Friday, 22 February 2013
racing pigeons pictures
A picture of the top German racer "The Book". As a young bird, he was 3rd, 7th, 9th, 10th and his nestmate also added a 2nd and a 6th. The pigeon was bred (and named) by the super fancier Dieter Siebert of Germany. The pigeon also happens to be the full brother to my pigeon "The German"
(see picture below).
"The German" - Bred by Dieter Siebert of Germany.
The nestmate to "The German" finished 182 in the South African race and should be shipped here shortly.
Eye of "The German"
Inbred Horemans off the great racer, The Mealy Cock -Recently Sold
Eye of the Mealy Cock
If you look very carefully, you will see four yellow dots in this
eye that look something like a tiger paw. This is a very good picture
of a very small cluster. Clusters tend to get bigger with age. I have
always wondered if the number of spots grow or if the existing spots
grow in size, but this particular cock is two years old and the number
of spots has not changed.
The Daughter to the Mealy Cock
If you look very carefully, you will see that she also has a cluster
that is not as pronounced as the father's, but it will eventually be
bigger than his as the beads of the cluster grow.
The Qualls Hen - Placed well in the Snowbird Race - Part of the Survivor Pair
Eye of the Qualls Hen
The Survivor Cock - Son to the Survivor Hen which won the Survivor Series as a seven year old. Also Mother to a 600 mile winner.
Eye of the Survivor Cock

The Super Cock (Right), was recently sold.
Son of Ed's 550 Mile and Championship Points Winning Hen, which is the sister of Silver Streak and Quick Silver
Currently mated to:
The Super 973 - Recently Sold
Top breeders

Super Ton
father of 1st NFC Tarbes, 8th NFC Tarbes, 1st Messac

Barcelona
4 x Barcelona 800 miles
3 x Perpignan 700 miles

Kanjer
2nd NPO Chateauroux
multiple 1st prize winner
Top racing birds

Champion Indy
1st Section, 1st Open National FC Tarbes 571 miles in 2009
3rd Section, 8th Open National FC Tarbes 571 miles in 2008

Louis
1st Section, 8th Open BICC Pau International 2010
(direct son of Indy)
Racing System
I race all my pigeons on the natural system. Young birds are trained privately, yearlings get some more training and then are sent to France for 2 or 3 races with the combine to 300 miles. As two year olds I assess each individual pigeon to see if I think they have finished their physical development and if so then and only then are they ready to race the long distance.
The emphasis is very much that birds are individuals and by not racing them with any expectation until they are 2 years old I get plenty of oppurtunity to assess each pigeons peak nest condition, this is the art of the natural fancier to discover if each individual prefers a certain nest position, eggs, youngsters, both! This coupled with a natural environment and limiting exposure to stress alllows me to get the maximum performance from my small race team.Below is Indy only two hours after being timed to win the most prestigous long distance race in England, flying 571 miles in extreme conditions with the English channel to cross at the end, to race like this they must love their home!

Pigeons
Racing the long distance needs special birds of blue blood, bred to fly all day in any weather, for this reason I purchased the very finest Dutch long distance blood from the distance matador, Ton Bollebakker of Laren and right away they show their class

A pigeon brought Noah the news that heralded the end of the great flood.

Pigeons were involved in the building of great empires, the amassing of vast fortunes, great sieges of important cities, the great communication routes of the east, the great wars of history, the opening of important Olympic games, the feeding of entire countries or the duping and undermining of entire peoples and civilizations together with the undermining of science. It is this last point (the undermining of science) that I intend to briefly comment upon in this short article.
I am not a geneticist or biologist, nor ornithologist, or for that matter scientist of any sort. I am but a life long breeder of pigeons. My day to day occupation is that of an independent book publisher and my formal training is in the field of history.
Figure
3: "The Pigeon Guide," a recently published book
by In a very real sense I am probably (that is my pigeon breeding self) the type of person that Darwin sought out, listened to, discussed with and learned from in order to better focus his own evolving ideas.
Figure
4: Photo Of Darwin in later life together
with an image of his "The Origin of Species." This image was taken
from a site entitled www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/
squashed/darwin.htm and is used with permission. Most people are unaware that I was fascinated by pigeons and Darwin was equally fascinated by and studied pigeons.
Figure
5: Highly developed show specimen "Blue Vision" known as a British Show Racer,
bred and perfected by many including by author, stockman, Douglas McLeary
of the
His
supposed understanding of the pigeon amongst other forms ultimately led
to the formulation of a theory so powerful that we are still suffering
from its effects a century and a half later. He was to convince himself
that selection, eventually to be referred to as "Natural Selection" was
the primordial engine by which all life was to forever move from lesser
forms to higher forms, from less complicated to always more refined, more
adapted and more complicated forms. The pinnacle of this process culminating
in man himself! Here, in his own words, is the essence of his belief and
hypothesis:
"Such variability
may be attributed to the conditions of life, to use and disuse. But I am
convinced that Selection is by far the predominant Power." [2]
Figure
6:
Specialist pigeon fanciers in New York have spent the last half of the 20th century perfecting
the finer qualities of the It certainly seems to me that Darwin's work itself has been subject to this supposed evolution, for it (Darwin's work) began as a hypothesis, then quickly evolved into a theory, and with the passage of only a brief amount of additional time emerged fully mutated into an entity more akin to a religion than to science. A pseudo religion, in many cases a type of state religion, a religion of the supposed enlightened. Oddly enough in the 21st Century science itself has taken a back seat to this new, politically correct religion! Evolution - religion for those who have freed themselves permanently of all need of religion. How very odd yet here is what was written of "Darwin's dangerous idea"
Figure
7: "Medallion Cock" a
Champion British Show Racer bred by Douglas McLeary of the I have read many articles by pigeon enthusiasts that often make reference to Darwin and evolution. Many talk of how the pigeon has evolved and how it is still evolving. It would seem to me, if this were in fact a truth, that such knowledge, in the hands of really dedicated pigeon breeders would be an awesome (awesome power in the sense of what a pigeon breeder could achieve in transforming his charges) power. Yet for the 41 years that I have bred the racing (as well as other pigeons) I find my experience as a breeder of animals, and my observations at constant odds with all that Darwin wrote and imagined. When you choose to breed animals, any animals and certainly when you have done so for as many years as I have, you begin to come to certain conclusions, regardless of what has or has not been postulated or hypothesized. In time I would come to write the following from my observations (which appeared in racing pigeon publications worldwide) and my hands on experience, with breeding pigeons (but certainly totally applicable to any animal or plant form):
Figure
8: The racing pigeon, as we now know
it, is the result of two centuries of total dedication to selective breeding
on the part of racing pigeon fanciers. The modern racing pigeon breeds
true but it is a hybrid that combined the best qualities of many different
pigeon varieties. The careful combination of the finest qualities of all
of these different varieties resulted in a highly developed homing instinct,
aerodynamic body, tremendous heart (nearly twice the size of a regular
pigeon's heart) and indestructible constitution, making the racing pigeon
the ultimate flying machine. Pictured above is "Phar Lap" a great-great
grandson of St. Thomas, bred by Silvio
Mattacchione, in 1997. Phar Lap was the Kwartha Northshore Combine Champion
as well as The Oshawa Racing Pigeon Club Old Bird Champion for 1998. He
flew 4,500 kilometers in 10 weeks.Most current livestock survive in the form in which they exist because they are beneficial to man in that form. They exist in that form because expert herdsmen (or geneticists, scientists, and others) have applied known genetic principles to common stock so as to modify them to their own ends, i.e., more milk, more meat, more eggs, faster horse, and so on. If man took himself out of the equation, the result would be a reversion or extinction of the form." [4]
Without really knowing it, nor having studied it , my experience with breeding the racing pigeon, had lead me to enunciated, in my own words, a well know universal law of science. That is the second law of thermodynamics often called the law of entropy!

Figure 9: This exceptional variety know as a "Satinette" has required tremendous work in developing the incredibly complicated features of the head and beak. Someone, a fancier, had a vision, clarified it in his own mind, prepared drawings of what his mind's eye saw and then spent his entire life working out hundreds and possibly thousands of breedings in an attempt to achieve the standard that he envisioned. Most often these works of art are established over many generations of pigeon fanciers. Photo courtesy of Ronda Mariani.
"Regarding the second law of thermodynamics (universally accepted scientific law which states that all things left to themselves will tend to run down) or the law of entropy, it is observed, "It would hardly be possible to conceive of two more completely opposite principles than this principle of entropy increase and the principle of evolution. Each is precisely the converse of the other. As (Aldous) Huxley defined it, evolution involves a continual increase of order, of organization, of size, of complexity. It seems axiomatic that both cannot possibly be true. But there is no question whatever that the second law of thermodynamics is true." [5]
"These laws state that any natural process would involve conservation (1st law) and disintegration (2nd law). Evolution demands "integration and development" and is therefore impossible." [6]
What has happened to and in the minds of people, of all levels, of all disciplines, is that they can no longer understand that "truth can never be in contradiction to truth." I remember well the words of David Goldstein LL.D. in a series of letters he wrote in 1943 where he said as follows:
www.mystudios.com/.../michelangelo-creation-man.jpg
What
does all of this really mean? Well in simplest terms it certainly seems
to indicate that many scientists (geneticists, biologists, botanists,
zoologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, etc.) have chosen, for many
reasons (most of which have nothing to do with science) to close their
collective eyes to the immutable laws of science. In essence they choose
to survive in this politically correct, modern world. In most cases they
do what needs to be done. Educators, who have little or no expertise of
their own, in any of these areas but who, in many cases, are subject to
all of the same survival and promotional considerations as the scientists
in question, just do their jobs. Children world wide walk away dazed and
confused. Little wonder then what we currently see around us.
W.R.Thompson,
who is certainly pro-evolution, in his introduction to Origin of Species
by Darwin, (page 90) had the following observation to make:"This situation, where men rally to the defense of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigor, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science."[10]
What
have I learned as a stockman? I know for a fact that no biologist can
give any evidence that shows that any species has evolved from another.
I know through observation that new varieties of plants can and are developed,
as are new varieties of animals but this process cannot in any way be
referred to as evolution. Yet clearly Darwin
(was?) seemed to be confused (willingly so?) by this very simple distinction.
He glossed over it, confused it, made light of it and sought to even have
it prove what any novice stock breeder knew intuitively and that is that
variety and species were fundamentally of a different order. Here is what
Darwin had to say in his Chapter
VIII on Hybridism in his "Origin
of Species":
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