"The Cobbler"
Northamptonshire
Ramblings
October 2010
Ramblings
October 2010
"The Cobbler"
Any views on Pigeon Racing in Northamptonshire to
Tel: 01933 410322 or
Email: russellbradford@talktalk.net
Copyright, all rights reserved, Russell Bradford 2010
Ramblers Itinerary Racing Pigeon Post RPP Index to Articles
Any views on Pigeon Racing in Northamptonshire to
Tel: 01933 410322 or
Email: russellbradford@talktalk.net
Copyright, all rights reserved, Russell Bradford 2010
Ramblers Itinerary Racing Pigeon Post RPP Index to Articles
Is it my imagination, or has the strength of the moult in some pigeons this year been more intense over a shorter period. Bare patches of skin tend to show up more where there are white feathers - or lack of them to be precise, and I enclose a picture of one of my pigeons showing him completely naked from the neck up. I can’t ever remember seeing a pigeon drop every feather around the head like this before and at four years old; he’s never moulted like this in the past.
Nothing Much Changes
Time marches on remorselessly and the racing seasons seem to come and go ever more quickly, but it is arguable as to how much changes. I started writing this column regularly in 2003 and have now contributed over one hundred articles to the BHW. I glanced back through a few articles I’d submitted in that year, as I have them all stored on my PC, and smiled to myself when I read a report concerning early season OB racing with the Northampton South Road club. In those days the Northampton (or Budgie) club as it is fondly known were transporting the Buckingham club as well, and early season up to 465 birds went to Fareham. Those days seem to have long gone, with Northampton SRFC seemingly struggling to retain their independence and ability to go to race points where and when they choose, and now being required for financial reasons to consider either joining the Harrowden Federation, or seeking another organisation to convoy them. This year the highest numbers that have gone to any single race is 240, and clearly the income (even at 70 pence a bird) cannot continue to match the expenditure of “going-it-alone”. Next year a VAT increase due in January will see a gallon of diesel increase yet again, and with decreasing birdage and increasing transport costs, there will surely be a shift towards inter club cooperation on transport. The days of the fancier who wants to send four or five birds to a club race now and again, and expect to only pay 50P are about as doomed as Gordon Brown continuing to utter the word “Prudence”
I also reported in one of those early articles of ONE Northants fancier sending to the first BICC Falaise race; Graham Caple turning in a 69th Provisional, and Graham is still there sending to the BICC, albeit this year with the Championship Club and achieving a third and some prize money in the NCC, at the disastrous and very hard Sarran race. The grin to myself was really more a sad smile, all the more so, when I came across another report later in the same year noting how young bird losses were anything up to 40 or 50%, and yet I’ve read that this year’s YB losses are simply terrible and the worst ever. Not a lot changes does it! Of course what has changed in the intervening years is the use of ETS, which despite causing such rifts has never-the-less now been so universally accepted. I certainly know of local fanciers who a couple of years back were totally adamant that they would never have ETS; and guess what?.......they now have an electronic timing system installed and are admitting it is the easiest and best thing they’ve done in a very long time.
£2,413
Two thousand, four hundred and thirteen pounds is a fairly eye-catching figure and an amount you might conceivably expect one of the Classic clubs, or maybe even the local Federation to perhaps be paying out in prize money. It is simply what the seventeen members of the Northamptonshire Championship Club will share out at this year’s prize presentation, and I will report on this more fully in the next Northamptonshire Ramblings.
Northamptonshire Gold Ring 2011
As many will know the Championship Club ran a gold ring race for the first time this year, with a £350 plus pay-out, and like any such race or event, the first year can always be improved or ‘fine-tuned’. That the club is capable of organising such a race (or races) is abundantly clear, but there is without doubt the potential to develop and grow the event ~ after all, every such prestigious big money event had to start somewhere. The club currently believes there is scope to open up the gold ring scheme in 2011 to any fancier in Northamptonshire, and if the ring sales can be increased to (say) three times the 81 rings that were sold to members only this year; then well in excess of £1,000 could be up for grabs, and all for the very reasonable price of a five pound ring. With a gold ring race, (unlike a breeder / buyer race), the fancier breeds his own pigeon, and fits that into his own breeding timescale, whereas so often the purchase of an expensive youngster at a breeder / buyer auction can come at the wrong time to fit in with his own batch of YB’s bred earlier in the year, and of course prove far more costly than a five pound ring. The perceived problem however with any one single race, is that the wind and the location of the home loft on a given day tends to define where the likely winner is going to be, so the current thinking within the club, in order to make this as fair as possible to everyone wherever they live in Northamptonshire, is to have two races ~ one from (say) Hastings or Eastbourne, and the other from (say) Portland or Kingsdown, so the distances will even-up for either side of the county and the wind will not be such a defining factor. The two race velocities will be added together to produce the winners.
The other factor the club will consider is that a fancier’s own ring or rings can be nominated, (maximum of ten) so if a fancier is desperate to have MNFC or National rings, they will be able to nominate those rings by (probably) the end of March, albeit the club will charge £6.00 instead of £5.00.
The rings have already been ordered, and are quite likely to be sold as soon as they arrive in early January, so if you are interested and live within the borders of Northamptonshire, then please get in touch with any member in the Championship Club, or via the contact details below. The club will be producing a flyer with all the entry details at the end of October.
Time marches on remorselessly and the racing seasons seem to come and go ever more quickly, but it is arguable as to how much changes. I started writing this column regularly in 2003 and have now contributed over one hundred articles to the BHW. I glanced back through a few articles I’d submitted in that year, as I have them all stored on my PC, and smiled to myself when I read a report concerning early season OB racing with the Northampton South Road club. In those days the Northampton (or Budgie) club as it is fondly known were transporting the Buckingham club as well, and early season up to 465 birds went to Fareham. Those days seem to have long gone, with Northampton SRFC seemingly struggling to retain their independence and ability to go to race points where and when they choose, and now being required for financial reasons to consider either joining the Harrowden Federation, or seeking another organisation to convoy them. This year the highest numbers that have gone to any single race is 240, and clearly the income (even at 70 pence a bird) cannot continue to match the expenditure of “going-it-alone”. Next year a VAT increase due in January will see a gallon of diesel increase yet again, and with decreasing birdage and increasing transport costs, there will surely be a shift towards inter club cooperation on transport. The days of the fancier who wants to send four or five birds to a club race now and again, and expect to only pay 50P are about as doomed as Gordon Brown continuing to utter the word “Prudence”
I also reported in one of those early articles of ONE Northants fancier sending to the first BICC Falaise race; Graham Caple turning in a 69th Provisional, and Graham is still there sending to the BICC, albeit this year with the Championship Club and achieving a third and some prize money in the NCC, at the disastrous and very hard Sarran race. The grin to myself was really more a sad smile, all the more so, when I came across another report later in the same year noting how young bird losses were anything up to 40 or 50%, and yet I’ve read that this year’s YB losses are simply terrible and the worst ever. Not a lot changes does it! Of course what has changed in the intervening years is the use of ETS, which despite causing such rifts has never-the-less now been so universally accepted. I certainly know of local fanciers who a couple of years back were totally adamant that they would never have ETS; and guess what?.......they now have an electronic timing system installed and are admitting it is the easiest and best thing they’ve done in a very long time.
£2,413
Two thousand, four hundred and thirteen pounds is a fairly eye-catching figure and an amount you might conceivably expect one of the Classic clubs, or maybe even the local Federation to perhaps be paying out in prize money. It is simply what the seventeen members of the Northamptonshire Championship Club will share out at this year’s prize presentation, and I will report on this more fully in the next Northamptonshire Ramblings.
Northamptonshire Gold Ring 2011
As many will know the Championship Club ran a gold ring race for the first time this year, with a £350 plus pay-out, and like any such race or event, the first year can always be improved or ‘fine-tuned’. That the club is capable of organising such a race (or races) is abundantly clear, but there is without doubt the potential to develop and grow the event ~ after all, every such prestigious big money event had to start somewhere. The club currently believes there is scope to open up the gold ring scheme in 2011 to any fancier in Northamptonshire, and if the ring sales can be increased to (say) three times the 81 rings that were sold to members only this year; then well in excess of £1,000 could be up for grabs, and all for the very reasonable price of a five pound ring. With a gold ring race, (unlike a breeder / buyer race), the fancier breeds his own pigeon, and fits that into his own breeding timescale, whereas so often the purchase of an expensive youngster at a breeder / buyer auction can come at the wrong time to fit in with his own batch of YB’s bred earlier in the year, and of course prove far more costly than a five pound ring. The perceived problem however with any one single race, is that the wind and the location of the home loft on a given day tends to define where the likely winner is going to be, so the current thinking within the club, in order to make this as fair as possible to everyone wherever they live in Northamptonshire, is to have two races ~ one from (say) Hastings or Eastbourne, and the other from (say) Portland or Kingsdown, so the distances will even-up for either side of the county and the wind will not be such a defining factor. The two race velocities will be added together to produce the winners.
The other factor the club will consider is that a fancier’s own ring or rings can be nominated, (maximum of ten) so if a fancier is desperate to have MNFC or National rings, they will be able to nominate those rings by (probably) the end of March, albeit the club will charge £6.00 instead of £5.00.
The rings have already been ordered, and are quite likely to be sold as soon as they arrive in early January, so if you are interested and live within the borders of Northamptonshire, then please get in touch with any member in the Championship Club, or via the contact details below. The club will be producing a flyer with all the entry details at the end of October.