WINTER LATE-BRED TRAINING - Part 2

 by John Clements

I am continuing with my winter training experiment of my now 19 ‘late-breds’ (lost one). Tomorrow I am taking them for their second release of two at a time.  This time I shall start on the A34 Congelton road and come back on the A535 road, making another circular trip and releasing each pair every mile or so.

Because I had a lunch appointment and was a bit short of time I decided to release the pigeons in groups of five. I imagine this was their stiffest test yet because the sky was really over cast, damp and cloudy with a bit of mist about. Usually in this kind of weather you would not want to be training pigeons but because I decided not to mollycoddle them at the start and was prepared to lose some I didn’t have any thought but to continue even on a relatively bad day. I have lost one pigeon up to now I think I lost it when I let them go in twos a couple of days ago, so now I have nineteen left. 

They all came though although the last four released at 10.30am did not get back until 12.30am (still in a group) so they took two hours to fly about 15 miles. Considering the weather and the state of play on the day, I was pleased they all came though. The next toss will be tomorrow - Saturday. The forecast is good so we will try two at a time once again.  I hope this time the release will be from the west at Norton Priory near Runcorn. I will try to take a photo to underline my experimental credentials and I will publish it the next time I write.

 There is a real deeper meaning to this experiment. As well as attempting to find individual pigeons that are potential leaders, the fact that I am publishing the details (good and bad) is because  I am also attempting to encourage individual fanciers who themselves are potential leaders and who, because they are prepared to research something different and be imaginative with their own pigeons, are in fact setting themselves apart by being prepared to have a go to improve the average homing quality of their loft of pigeons.

Fanciers, like pigeons, are gregarious. They too for the most part are wary of going it alone; they too find comfort in the flock. That is why strains, races, clubs etc are growing in fashion or out dropping out of fashion. Fashion is an expression of group thinking. Economists call it ‘conventional wisdom’1 conventional wisdom or staying with what is prevalent and familiar is a very powerful driving force. 1 The Affluent Society by J.K. Galbraith.

I don’t suppose for a moment training twenty ‘late-breds’ in pairs during the winter is ever going to be really fashionable - it would frighten me if it was. I would feel I had lost my imaginative ‘mojo’ if ever it became so. One thing’s for sure winter training means you are on ‘the darkness’ of the time of year, treading a path that will either lead to great success or fail dismally.

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Elimar - November 2014