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NEWS FROM SCOTLAND by Joe Murphy I start off this week’s column with some good news - for me anyway; I have passed my first British Sign Language Assessment, and await the result of assessment number two. I have one more to do as it is a 3 part exam and this last part looks very hard. I have to watch videos of people using the Deaf sign language and explain what they are saying. It is like watching someone at a political conference who is signing for people who are deaf, and I have to know what's going on. The test is that I have to have a 5 minute conversation with my tutor; this is videoed and sent for independent judging to see if I have passed. This is hard work however very enjoyable and it is funny how I can now speak to my deaf clients and we have a laugh. More times than often they are laughing at me because I will have made or said something wrong. However I’m more than pleased to have achieved my first pass and this will encourage me to do well in my next assessment.
Received an email from fellow scribe Ryan Hay from Banff who wrote: ‘Joe I sometimes write an article for the BHW under the title ‘What Doo I Know’. The reason I’m dropping you a line is I cannot believe the way you are treated at times. First of all when you were voted out the press officer’s job, and now this rubbish about some fanciers going to the council to complain about liberations from Thornton; I would love it if there were liberations from Banff. I know there was at one time and there was no complaintup here. Anyway what I am trying to say is for all the effort and dedication you put into pigeon racing you don’t deserve the negative responses you get from some people. It is people like you that make this a great hobby and your idea for the young bird exchange is excellent. I would have loved to enter it but I would not like to lumber anyone with one of my birds this year. I’m was always bottom of the result sheet last year, however it was my first year without my dad's help, but hopefully this season I will start making my way up the result sheet and have a bird worth putting into next year's young bird exchange. Keep up the good work Joe, there are a lot of people who appreciate all your hard work and I’m one of them, all the best yours in sport Ryan’. My thanks to Ryan and I did appreciate his email along with all the other people who have contacted me on the same subject. I wish Ryan well in the new season and asked him to please think about joining the sporting challenge exchange next year. As I said, it is open to everyone and you never know with the quality of fanciers taking part they maybe are the ones to bring the best out of Ryan's youngster. While on about the exchange lets continue with it... Sporting Challenge - Young Bird Exchange With my appeal last week saying I only had about a dozen names seemed to have jogged fanciers memories as I received quite a few phone calls saying people wished to take part and they would send on the remittance so long as I added their name to the list. I have even received two offers of sponsorship for the sporting challenge, however this is still ongoing at the moment, however the offers are from genuine people and this makes all the hard work so much sweeter. There is no monetary gain for the fanciers taking part and this will always remain a SPORTING VENTURE. These offers of sponsorship may be used for various projects for example; purchasing new trophies, engraving or any other expenditure incurred in the sporting challenge. More about this at a later date as this sponsorship is in its infancy and we are only at the talking stage. Regarding the young bird exchange I intend to purchase trophies for the breeder and the racer of the youngster; as I said I now have more entries than first thought and I have decided to give a £100 prize each to the breeder and racer of the winners of this young bird exchange. There will be enough money from the contributions from the fanciers taking part to purchase trophies which the winners will keep as a memento of participating in the exchange. I think this is an added bonus to the exchange and these winners will be invited to our presentation night on the 7th November at the Hillcroft Hotel to receive their trophies and cheques. I have also invited ALL the fancier participating in this first young bird exchange to the presentation and I hope they will join us and it will allow them to meet the fanciers taking part in the 2008 sporting challenge. The draw for the exchange is as follows:
Once again I thank the above fanciers for their support in my sporting challenge; I hope they enjoy taking part in this young bird exchange. My sole purpose in starting up the sporting challenge was to promote good pigeons and at the same time keep the word SPORTSMANSHIP to the front of everything associated with the challenge and I think I have achieved this goal. I sincerely hope these young birds prove to be something extra special to each of the participating fanciers not only for this year but in years to come. Received a letter from Clark Smith secretary of the Lothian Charity Racing Pigeon Show regarding, the presentation of the cheque for £2000.00 to St John’s hospital Oncology Unit. Tina (ward sister) said: ‘The hospital were very grateful to receive this amount and what it would be used for within the ward. To-date the charity has presented £50.800 to Bangour and St John’s Hospital. Chairman of the Lothian Charity show Robert Cormack thanked the committee, the ladies who do the catering, judges and all the fanciers who attend the show and auction sale. Last but not least Robert wished to again thank the donors of pigeons, raffle prizes etc for the charity sale as well as the buyers without whom this fantastic total could not be raised; my thanks to Clark for his letter and we wish the Lothian Show every success for the 2008 season. Angus/Dundee Federation News Received an email from Dave Liddle of Forfar asking if I could please mention the following forthcoming events in the column, the pleasure is mine Dave. Forfar RPC Breeder - Buyer Young Bird sale will be held on Sunday 6th April in the Plough Inn, Forfar. Birds will be on view from 1.00 pm and the auction will start at 2.00 pm Grampian Combine Trophy Presentation will be held in the Taxi Club Dundee on Friday 11th April starting at 7.30 pm. The panel this year comprises three national winners Jim Benvie; Dennis Dall and Ian Gilmour. There will also be a Breeder-Buyer auction and a buffet. Tickets will cost £3 and thoseattending should contact Bruce McKenzie on 01382 818350 or David Liddle on 01307 462082 Angus Federation Young Bird sale will be held in the Lochside Bar in Montrose on Sunday 13th April. Birds will be on view from 1.00 pm and the sale will start at 2.00 pm. My thanks to Dave Liddle for supplying the details, I know Round O usually covers this area but as he is out of commission at the moment I will help out. I know that many people are asking for brother scribe Jim George and when I spoke to him a couple of nights ago he seemed to be improving. He is desperate to get back writing an article but I have told him to wait until he is 100%, he has had a rough time of it lately and it is good to see him making progress. Letham Friendly breeder/buyer will be held in Letham Hotel on Saturday 29th March viewing from 12.00noon sale starts 1pm, Once again for the Letham club yearling race from Wakefield on 21st May is open to Fife/Dundee/Angus/Aberdeen and North of Scotland federation’s entry fee is £5.00 per bird plus pools (prize money dependant on entries). The Gold ring race for young birds will be flown from Hexham all members competing must fly OVER 100 miles again £5.00 a ring these have to be registered by 1st April 2008 to Dave Glen on 01307 467013 or mobile 0778 385 5366 my thanks to George Briggs for the details of the above Letham activities. Fanciers wishing Help I have been receiving emails from fellow fanciers wishing help on various subjects relating to pigeons. The first was Andy Kyle who wrote: ‘Dear Joe, as a teenager some 40 years ago I was allowed to help a fancier in Kilwinning club at the time when the club was one of the strongest in Ayrshire. Much of what I learned is lost somewhere in the depths of my memory. I am hoping to start racing pigeons later this year and intend to involve my 7 year old son and 9 year old daughter. I am fervently reading books to refresh my memory, however there seem to be many changes since the time I was involved. At that time the natural system was the main system used and the lofts had verandas and drop traps. Clocks were the only system of trapping. Now we have the likes of Unikon and closed lofts along with widowhood, darkness and roundabout. I am trying to plan my loft and I’m advised not to use open door since Unikon renders its need redundant with regards to a fast trap and ring to clock timing. The open loft seems to be largely frowned upon as well, so long as the loft is well ventilated. In a closed loft, with no open trap use, how do the birds receive daylight other than two hours freedom daily? Should I keep to the only system I have any knowledge of, natural, or attempt widowhood with roundabout? Is darkness necessary? You are no doubt aware of my current predicament with regards to loft design. I intend to race long distance, given time to build and train a team as well as overcome the obvious mistakes I will make as a novice. Training methods seem to have changed as well in so much as fanciers I have spoken to seem to avoid training through fear of raptors. I am not interested in young bird racing and intended to train them myself without racing until the yearling stage, thus in my mind, negating the use of darkness. I am not interested in short and middle distance racing except as a means to an end. Does this negate the use of widowhood? What are the pitfalls in using an open loft, since if it is open it can not suffer from draughts, it should be at outside temperature at all times and with suitable ventilation should be cool enough in summer? The birds should of course be protected from being soaked by rain, but does the loft have to be closed in to achieve this? Please Joe can you give me your comments regarding my queries. Joe M reply: Thank you for your email and if I can help you out in any way then I will do my best. Like you I’m a bit of an old fashioned type but we have to change with the times are be left behind. As you may know I only have stock pigeons and my son Kevin races them, he flies roundabout and has also flown widowhood but his national team are flown on natural. It all depends on what you want out of the sport, you say that you are not interested in young bird racing or short to middle distance except for training. Go for what YOU want to do that what keeping pigeons is all about it is what makes you happy not everyone else. Build your loft to suit you and your pigeons; I have 2 glass windows on the front of my loft with an aviary at the side. Ventilation is the most important thing in any loft and if the air cannot circulate then you have trouble. Any stale are must go up and out so the fresh air must come in and lift the stale air outwards. When I was racing I lit a cigar and lay on the floor of the loft and puffed the smoke along the floor. At first it just moved slowly upwards so I had Kevin take a part of the front of the loft off and tried it puffing the cigar again. Still not enough so we took more straps out until in the end I put a 2 foot vent in the front of the loft and took the bottom strap out and replaced it with wire netting. The front of my loft was glass windows with an apex roof with a gap along the whole roof and this was covered in by tin sheeting but it allowed the stale air to go up to the roof and out. The only problems I had with the roof was when it was strong gale force winds and the air came in this way but that only happened now and again. I trapped the birds through 2 stall traps on the front of the loft and Kevin does the same however nowadays he has the ETS pad under the stall traps. Some people fly the open doors and catch their widowhood cocks when they come in. Andy Miller of Edinburgh is one and he catches the cocks in their nest box and then place them on top of the pad which is situated on the inside wall of the loft, believe me he does not loose a second as his cocks are in their boxes in the blink of an eye. So open doors are no problem if that is what you want to use. One thing for certain Andrew; fresh air cost nothing and will not do your pigeons any harm, however you do not want dampness in your loft as this can be a killer. Kevin’s has an all wire loft front that acts as an aviary and lets in the sun, wind and rain, he has grills on the floor inside the loft and the loft is built on top of a cement base so any water that does get in goes under the grills and out through the drains. This open type of loft has done his birds no harm whatsoever and they always look a picture when I visit, with pure white wattles, good feather quality and are always in good health. His traps are on his sliding door with a fixed landing board on the outside of the loft I will send you a photo of this I will also send you a photo of Richard Combe’s loft with open doors and he is the best SNFC distance man in Scotland at the present time (he won all the averages last year). Regarding your management system do what you want to do; I agree with only training youngsters as I do not think all the ones lost are bad pigeons. Had they been given time to develop they may have become something special. Regarding the darkness system this is only of any advantage to you if you are going to race youngsters. I would also use the club as training for your yearlings however I would say that they would have to go out every week to at least 300 miles, and then they can sit by for the 2 year old stage. These I would only give 3 inland races to the Inland national and then into the classic race of your choice. Pigeons can take a jump of 200 miles so don’t worry about this I had a mealy hen who never raced past 175 miles and every time she was entered to a race from France she was my 1st bird home winning 3 times in the SNFC being 75th, 93rd and 96th open Sartilly; in fact she flew the channel 7 times for me. Once you have established a team of pigeons you can then test your yearlings out to the coast and over the channel if you have a mind too. Yearlings in tip top order can hold their own with the experienced birds but they have to be right or you will throw them away; and what is the point in keeping them to this stage of their lives to throw them away. Regarding training many fanciers now use the race basket as a form of training tosses as it is a nightmare going on your own as too many of these private training tosses result in raptor attacks. The more experience you gain with your pigeon then the better the pigeon fancier you will become and who knows maybe your son or daughter will be the future champion of Ayrshire, only time will tell. Hope this has been of some help to you and I forwarded a photo of Kevin’s & Richard lofts. Andy wrote back: Joe many thanks for your email and this has put my mind to rest about a lot of things. Regarding raptors, is there a way of finding out hotspots? I have planned my training stages for young birds and feel this is the method I would prefer to use to give any edge I could get regarding training for my best line without the influence of club/ federation drag. I expect if I could find local fanciers at these points they could and would advise me, but this is the only way I can think of. If I go for this method, what sort of distance would you recommend for young bird training (Joe M reply; they can be trained out in stages to 50 miles and stopped for the year if you wish. I’m a great believer in training in small groups of 3 and 4’s rather than single ups as I don’t think youngsters enjoy this they like company) For yearlings I was going to single toss say from 50 to 100miles, prior to club racing (Joe M reply; I have advised above) then if any survived, to assist mynext year young bird training, ad infinitum. 2 year olds to the coast and if any caught my eye, perhaps give a classic a try.3 year olds + would be for the classics. This at least till I had managed to build a team to my satisfaction when I could perhaps become a bit more adventurous. I am well aware it will take time to gain my own experience. Regarding stock, if you don't mind, I would like to contact you nearer the time for advice. I know Mike Donnachie from my previous hobby of breeding and showing Boxer dogs and I see he is doing quite well in the Nationals. (Joe M says, you will have seen his champion pigeons photograph on the front page of the BHW) I also know Gary Gilfillan from Newmains and I'm sure this is not a common name, so he is probably the same person who has had some National success. Otherwise I know no other major fanciers. I want to start with the best I can afford, but I am also aware that I probably won't be able to afford the top birds. I have no idea of costs, but from the fanciers I have spoken to there seems to be no shortage of offers of birds to help us out at the moment. As I have stated my main interest would be Classic distance racing. (Joe M reply ‘Andy I would accept these offers of birds from local fanciers since it would allow you to ‘cut your teeth’ and as time progressed you can attend the various sales and purchase top quality birds on offer to use as your new stock’). I intend to assist at the club come April, thus refreshing my mind of the processes that involves and have had offers of attending on race day with the kids. This would also allow me to gain knowledge of the best fanciers within the club and federation and their management methods. Whilst wanting to start soon, I also want to ‘hit the ground running’, if possible. Club membership, etc would follow for next year, even though I don't intend to race young birds. I am also confused by the SNFC / SNRPC split.(Joe M reply; I would rather not give my opinion on this however everyone knows where my loyalties remain) There only was the SNFC when I was previously involved and whilst fanciers are extolling the merits of both clubs, I don't want to fall foul of any rule breaking. Perhaps you could give your opinion, not withstanding the seeming non sporting attitudes to Thornton race release. As a point of interest, I have acquaintances in the Dysart / Kirkcaldy / Thornton areas and while none are fanciers to my knowledge, you will no doubt know Mr. David Duff from Thornton. Many thanks for your help to date and I look forward to your reply in the future, albeit as you will have gathered, I am not in any rush just now and I fully appreciate that you are busy with many things pigeon as well as privately. Finally all fanciers I have spoken to have been extremely helpful and very friendly accepting my unannounced visits and freely giving their time. No matter their success or otherwise they are fantastic ambassadors for the sport / hobby yours Andrew Kyle’. My thanks to Andrew for his letters and I hope readers have found them of interest, it seems to me that there are quite a number of novices who are in need of help and support and if I can do this in my column then so be it. Another request for help came from Don Meredith from the West Midlands; he had been reading my column and came across me saying that I used Emtryl. Don has also used Emtryl until recently, however he has been trying to purchase it from the UK and Belgium but have been unable to obtain it. He would be obliged if I could let him know were I purchase it from so that he could order, it as I would like to continue using this product. To be honest Don is the 2nd person who as asked me about Emtryl, I purchased it at Blackpool but to be truthful don't know the name of the stand. However on the tub it has the following info which may be of help to Don or others wishing to try Emtryl the Distributor is Medpet (Ply) Ltd PO Box 27239 Benrose 2011 Telephone (011) 614 8915 or Fax (011) 614 8916 Hope this is of some help to you if you are successful can you let me know and I will tell the readers where to purchase it if there is a supplier in Britain. Loft Report I have visited the Kirkintilloch partnership of Derek and Linda Hay for a loft report and I’m in the process of compiling all the information together to make it flow so to speak. Derek was very helpful and I think fanciers will enjoy reading about this top Scottish west section loft. I was very impressed with their team of pigeons and they handled like ‘peas in a pod’ and were in tip top condition which you would expect from a quality fancier at this time of the year. I also obtained some photographs to go with this story which will make it more pleasurable as I always think pictures of pigeons say a ‘thousand words’ and I know that I personally enjoy looking at photos of pigeons when they are added to a loft report. This should be in publication within the next couple of weeks so don’t miss it as believe me it is worth reading. Improvements An update on some health issues I highlighted regarding fanciers and their families. Dale Newcombe is keeping well at the moment and continues to enjoy his time with his small team of pigeons and walking his dogs. Young Strachan White from Dumbarton has been in and out of the Sick Children’s hospital in Glasgow and his mum Jill and dad Graham have been at their whit’s end concerning this young child. He has been through every test imaginable and received a course of steroids and at the present time he is now being weaned off them. Jill and Graham say they see a slight improvement in Strachan and let us all hope this young boy continues to improve on a daily basis, we are thinking about the 3 of you at this time. Jim George is also improving and I spoke with him just a couple of days ago and he sounded a lot better. I have received some phone calls from friends of Jim who have passed on their best wishes, this has been carried out and Jim will be in touch with them once he is feeling a bit better. My daughter in law Linda’s mother has just undergone a liver transplant and she is improving every day so much so that by the time this is in print they hope to have her home. Isn’t it fantastic that someone can have such a major operation and within 2 weeks be home as if nothing had happened; we wish all the above a speedy recovery back to good health and will remember them all in our prayers. This week’s photographs The first picture is from the SHU Centenary presentation and is of John Barlow, Andy Miller receiving his medal from Chris Gordon one of our 3 main guests for the weekend. The other 2 pictures are from Jim Hannah with the performances highlighted on each picture. I would also like to thank all the people for their kind words on the condition of my own pigeons after seeing them on the web sites.
Club Results The new season will soon be started and if you would like your club results added to the column then you can either drop me a line or email me at the address below. All that is required is details of how many members and birds complete and remember to tell me the race point and if possible the distance to your club. I then require details on EACH of the first 3 birds in the race, nest condition; breeding of bird or if it has had any past performances anything of interest regarding the racing pigeon. If you have a novice started and they do well give them a mention and if possible a photograph of your club winners or members will not go wrong. What I will not print is a name and velocity as the feedback from readers is that they don’t read this as they find this most boring and I will not accept this in my column. You can send this type of results to the back of the paper. The Joe Murphy column is open to anyone who wishes to participate it is up to you. Please continue to keep the news flowing to Joe Murphy Mystical Rose Cottage 2 Flutorum Avenue Thornton by Kirkcaldy KY1 4BD or phone 01592 770331 after 7pm week days or my email address is joejmurphy@tiscali.co.uk
Report
Stray Pigeons Here
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