Well today has been interesting if somewhat disappointing! The birds were sent last night to be marked and I was quite happy with their condition even though they had only been out of the loft for 2 training tosses last week (Wednesday and Thursday) with no loft exercise at all! The club sent 117 birds to Newbury, 97 miles, and I was hoping to be closer than I was last race (10 mins behind the winner). The birds were liberated at 7am and at 9.26am 2 birds circled the loft and landed on the trap. 93 and 78 were both timed in and at that point I was quite excited I felt I had 2 good birds! There velocities were 1170 and 1163. However, when getting to the club most members had timed in around the 9.00 - 9.08 mark. Allowing my overfly of 9 mins that still put me 15 mins behind the winner. So I was left quite disappointed with that result. I had 4 out of 5, but my first bird home on 2 previous races is missing. I hope she works back tonight or tomorrow but deep down fear the worst for her!
They have exercised around the loft tonight for 30 mins and on trapping were fed as much as they wanted. I am going to try and give plenty of loft exercise now this week and get them right for next weeks race. I will try to take the birds training a few times in the week as well. Next weeks race is Epsom 140 miles to me. The further the birds go the more it benefits me, due to my lack of drag. The further from the Severn bridge the birds go the more chance of working into smaller batches and then finding a truer line of flight than following the bunch into the valleys and then having to banana back to Brecon.
I am going to start training the remainder of the youngsters this coming week as well. There is 8 in total who can now start to be trained and I am hoping to put these into the comeback races at the end of September.
The bird Niddy purchased in the breeder / buyer who is a full brother to my 2nd bird today and nestmate to my 4th bird done ok for him. Having his first race today he was Niddy's 2nd bird out of the 10 that Niddy sent. I am going to look to purchase a top scoring hen at the Europa Classic to pair to the father of these birds and hope to enter one of the youngsters in the Europa Classic 2010 next year. I couldnt put one in this year from him as the dates of the pairings were all wrong for him. Will be interesting to see how this cock does for Niddy over the remainder of the season.
The one loft birds had there 4th Hotspot Friday. My first bird home was (84) and he was 204th, (83) was 315th and (91) was 502nd out of the 815 birds entered. I was quite happy with that result with (84) being just 4 minutes behind the winner from 160 miles! I am looking forward to the final hotspot and the final race. I was looking through the ring list and there are not many fanciers who still have all the birds they sent still in the loft, so I am quite proud of that fact.
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