Shared experiences (2) (7-10-25)
Sharing experiences (part 2 of 2)
If you race with pigeons for half a century and write articles for decades, you can't help but come into contact with many fanciers. This led to quite a few reciprocal visits. Some are still engraved in the deepest caverns of my memory.
Guy from Limburg
For example, years ago, I was alerted to the rock-hard performance of a guy from Limburg. It was in the time that everyone still raced 'traditional' widowhood. He did it in a loft with twelve. His performances were such that you would like to know more about such a loft. I went there, arrived early in the evening and we went into the loft. While the cocks crowded at the feeding trough, he asked if I didn't see something special, except for that one white flight.
No matter how I looked, I didn't see anything exceptional. He kept insisting, I kept saying that there was nothing I noticed.
' Count them," he said at the time. I counted and immediately I got it: Thirteen cocks, while he always raced with 12 and the loft also had 12 boxes.
What did he do from Wednesday on? Feed individually twice a day in their boxes. That thirteenth pigeon had only one function: To be a little hungry. So you can guess what happened during feeding. Such a pigeon also wants to live, so it ate and flew from one box to another. And what motivates a living being more than feeling threatened? Twelve pigeons felt threatened here because he flew from one box to another.
SIMILAR
It was reminiscent of what I did at the time to motivate my youngsters destined for National Orleans in particular. They were separated, but when they got along I didn't panic and let them do it. Of course they were hens. They want to breed at the same time, were constantly pushing each other off the nest and it worked.
When the youngsters were training, I took the feeding trough from the loft and next to the breeding hens I put a jar full of food. Hungry as the loft mates were, they all flew to those pots and the brooding pigeon did not know how hard it had to beat its wings to keep the hungry gang away from her and her nest.
CONNOISSEURS
'Nobody knows anything about pigeons', you sometimes hear and read. Or..' You have to have good ones, everything else is nonsense.' That too is nonsense and we all know that.
By the way, no one knows how to get that one super out of the heap with certainty.
However, that does not alter the fact that some people know more about a pigeon than others.
If you let veterinarian Marien choose a bird from your loft you may have a good bird less.
Ludo Claessens was a dangerous selector and also Gust Christiaens.
I once showed Gust some birds. And people who knew him know what happened. The oldest were approved, not one of the yearlings. Gust assumed that the old ones would not have become so old if they had not performed. At the time I had a 1st National Orleans in the loft, I kept it until last and when he was apparently tired of judging I said 'Wait a minute, Gust, another one, the last one.' Gust:
'That checker second from the right? Let it be, let it be. A super, I had seen for a long time.' It was the Orleans winner 'National' (zone).
UNFORGIVABLE
By the way, I would make another unforgivable mistake with this bird.
Although a direct son of 'Jonge Merckx' was his father (so bred in Arendonk) I sold this Orleans winner later.
I thought it was irresponsible not to sell him. When my wife went shopping she compared prices everywhere, she would never buy something that was cheaper on someone else and I would turn down such an offer for a bunch of feathers of 300 grams? No way!
And there was something else. That race was won at a fairly high speed, so with a tailwind, and I was so naïve at the time to think that victories in such weather were mainly a matter of luck. That a pigeon that was ahead of such an enormous mass had to have something extra, even if it was with a tailwind, did not dawn on me at the time. I only realized that later when the descendants were raced.
My 'son Young Merckx', so born in Arendonk and father of my 1st National Orleans.
NAME AND NO NAME
In order not to hurt him, I will call him X. He had built a name for himself worldwide. Not because of his strong performances or good pigeons, X was a different kind of fancier. He had beautiful lofts and he put (very) expensive pigeons on them. Commercially not so stupid, because he regularly had foreigners visiting and that certainly had to do with the beautiful loft. A loft that exudes class also assumes class in terms of content.
I knew that X also wanted to perform.
That was not necessary for the sale, he had pedigrees for that, but he wanted to matter.
Until I once stood in his garden. Then I knew. He wanted to show a widower, wandered with great strides to the loft and in even larger strides through the loft to find that pigeon. It gave me a terrible noise all those flying pigeons, even against the window.
When Adriaan Janssen wanted to show a pigeon, he opened the door of his loft and was immediately outside again with a pigeon in his hands.
He had grabbed it with one hand.
OTHERS
I still remember Dirk van Dijck's explanation of why he was in favour of corrugated bars in the loft, of Marcelis how young he weaned them and of Fonske Jacobs, where William Geerts had fetched his super racers, what great importance he attached to the manure in the morning.
But perhaps the most impressive thing was that Antwerpian with a world name. We once stood in front of the aviary in which his young were. I estimated 300 at least. "Ten percent good?" I objected. 'If only it were true', he sighed. That would be 3 x 30 = 90 good ones in three years time.
Who on this planet has 90 good ones? Fair and realistic. There are others.
The guy on the left looks familiar? He was the brother of President Mitterand from France.