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Lots of contradictions (31-03-22)

Lots of contradictions.   

Whether I am serious when I make fun of names for pigeon food and question terms such as 'moulting', 'purification', 'breeding' and so on. I am for sure. You, too, would not become less skeptical when you see so many completely different food mixtures, all of which have 'moult' as a predicate.

GOOD TO KNOW
I myself give the same mix throughout the year. Learned from Klak.
The fact that the super performances are there, every year, has the additional knowledge that it is not the feed if the performances ever would decrease.
Then something else is to blame: The loft, the quality or, perhaps, the aging of the boss. Because, believe me, the vitality of the fancier also influences the performance of the pigeons. A lot of lofts would perform a lot better with a boss 20 years younger. 
In short, those words that you often see in advertisements should not be taken too literally. This also applies to language use in general.
I once read about Cruyff:
'The wizard first struck the woodwork and then kicked the leather into the ropes after all.'  However: No wizard, no wood, no leather, no rope.  
Cruyff was an ordinary person, he didn't hit the wood but the aluminum, he didn't kick the leather but the polyester. With that polyester ball he didn't hit the rope but the plastic! That was the reality.
No problem and only worrying if names are so misleading that you are harmed by them. Unfortunately, that is sometimes the case in pigeon sport.

NO PROBLEM
With some brands, the suppliers are kind enough to indicate what's in them to the nearest tenth of a percent. As if fanciers are knowledgeable about this. Andre Roodhooft once wrote that he had absolutely no understanding of proteins, carbohydrates and more.
Here's another one. 3.5% of this or 5% of that? Great champions like Klak, vd Wouwer, M Wouters, Roger Buvens never pay attention to such percentages.
They know as much about it as I do. What they did pay attention to was the price. I'm one of those too, so a bit frugal, and will never buy something that is unnecessarily expensive. Even (or certainly) not if it is for pigeons.  
'Diet for me', I heard someone at the feed shop. 'And for me super diet,' said another. Wouldn't the price be the only difference?  
A few percent more or less of this or that it really does not matter, dear readers. Not even on some grains. Long ago I had a very good hen that always came in last after training. What happened when that one wanted to eat can be guessed. Corn was never on her menu. The loft mates were away with that. Yet she beat the loft mates in the races.   

'JUNIOR'
'Junior' would be good food for youngsters, the name also indicates that.
Don't know how it is now, but when I once fell for it, it was a mixture with quite a few peas and no corn.  

As far as I know there was no one who played well with babies with that so-called 'Junior', also called 'Liège mixture'. A lot of peas is recommended to get pigeons with blue flesh that are late in every race.

BARLEY
If there is one type of grain that is controversial, even among the champions, it is barley. 'Poison' says one, a champion like Dirk van Dijck loves it. He dares to give it a month at a time. Misconceptions are that it is easily digestible, pigeons do not get fat, the desire to mate diminishes. Have already seen fat pigeons that only got barley. Also hens that lay like hens. By the way, you read a lot of good things about it.  

UNDERSTANDING
When it comes to feeding, you notice many contradictions, when it comes to the needs of a pigeon you are sometimes puzzled.
So you sometimes see that they start pecking and pulling at everything that is loose and stuck. Especially the sand in the garden seems to be a delicacy.
It once happened to me. When I let them go, they didn't take to the skies but rushed under the loft as quickly as possible. No sun 'comes' there, nothing grows, but it is precisely there that they satisfy their hunger… Yes, for what?
I once heard because the soil is acidic. What you also see with feral pigeons in city squares. They also rummage in places where there is no sun and young adults or drunkards urinate.
Klak once had that problem too. Two vets had told him that such pigeons were deficient in minerals. He gave several types of pickstone, mixes, mineral powders, electrolytes and so on, nothing helped. There will certainly be a shortage. But minerals? hmm. Klak didn't know, let alone me.

LOFT
A guy calling himself a novice was confused by an article about lofts in which he had read that only two pigeons were allowed per cubic meter. What writer was that? A drunkard maybe? It would mean that in a loft of two by two by two no more than sixteen pigeons belong.
Have you ever been to the old lofts of Verkerk? Or Cees Everling's? There were three times as many on it. Or more.   

ANECDOTE
I once visited a renowned fancier in Antwerp with a renowned 'young pigeon specialist'. The Antwerp guy races fantastic except... with youngsters. He knew our results with youngsters and that is why he invited us to talk and especially to look at his lofts. Beautiful lofts, I must say, but he had never been able to play well in them.
'And the birds have plenty of air, the lofts are thinly populated enough’ the Antwerp resident moaned in despair. You could say that. In a loft of about 5 x 2.5 meters there were barely 20 youngsters, as scared as can be (how could it be otherwise in such a large loft) but they looked healthy.
The man has such a big name that we didn't have the guts to lecture him but on the way home we both thought the same thing:
'So few pigeons in a loft was precisely his problem. In such a large loft with so few youngsters there is no atmosphere, no jealousy, no struggle for one's own territory.
People who advise not to put more than two pigeons per cubic meter in a loft, are  'connoisseurs' who do not race pigeons themselves!
I said that the pigeons looked healthy. But that is not enough in today's pigeon sport', I added. Did he understand? hmm. Do not know.