Article by CJ Richter
Article Published 09 November 2007

By the time you read this article on your favorite pigeon website the racing season will be over and fanciers everywhere will, no doubt, be having sighs of relief on that score. Indeed, many will be licking their wounds following the dreadful mauling experienced throughout the season.2007 has almost certainly provided us with one of the toughest seasons in many years with many fanciers experiencing losses by the time the first race was flown.

Towards the end of June it was not uncommon to hear fanciers talking of having their strongest young bird team for years with club and/ or Federation secretaries rubbing their hands in glee as they looked forward to bumper revenue to boost their finances. Within a few weeks we were looking at an entirely different picture as everything seemed to fall apart. Fanciers were suddenly losing youngsters and suffering heavy losses in training. By the time the first race had arrived their numbers were sorely depleted and secretaries everywhere were concerned at the reduced entries for the first race. Little did many of them realise that their concern was to turn to despair when wholesale losses of birds were reported in the first races by many organizations. Estimates of less than 20% returns were commonplace and the young bird season was doomed from then on.

A few good inland races were experienced after the first few disappointing ones and everybody thought the season was on even keel. As winter progressed in the Western Cape and our Northerly neighbours started their races in our direction, the heavy losses returned. We do wonder why so many fanciers even want to send youngsters to middle and longer events in the first place. It is a fact that some experienced old birds can get lost on the short sprint races, yet we expect inexperienced, immature, unfit and, in many cases, ill-prepared babies to compete over distances of up to 600 or 700km. We must also emphasize that the weather upcountry in August or September can be more treacherous than in June or July.

These disasters can be avoided to a large extent, but only by a change of attitudes. It is part of our national character to resent any form of change, but a combination of factors now makes it imperative that we have to change our ideas or the sport will suffer. The sport has expanded considerably since those early years and many fanciers are far more informed than their predecessors. What was good enough 50 years ago is certainly not good enough today, there has to be more control over racing than hitherto.

There are many factors which contribute towards losses including poor quality pigeons, poor quality management which results in pigeons being sent in a bad state of preparation, perhaps the keeping of too many pigeons, lack of adequate basic training and clashing. With the vast increase in the price of petrol it is certain that many fanciers are cutting down on training, relying on the better trained birds to help theirs along. Unfortunately, there are now too many poorly trained birds in the race panniers and on release they tend to panic even the better prepared pigeons. The time has come that we must have more collective training schemes, whether run by fanciers who have vehicles suitable for carrying large teams of birds, or by use of Federation transporters. Even in today’s inflationary climate we can obtain very cheap training if fanciers will make the effort to work together. Unfortunately, many fanciers who have tried to help their fellow members have given up after complaining that they seem expected to do all the fetching and carrying as well as providing the actual transportation.

We believe that our governing body in recent history has perhaps put too much emphasis on the introduction of technical rules, which few can understand and are often found impossible to implement. We believe they should give urgent attention to the need to exercise control over race programming and liberations with a view to (i) avoid clashing(ii) to ease the congestion often experienced at some of the popular race points (iii) appointment of central Race Controllers. It is something which could not be brought about completely in one season, but even a modest start would be encouraging. Above all, the sport’s “sacred cow” of having pigeons liberated from everywhere to arrive home sometime after 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon has to be buried, once and for all.