Les J Parkinson - What’s on my mind.
Had a lengthy conversation with Alan Wicker about the Padfield bred pigeons that he has, and he has a big direct stock team of them. What’s more important is they are now all DNA certified, those that didn’t come through the process with flying colors have all gone. Alan was saying that he wants a team of pigeons where they are all spot on with the breeding. Alan is like myself, mostly interested in the longer races, especially in the Nationals. The Padfield pigeons have a good record when it comes to the distance races so the stall is set out for the family that Alan believes are the ones to get him the results that he is after. Alan was saying that he also has a few direct off top distance pigeons to breed with the Padfield family and they also have a DNA certificate to go with them. The Padfield lofts were one of the top UK lofts that I missed out on, in all my years of writing I wanted to visit but never did, I would have loved to have seen their distance family. Cameron Stansfield had visited the Padfield family and was telling me several years ago how good these pigeons were, and he was always keen on the longer races. Perhaps now that Alan has a very good team with DNA certificates, we may start to see the Padfield pigeons back at the top when it comes to long distance races. It would be nice if you could send a team of pigeons to 700ml races and be confident in them coming home in good time, which is what the Padfield family could and did do on so many occasions. There’s no doubt about it I will be going over to Alan Wicker’s to see this team of 32 direct Padfield’s and a small team of DNA certified in the stock lofts off top Padfield stock. Alan did win the St Vincent National so does have some idea of what it takes to win at the distance. Don’t get these mixed up with any other lofts of the Padfield family, these are all DNA certified therefore the pigeons to breed off for the future long-distance loft. When it comes the quality in these pigeons Alan has 12 direct off “IRON LADY”
You can understand why the Padfield family have won so much when you look at the following lines.
“IRON LADY” a magnificent winner of 1st Gwent GDC, 3rd section 8th open British International Championship Club Barcelona 757mls.
“CHAMPION PADFIELD JACK” was the first pigeon in the history of the Welsh South Road National to win the meritorious award for being 3 x in the top 20 Open of the Welsh South Road National. In actual fact; he achieved this 4 times!
Winner of:
1st Section Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
1st Open Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
3rd Section Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
3rd Open Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
9th Section Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
15th Open Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
7th Open Welsh South Road National Tarbes 607 miles
8th Section NFC Tarbes 607 miles
56th Open NFC Tarbes 607 miles
12th Section NFC Tarbes 607 miles
88th Open NFC Tarbes 607 miles
19th Section NFC Tarbes 607 miles
161st Open NFC Tarbes 607 miles
45th Section NFC Tarbes 607 miles
337th Open NFC Tarbes 607 miles
“CHAMPION PADFIELD’S INVINCIBLE” What a fantastic pigeon!
One of the best present-day long-distance Jan Aarden-based pigeons to fly into the U.K. His wins are;
1st.G.G.D.C, 1st.West Section, 2nd.Open BICC Barcelona, 754 miles,
1st.Single Bird NFC winning £1,500 in 2009, beaten only by a bird flying 200 miles to the east of his loft in a strong westerly wind, beating over 25,000 birds in the Barcelona International,
23rd.Open BBC Nantes, 3,200 birds,
33rd.Open BBC San Sebastian
3rd.Open Single Bird National, 3rd.West Section,
31st Open Pau BICC,
163rd.Open BBC, St. Nazaire.
Winner of 6 x Welsh Meritorious Award 600miles
Winner of 1 x Welsh Meritorious Award 750miles
A son of “CHAMPION BLUE BADGE COCK”
He has appeared four times in the first 10 in the BICC International races:
1st Gwent Greater Distance Flying Club.
1st West Section,
2nd Open BICC Barcelona International.
1st NFC Single Bird National.
He was roughly 330th International from nearly 20,000 pigeons.
1st West Section,
4th Open BICC
“CHAMPION INVINCIBLE SPIRIT”
1st National 1st International Barcelona 27,068 birds.
23rd National 42nd International Barcelona 27,352 birds.
With generations of winners following suit.
These are just a sample of the winnings behind these pigeons, especially in the distance races and you can understand why they have such a winning line behind them.
Breeding
As I have reported a few weeks ago the first round of eggs for the stock birds was a disaster and have ended up with only 4 chipping out. There was obviously something disturbing them for them to leave the nest and their eggs. It looks as if whatever was disturbing them was not going all the way down to floor level because those 4 young birds saw one pair on the floor and another pair in the bottom row of boxes. They have now started to lay again so let’s hope all goes well, I don’t want to be struggling and leaving them too late. I am not set in my ways about breeding, when I say that I am referring to which pigeons I breed off, stock or racers. I would like to breed only off my race team because I always believe if they are in the race team at the time we are breeding then they have earned their perch. As I have always pointed out with the stock birds you need to breed 6 off a stock pair to find the winners, that view came from David Coward-Talbott and I don’t think he is wrong. The one problem we are having is the weather is not with us, even if a loft is well covered the cold will still get through to the yellow squeakers in the nest, doesn’t say it will do them much harm as long as they are not left too long.
Blackpool
Another Show has come and gone with feelings for the show appearing to drop year on year and it does not look like building up again. The one thing that I have heard a lot of and that is it is a good social weekend with lots of alcohol and good banter. The problem is the show needs more stands, but the costs involved are far too high for what most of the stallholders get out of it. I know that when we had a stand at the show it was not as good as we would have expected. We were not looking to make a profit but make fanciers aware of who we are. With the cost of the stand and other costs including the hotel we were never going to make a profit which we knew before we went. To Elimar it was an exercise to show our faces in what used to be the biggest pigeon weekend of the year. With breeding now starting so early anything that fanciers want for their birds and loft are mostly purchased by the end of the year. There are still fanciers who pair their birds at the old-fashioned time of the year, around Valentines Day. When you think about it if you do start breeding on Valentines Day, you are not giving enough time for the pigeons to rear a nest and be ready for the racing season. That time of the year was okay when racing started around the third weekend in April, in fact when I was fed secretary, we had no more than two races in April. Getting them ready for early April after pairing up in mid-February is a big task and one that can cause early losses that none of us want.
Strays
Thought I was getting rid of them from the solar panels on the house roof, 5 have gone as I know of but every time, we have a spell of removing them more move in. I don’t know what the answer is, what I do know is there are batches of pigeons settling on houses and they are nearly all where solar panels are fitted. We had ours wired off so they could not get underneath but they then decided to nest along the top of them. Since having this problem, I can understand why non fanciers complain about Ferrel pigeons.
Les J Parkinson. 11 Rushton Drive, Middlewich, Cheshire, CW10 0NJ.
Tel: +44 (0)1606 836036. Mob: +44 (0)7871 701585.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Web site: http://www.elimarpigeons.com