STAFFORDSHIRE MOORLANDS & DISTRICT FEDERATION

by Thomas Garvie

Blandford - September 2012

Well the end of the young bird season has arrived with the final fed race from Blandford and there were 733 birds liberated at 11-15. Finishing off another great season was North section flyer Paul Beck from Longdendale taking first and second places in the fed on 1658 and 1652 and he was also 6th, 8th and 10th on 1644, 1641.2 and 1640. Another great race up in to the North section from one of the best flyers within the federation. C Knowles, also from Longdendale, was on 1649, P Stanway from Poynton was next on 1648, Collins and Stevens from Dukinfield were next on 1646, K Johnson from Poynton was on 1641.9, Rick Geary and son from Macclesfield were on 1641.0. So the north section finished the racing on a high with 9 out of the top 10 places - well done.

Some club news starting with Ipstones where 3 members entered 30 birds and the first four places went to R & J Goodwin and son on 1617, 1580, 1578 and 1571. Next club is Macclesfield where 7 members sent 116 birds and Rick and Simon Geary take another red card on 1641 with the pigeon that was second last week which is a home bred Hybrecht x Soontjen returning to the perch. Hope you had a nice time in Spain Rick and I will collect my present later. Martin Hough had a good race taking the next three places on 1632 and two on 1631, the first bird home being a Duggins Janssen, the next bird a Kirkland Willy Thas x Leo van Rijn and the dam is a full sister to Cut Throat which is a double combine winner and their 3rd bird is again a Duggins Janssen x with Martin’s old Cheekie and Moneyspinner lines. All three were bred by Martin and were returning to the perch. Packmoor now where A Cliff took the red card on 1635 as well as all the pools and nom. What a good young bird season he has had. Second place went to T Woolrich and son on 1632, L Khan and sons were third on 1631 and fourth were Walley and Wilkinson on 1630.

Last but not least were Hayfield where 4 members sent 50 birds and taking the first two places was Chris Mourne on 1612 and 1610 and taking the next two spots was J L Gibb on 1567 and 151562.

So that completes the club round up for this year and at this point I would like to thank the clubs that take the time to send me their reports. It is appreciated because without them there would be no write ups so again thank you.

The claims for the 2012 season averages are as follows:

Paul Beck from Longdendale in the north section won the young bird average on 1566 with Rick and Simon Geary from Macclesfield the runners up on 1545.

Old bird inland average winner was W Burgess from Packmoor on 1437 and runners up also from Packmoor were T Woolrich and son on 1432.

Old bird channel average winners were Challinger & Collett from Meir on 1325 with the runners up being Burton & Jones from Ipstones on 1279.

Combined land and channel average winners were Challinger and Collett on 1346 with runners up Burton & Jones on 1328.

All races average winners were again Challinger & Collett 1382 with runers up being Mcgraw,Clegg and Preece from Berryhill on 1333,some very good and consistent flying in there so well done to everybody who flew this year.

The fed has already had a meeting for all clubs to discuss plans for the future and another one is planned for Sunday 4th of November at 11-00am at Meir Sports Club to further discuss matters which arose at the first meeting. Hopefully things can be sorted out before the AGM and the fed is still looking for a race controller so there is plenty of time for clubs to get somebody to take up this position with help available from former race controllers.

My old computer unfortunately packed up and we were both a bit upset because we store almost everything on there and we were mainly worried about all our holiday photos. There were lots of other federation items and photos on as well but the most important things were the holiday ones along with a lot of the holiday cottage details, but to our relief our chap in the local computer shop told us he could take out the hard drive and put it in a shell for us and we could plug it in to another computer via a usb lead. Fortunately we have a small notebook that we take on holiday with us so we can use that for a bit. Some things were lost though because of where they were stored but there is a lesson to be learned and that is do not store everything on a blasted computer. We will not be left worrying about that again as I have taken all the holiday photos and other important documents and put them on discs and cards. There is a lot of pigeon stuff that I cannot get access to but that is not of major importance to me. My wife keeps saying we should print off holiday photos when we take them and I always insisted on storing them on the computer as it takes up less room and they are easy to find but maybe I will take her advice next time and print them off. Then at least you will always have them and by taking your memory card to some of the chemist shops you can probably print them all off a lot cheaper than you can print them yourselves; it uses a lot of ink when printing off photos and it is not cheap either.

Another thing that is not cheap now, though it never really is, is our corn bill. We could not believe the huge hike on the corn when we went for our last order with our most used bags such as mixed peas and bags of beans jumping almost £4 a bag and especially the beans jumping from £9 to £13, which we use a lot of. Maybe we need to cut down a lot on birds. This year’s old bird racing cut down a lot there but we have a lot of birds, especially as my wife loves showing, as do I, but the racers will always keep themselves to a level. Well I think that is about all for now so bye from TG.