The lesson of 2 magic birds (Febr 9)
Crazy money foreigners pay for pigeons. Especially when names like Harry, Olympiad, Rudy, Kaasboer, Vandenabeele, Kannibaal, Kleine Dirk, Geerinckx and others are involved. They want good pigeons, but in many cases they find out later on that they bought buy paper tigers. Good birds are the pigeons from Dutch van Donk and Belgian Broeckx that represented their countries at the Olympiad that was recently held in Brussels.
Van Donk
Van Donk calls his super 'Olympic Miracle" and for once this name is not an exaggeration It is only from 2014 and still won:
1st Nanteuil 11,867 p.
1st Pont 4.243 p. (2nd fastest 13,166 p)
1st Asse 3,444 p.
1st Peronne 2947 p.
1st Quievrain 1749 p.
2nd Duffel 2,097 p.
2nd Pont 1,833 p..
3rd Peronne 1,465 p.
4th Duffel 1,783 p..
5th Asse 1,523 p.
7th St Juste, 1,375 p..
11th Quievrain 2,053 p..
How do you get such a bird? The parents purchased from Koopman, Heremans, Vandenabeele, Verkerk or so? Not at all in this case. Both parents were imported, so bred by others. And surprise surprise for ‘pedigree crazy fanciers’: He got the father from Bressulus and the mother from Griffioen. Most probably those are not the names that some expect, but that is their problem, not mine. And what do many fanciers do when they have a super or a good year? They are going to keep more breeders, and so did J Donk. He is going to double the amount of breeders. He had ONE pair and now he has TWO.
BROECKX
Another flying miracle that could be admired at the Olympiad was a hen from Broeckx Belgium: His 'Olympic 306’, just ‘306’. Broeckx is a man without blabla. Terms like Rocket, Superstar and so on do not belong to his vocabulary. The bird is from 2014 as well, so once more it seems that pigeons are at their best when 2 years old. Despite this pretty young age it won:
3rd National Montlucon 16,982 pigeons.
14th National Chateauroux 25,720 pigeons
14th National Gueret 16,262 pigeons.
15th National Chateauroux 6,850 pigeons.
With this results it was the best of the whole country at long distance.
So again it is a hen that was better than all widowhood cocks from across the nation. And then you should know that not so long ago hens flew separately to protect them from the widowhood cocks. Today, the question arises who protects those widowhood cocks from the hens. Today fanciers like Daniels, v d Wouwer and so on race hens only, something that was unthinkable only a decade ago. In England and the USA fanciers like to talk about their own ‘family’. But like van Donk also Broeckx imported both the father and mother of the best long distance bird of the nation. In its the pedigree you see the names of v d Veken, Vermeren and Louwers. So once more: Create an own family is BS. That is something that you should hope your competitors will do.
Jan Breockx and his wife who is also 'pigeon crazy'.
FUNNY AND SAD
Concerning this it is funny and sad as well to see what happened after the total auction of Hofkens long way back. Shortly after especially Americans showed up with ‘pure Hofkens strain’. Hofkens himself would have turned in his grave. He had no family and never wanted to form an own family, most of his birds were imports, bred by other fanciers.
Those who are seen dancing are thought to be insane by those who cannot hear the music.