KEITH MOTT'S

Visit to The Racing Pigeon offices

The month of March saw Peter Taylor and myself make the 95 mile drive around the M25 motorway to Colchester in Essex to visit The Racing Pigeon offices. The five mile tail back at the Dartford Tunnel tolls made us a bit late, but we arrived just in time for the nice lunch put on by the paper’s editor and owner, Lee Fribbins. It was great to get an invitation to have a look around the offices at the ‘Seedbed Centre’ and I must say it was very plush and well equipped with the very latest technology. I wrote my first article for the paper in 1972 and although I visited the offices in London a couple of times, this was my first time at Colchester. It was great to meet up with all the Racing Pigeon crew, including Lee and Steve ‘the main man’ Rickett, who are the main cogs in the smooth running of the office. Steve joined the ‘RP’ in the early 1970s when the paper was based in London and although he is a typesetter by trade, he must be described as one of the general managers of the paper these days.

Lee Fribbins, the editor of the Racing Pigeon weekly and Pictorial International monthly, is a 100% pigeon man and as well as being very successful racing his own birds, he is a great worker for our sport. He first came in to the sport as a six year old lad when his granddad purchased six Westcott pigeons from Inspector Ralph Chapman. These first birds were housed in a coal bunker and he started racing to a proper pigeon loft at the age of twelve in 1984 and won his first race from Wetherby. After many years in the sport, Lee now races his birds with brilliant success to his wonderful loft set up at his home near Colchester. Lee told me on my visit, ‘My dedication, experience and passion for every aspect of pigeons has allowed me the fortunate and unique opportunity of making a career from nearly four decades of a wonderful hobby. Global publishing is one aspect of my business and my publishing operation began in 2007 when I became the owner and editor of ‘The Racing Pigeon’, first published in 1898. The move in to media was a sentimental one to start with, but the heritage of the oldest pigeon racing magazine being lost for good drove me to make sure that the magazine could continue and is now going from strength to strength. Today ‘The Racing Pigeon’ has a weekly circulation of over 10,000 and the glossy ‘Pictorial International’, the sister monthly magazine is distributed to over 50 countries. A team of graphic designers and editorial staff help me produce what is the only independent newspaper for pigeons in the UK’.

My good friends Mike and Edna Shepherd were also invited for the visit and Mike tells me that Colchester was a Rome town and is the oldest town in England. Mike started working on the paper in 1970 and left in 1987 to become joint secretary, with Edna, of the National Flying Club, which was a job they did for ten successful years and then in 1997 the then owner of The Racing Pigeon, Dave Alan, asked Mike to return to his old job on the paper, which he did. Mike worked at The Racing Pigeon for over 25 years and still has a big involvement with the paper today. The very first article I did in the fancy press was the prize presentation, in the winter of 1972, for the old and now disbanded Molesey club and very soon after that I had my own regular page in the Weybridge based Pigeon Racing Gazette, then run by Roy and Audrey Bishop. Later in the 1970s I was judging at the Inter Counties Federation show in Hertfordshire and met Mike Shepherd for the time. Mike worked for the Racing Pigeon as editor of the Pictorial at that time and invited me to submit some articles and photos for inclusion in the Pictorial, which was then and still is today the premier glossy monthly pigeon magazine. Really at that time Mike was the man who took me to the top level of pigeon journalism and set me up for what I do in the fancy press today. I made my first pigeon photography box on a building site on a cold winter’s day at the end of the 1970s, with the sole purpose of enhancing my pigeon articles and it is a practice I still carry out today. Nothing looks better than an article with plenty of quality pigeon photographs. I think I must have been the press office for every organization I’ve belonged to and in the 1990s I was press officer for the National Flying Club. Writing is what I do and I still enjoy it, even after all these years. Mike Shepherd is my mentor and we have been good friends all through those many years!

Lee Fribbins gave Peter and I a tour of the premises and I must say how impressed we were with it all, but especially with the Clinic and the veterinary side of the company. The surgery was spotlessly clean and in ‘mint’ condition, and was kitted out with all the latest equipment to ensure good pigeon health. Lee showed us the pigeon hospital, which is a room kitted out with fifteen cages and set aside for fanciers to leave their sick birds for treatment. The inmates are monitored at regular times thoughout the day and their progress is recorded on a board on the wall. Lee introduced me to Hollie, the 21 year old veterinary nurse who was testing pigeon droppings through a microscope at the time and she is the regular person testing at the clinic.

I asked Hollie how long had the clinic been set up and she told me, ‘the Belgica De Weerd Clinic UK is situated here in Colchester and the clinic has been successfully running now for four years, offering advice and help to customers all over the UK and other countries such as Northern Ireland and Malta. The clinic offers a variety of services from your standard dropping sample, to in-depth cultures and post mortems. If the journey is that little bit too far to come for a consultation, we can arrange couriers to collect your pigeons and have them stay in our hospital for testing, have any operations if needed and treatment until they have recovered to be sent home. Belgica UK will turn over a vast amount of test kits per day but we have a promise as soon as your sample is received it will be analysed and you will be called that day. Belgica De Weerd UK is happy to help at any time, with a wide range Belgica de Weerd products which  are all developed by the company, doing its own research and are of course free of any kind of any active banned substances. Each product is field-tested in real race competition by top fanciers before Belgica de Weerd introduced it. The Clinic’s dropping and swab service provides a fast and thorough microscopic examination providing an interpretation of your pigeons droppings. Regular testing is recommended before breeding, racing, moulting or at the first signs of disease. Optimum loft health can be maintained through appropriate targeted management at the first signs of illness. Microscopic testing can help alert the fancier to possible health matters or hygiene concerns within the loft environment. We carry out full testing for worms, Coccidiosis count, Canker and crop swab test and then a full analysis of the results are posted out’.

The resident vet at the Belgica De Weerd UK Clinic is Dr Henk de Weerd who lives in Belgium and is at the Essex clinic most days in the summer months, and a couple times a month in the winter. Since 1972, Henk has specialised himself in the medical requirements of racing pigeons and at his clinic in Breda he employs eight specialists. As a young boy, Henk visited many premier lofts in Belgium and Holland with his famous father, Piet de Weerd, and subsequently they travelled all over the pigeon racing world, including: Germany, USA, Canada, UK, Mexico, Thailand, Taiwan, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Japan and China. Thousands of fanciers have attended the lectures given by Piet de Weerd and Henk on such topics such as pigeon diseases and the treatments.

Thanks to Lee and Steve for a wonderful day out at the offices in Colchester. Peter and I really enjoyed ourselves. I must say it is great to see the ‘RP’ thriving again and that is full credit to Lee Fribbins. Well done mate!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT

---

Elimar - March 2014