Keith Mott writes about winning fanciers past and present...

Holiday Breakaway 2007

Part 1

The month of July saw eleven of us drive down the A303, for a week’s family holiday in the Devon. With the floods that plagued the West Country that week, the 190 mile drive, which normally takes under four hours, took us over seven hours. It was just horrendous! Our family is getting bigger and bigger and with the recent arrival of baby Sophia, we now have four grand children, in the form of Sasha, Katie and Ryan. Betty and I, normal have a week away in the summer with all the kids, staying in a caravan and try to fly away some where abroad to get some winter sun on our own, after Christmas. The family is getting so big now; we had to have two caravans again this year! All the elder grand children love the pigeons and always hand feed my young birds on the loft floor, when they come over at the weekends. The eldest is Sasha, aged seven, and she is a natural with animals and she has a wonderful repour with the pigeons, just like her mother had when she was a youngster. My daughter, Caroline, was my pigeon partner when she was a girl and judged on her own at many shows, including a couple times at the R.P.R.A. Southern Region Show. She was a great judge and a wonderful handler of pigeons, but my son, Mark, was never interested in pigeons. Mark has followed in his ol’ man’s foot steps and is a first class carpenter / joiner by trade, and has always been very keen on football and fishing. When he was ten years old, he caught a 10lb. Pike and unhooked it, and returned it by him self. I’ve got an old photo of him holding the Pike and it was nearly as long as him!

Where we stayed on holiday in Torbay near Torquay, it is well known for being in the heart of the ‘English Riviera’, in the South West of England. The last time we visited Torquay was a few years ago, when we attended the National Flying Club prize giving dinner held there and I must say it is a wonderful setting, with it’s massive sea front and mariner. The N.F.C. ‘do’ was held in the middle of winter and we had better weather on that visit than we did this time! I’ve had a long standing arrangement with my good friend, Bob Reeves of Exeter, that if I was ever in his area I would stop off at his home and visit him. Well, where we were staying in Bob’s county of Devon, was only a few miles from his Exeter home, so he arranged a loft visit to Tumley Lofts in Polehayes, so we could have a pigeon day out together in Devon. The Wednesday was the day set aside for my pigeon visits and I was in Bob Reeves’ loft before 10 o’clock. Bob’s eldest son, Bob junior, needs no introduction to B.H.W. readers, as he has been writing for the ‘book’ for many years and is an outstanding fancier in his own right. Bob senior has seven children and on my arrival I met his youngest son, Martin, who had popped in to have a cup of tea and see the ol’ man. We were soon on the road, heading for Beaworthy, to visit Tumley Lofts Stud, our old friends Derek and Joy Cook, and their pigeon racing son, Jamie. I must thank Joy who put a wonderful lunch for us! The last time I visited Tumley Lofts it was sited at the wonderful Lower Trescott Farm in Okehampton and has been at Polehayes about seven years now. The Cooks live in Powleaze Cottage and Jamie, who still races the Tumley pigeons and is married now, lives in a beautiful converted barn on the site.

This week let’s have a little feature on Bob Reeves, to kick off our ‘Holiday breakaway 2007’ series!

Bob Reeves has been a very dear friend of mine for many years and he won the Nantes National in 1996. He is one of the pigeon sport's gentlemen and is not only a great pigeon racer, but is also a pigeon lover, representing everything that is good about pigeon racing. On my visits to Bob's little loft, the birds are always bursting with contentment, with his small team of natural old birds popping in and out, feeding their young and generally enjoying life. On one of my many visits to Bob's bungalow, he had the young birds out for a fly and when he called them down they alighted all over him, not from hunger, but from love. Bob won the Nantes National with his two year old Warrington-Savage Barker blue chequer hen, 'Reevo's My Peggy', named after Bob's late wife. This game hen won the National while feeding a youngster, but was locked out of the loft when she arrived home from Nantes, as Bob didn't expect her home so fast and was cleaning the old bird section out. The clock and thimbles were in the bungalow and he lost a lot of time, clocking his National winner in his kitchen. 'Reevo's My Peggy' was medium-sized and apple-bodied in the hand, with silky feathering and a nice tic behind her orange eyes, which really sets her off. She had been a truly class act, as prior to winning the Nantes National she won many top positions including 1st Club, 4th Section, 8th Open WECA Littlehampton, in spite of being a really bad trapper. On her build up to her National win, she had four races, including Rennes, and her last training toss was a single up from Torquay, 20 miles from the Exeter loft. Bob told me his great champion died of old age in September 2006.

Bob was born in Exeter and although his father wasn't a pigeon I fancier, he owned some good greyhounds in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Bob first became involved with pigeons at the age of six, when he used to watch a school friend's father's birds train and race. The young Bob kept his first birds in a fish box, with chicken wire over the front. One particular fancier who gave him some special help in getting started in pigeons was Tom Wilson, who lived just down the street from the Reeves family. Tom's loft was situated on the old city wall, looking out over the River Exe and beyond to the Haldon Hills, the present day Exeter liberation site. Bob said that Tom was a grand old fancier who taught him a lot of the basics of racing pigeons, which he has never forgotten. Bob has been a fancier for 70 years, a part .from the war years, and the first club in which he raced was the Western Counties RPC, which is still racing on the north road today. He likes all sport, but his other love is boxing, which he did competitively from the age of nine, boxing for the Exeter Boxing Club and the Royal Navy. Bob had 421 amateur bouts and lost only 11 of them. His first loft was 3ft square and 18 Inches deep, made from Tate & Lyle sugar boxes and nailed to the bathroom wall. He had to get up a ladder to clean and feed the birds and once he got splinters in his bottom when he slid down the ladder with some race rubbers, to run to another fancier's loft to clock in!

Bob's present loft is 12ft x 6ft, with two sections, one with 12 nest boxes for natural racers and one with 28 box perches for the young birds. His self-built loft has open door trapping and he maintains that good ventilation, and plenty of it, is a must for good loft design. He pairs up all his old birds on the full moon in March, when the wild birds mate up. He says he races the natural, system because he is an old fancier and it suits him. His birds have lots of clean water, good com, a clean loft, and most of all, a lot of love. During the racing season he likes to give his birds three training tosses in the week, Tuesday 20 miles, Wednesday 40 miles and Thursday 20 miles, as this keeps them on their toes and muscled up. His family of pigeons is made up of the old English strains of Warrington-Savage Barker, Kirkpatrick-Savage Barker and a few Busschaerts, and they do him proud. The Warrington-Savage Barkers were bred down from Menzie's Lerwick hen, only bird on the day and in race time from 671 miles. The Kirkpatrick-Savage Barkers were obtained from his son, Allan, who raced them with outstanding success to Thurso. Bob's best performance to date was winning the Nantes National in 1996. He says it's a race he will never forget and only fanciers who have won the National know the fantastic feeling you have when you are told that you have won.

His family is very interested in the pigeons. Indeed, they are a smashing family. He has two sons who are both fanciers, Bob Junior who lived in Malta for a number of years, and Allan, who had to give up because of the dreaded pigeon fancier's lung, but still likes to go to see his dad's birds on race days. Bob raced in the Exeter Invitation RPC, of which he was a life vice president, and races both north and south routes. When racing, Bob feeds his old birds with a good mixture, as this seems to keep them in condition longer. He gives them a trapping mixture and a lettuce twice a week and maintains that there is plenty of iron in green food. He also boils stinging nettles and, after straining them, puts the liquid in the drinking water. Bob has tried a deep litter of wood shavings on the floor of the loft, but doesn't like it. He prefers to get on his hands and knees for a daily scrape out. When breeding, he puts the best to the best to keep the line going until he needs a bit of new blood, hopefully from the same strain. When selecting breeders, he goes for good type, balance in the hand and good winning bloodlines. When, you have had pigeons for 70 years, he thinks you have a feeling that you've put the right two birds together.

That’s it for this week’s article! Next week we will be featuring Derek and Joy Cook , and their Tumley Lofts Stud. I under stand Joy Cook was taken ill the weekend after our visit, but is now home from hospital and recovering well. Get well soon Joy! My phone number is: 01372 463480. See yer!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT

9/8/07