such guys open their mouths.
Well, about feeding Ludo used to say: "If there is one thing that is not important in
pigeon sport it is feeding."
A little bit exaggerated of course but there is some truth in these words.
Ask 10 champions how they feed and you will get 10 different answers.
THAT"S WHY
That is why I seldom write about feeding. In a previous article I wrote that in
this regard I am the same as Andre Roodhooft, Leo Heremans, Koopman and so on:
We know nothing about enzymes, fats, protein, carbohydrates, omega and more of that shit. Nevertheless we can be proud of our results.
Koopman"s birds can even eat what they like and as much as they like a whole year round. Most champions hate to give their birds barley. Dirk van Dijck finds barley "gold".
ADVICE
Now some scribes, fanciers who hardly can win a prize themselves, advise to give 30 grams food per bird per day. Thus you never make mistakes is what they claim.
Experienced fanciers know better though.
And they are often the pigeons themselves that will teach you if you are doing the right thing. We in Holland and Belgium had a pretty warm fall, but recently suddenly temperatures went down to zero Celsius, with an icy cold wind.
And what did we notice?
The pigeons immediately started to eat like hell. Their instinct "told" them to do so.
30 Grams per day would certainly not be enough and would hurt them.
Most fanciers keep the birds inside in winter. One of the reasons is the fear for birds of prey. Those are less of a problem in summer.
Others let them fly out and with some of them their birds begin to train like hell when they are through the moult.
It stands to reason that such birds also need more feed than birds that are kept inside and do not train at all.
Part of the backside of my house in winter. Thanks God the photo is from a
few years ago.
WATER
A funny thing with those low temperatures is that pigeons do eat a lot indeed, but drink very little. In fact less than a quarter than the amount that they consume in full summer.
So you can imagine what happens when you cure the birds in winter through the water. Very few fanciers medicate their birds then, but it may happen that you have no choice, since there is a health problem.
- If you medicate through the water then the amount is by far too little, since the birds hardly drink.
- If you medicate the birds in summer in hot weather they will get too much of the medicine. I do not know which is worst.
In summer
IN CONCLUSION
Finally I want to warn those fanciers that intend to buy birds through the Internet.
Right now pretty many birds are offered for sale "second hand".
That means that the auctioneer (the man in charge of the auction site) pretends to sell birds directly from the breeder, a great name of course.
But the truth is that they are offered for sale by others. Those "others" bought the pigeons from the famous breeder, they turned out to be no good and now they try to recover some of the money that was wasted on the junk.
Poor foreigners. Many of them forget also great champions can breed junk!
GOOD INVESTMENT
I said "try to recover some of the money."
Some do even better than that.
For example this Belgian. He bought a bunch of birds from one of the greatest names in Belgium some years ago.
But what a disappointment. None of the birds were any good, despite their breath taking pedigrees. He put them on the internet and, believe it or not, made a profit of nearly 30,000 euros.
And he is not the only example, I know.
So you can also make money on bad pigeons. In fact it is a good investment. But one should know where to go and buy. The fanciers"s name should be hot.
His pedigrees even hotter.