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Several years back, I performed another web interview for the Mid Island Racing Pigeon Society. Like the interview you are about to read, the Mid Island interview was very long and in-depth but, by far, the most tedious portion to write was the introduction. Certainly it would be nice if someone knew your accomplishments well enough to write such an interview for you, but unfortunately that is never the case. Thinking that this might come up again, I kept a copy of this previous interview, which I have now updated for your perusal. Book

A private grading at the loft of Rune "The Funny Man," in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Rune is the collector of many fine pigeons!

Introduction to Bill "The Book" Richardson Let me begin this interview by saying that my name is Bill "The Book" Richardson, but everyone just calls me Book (If they like me, and even worse if they don’t). I grew up racing in the 200 member Mountain Concourses with an average shipping of between 1,500 to 2,000 pigeons a week. I obtained my first racing pigeons in 1970, at the age of

11; however, because of an outbreak of New Castle in the California area, I actually didn’t fly my first race until 1973, when I was 14 years of age.

BOOK – The Wonder Years

I wasn’t an easy student to teach because I obviously already knew everything there was to know (just ask me).

I was very fortunate in those early days to have a mentor by the name of Don Falkenborg. Although Don wasn’t a big name in the sport, he did have a reputation as an excellent selector of pigeons, and when he had the time, he was also an excellent competitor, but most of all he was a wonderful teacher. Let me point it out before others point it out for me, I wasn’t an easy student to teach because I obviously already knew everything there was to know (or so I thought). This was further compounded by the fact that my pigeons had some excellent success very early on. For instance, before I was old enough to drive, I helped my pigeons win two combine short average speeds, two points championships, three combine overalls, and many top ten finishes including a stretch where my pigeons finished 6, 4, 9, 2, 1, 12, 9, 3 and 1 in the combine in two seasons of young bird short average speed racing. Part of the reason that Don was such a good teacher was that as a former highly successful salesman, he understood people better than anyone that I have ever met. This

ability eventually helped him found a multi-million dollar business, and, as Don’s business grew, his time for the pigeons became far more limited. Consequently, instead of racing pigeons, he chose to study them. However, in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, fanciers that owned pigeons, but didn’t race, were more frowned upon than they possibly are today, so Don often didn’t get the credit that he deserved. Because Don wasn’t hurting for money, and because he loved studying pigeons, he put the two together and twice hired Piet De Weed to come grade his pigeons and teach him grading techniques. Piet was not known for giving away information freely, but because of Don’s ability with people, he was able to quickly win over the less than forthcoming Piet. Luckily, Don was willing to share this information more freely with me. Don passed away several years back, but I still think about him and many of the things he and to say on a daily basis, and I can’t really begin to tell you how important he was to me as a person and as a student of this game. Life can be funny, and, at least for me, many of my greatest moments in this sport have happened by coincidence. One such coincidences happened in 1981, while I was attended College at the University of Arizona. It happened that I went the Department of Animal Sciences looking to use a dissecting scope, and, instead, with the help of the renowned biologist and author, Dr. Robert B. Chiasson, I eventually came away with the concept of eye mechanics. Let me state here and now that just because the word “eye” is being used here, it doesn’t make me just another eyesign guy. For those that have paid to have me grade there pigeons, I think they would be happy to tell you that I never even look at the eye of most pigeons during the grading process, and when I do, it is the last thing that I look at.

Eye of a 2009 Young Bird

While the term “eye mechanics” may sound scholarly, it is based on cooling of the brain and flexibility of the eye as it relates to the flight of the pigeon. One of Dr. Chiasson’s assistants was provided a grant to study thermal displacement of the brain through the eye, which essentially amounts to cooling of the brain through blood flow to the eye. Surprising, this concept went hand in hand with many of Piete DeWeerd’s and Don Falkenborg’s explanations of eyesign, and it provided me the foundation to further the study the concept of eye mechanics. During the study, I had full access to a great deal of equipment, related reading material, and the knowledge of these two gentlemen. You would be surprised how many questions I can ask in a year! I know they were! After graduation, my wife and I settled in Tucson, Arizona, where I successfully raced pigeons until 1993, winning an All American Award, President’s Cup and AU Hall of Fame. When I returned to the sport in 1998, I had many more time constraints in my life,

so I had to narrow my focus to the breeding side of the sport. Although I will race again, it probably won’t be until after I retire. While my breeding program takes up a great deal of my free time, I have also filled in around the edges by writing articles, lecturing, grading pigeons, maintaining my website, and doing interviews like this one. With the exception of taking care of the pigeons themselves, the advantage in these pursuits is that when I don’t have time for them, I simply don’t do them. However, that is more of a threat than a reality. It was the now deceased eyesign enthusiast, Myron Kulik, who first suggested that I start writing articles, and to that end he put me in contact with Steven van Breemen of Winning Magazine where I gained international recognition for my 95 plus articles that were printed in Winning Magazine (English and Dutch), the Australian Racing Pigeon Journal ( English), and occasionally on the Danish site Dansk Brevduesport (Danish). Today, I regularly write for the Racing Pigeon Digest here in the United States, and these articles are reprinted in the Australian Racing Pigeon Journal. Most of these articles have found their way onto my Horemans International website at http://www.horemans.com (formally hofkens.com). Since 1987, I have also presented seminars at the San Diego Clubhouse, San Deigo, CA; the Desert Classic, Phoenix, Arizona; twice at the FVC Snowbird race in Los Angeles, California; the IF Convention in Long Island, New York; the Gopher State Auction in Minnesota; and the SRPC-Slidell Racing Pigeon Club in Louisiana. At many of these seminar sites, I professionally graded hundreds of pigeons including just over 800 pigeons in Slidell and Lafayette, Louisiana. Over the last two years, I have been invited on three occasions to be the guest speaker on PigeonRadio.com. In 2006, the Mid Island Racing Pigeon Society asked me to do a web interview, which is still available on their site today. I am currently scheduled to present a seminar and possibly grade pigeons (details are still being worked out) at the California State Convention in the Sacramento area of Northern California in November of 2009.

Grading at the Vejle clubhouse on the Danish peninsula of Jutland.

In 2005, through the sponsorship of a Danish Auction, Meldgaard Feeds of Denmark and Winning Magazine, I was invited to become the first American to present seminars and grade sessions in Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. This included sessions in Ringsted, Aalborg, and Esbjerg, Denmark; Etten-Leur, and Putten, Holland; and Aalst, Belgium. During this trip I graded 3,000 pigeons in these three countries. In 2007, I again returned to Denmark to present seminars and grading sessions in many of these same locations plus a few more. I also conducted a number of special loft visits across Denmark. Ultimately, I graded another 3,000 pigeons during the 2007 trip.

Introduction to Bill "The Book" Richardson .................................................................. 2 What qualities do you look for in a racing pigeon? ............................................................ 9 What in your opinion is the most important aspect of quality of a champion loft? ............ 9 How do you select birds for breeding?.............................................................................. 10 How do you select birds when pairing? ............................................................................ 11 What is the best breeding strategy in your opinion? And why? ........................................ 12 How many young birds do you breed each season?.......................................................... 12 What racing system do you use most? .............................................................................. 13 How do you train your birds? ............................................................................................ 14 Do you have any feeding and nutrition tips?..................................................................... 16 How do you get your birds ready before a race?............................................................... 16 Do you have any tips for pigeon health? ........................................................................... 16 What do you like to race more, cocks or hens? And why? ............................................... 17 What are the 5 most important things you think every fancier should know? .................. 18 What are your views on eyesign? ...................................................................................... 18 What in your opinion are the most important elements to pigeon racing? (ex. breeding, training... etc) .................................................................................................................... 19 What is your favorite pigeon strain? and why? ................................................................. 20 What can a fancier do to correct losing birds? .................................................................. 20 Do you vaccinate for anything in your loft? what? ........................................................... 21 How did you acquire your current pigeons? ..................................................................... 21 Do you have any so called pigeon racing "secrets" you can share? .................................. 23 How many old birds are on your race team? ..................................................................... 23 When do you pair up your birds? ...................................................................................... 25 How many hatches are allowed? ....................................................................................... 25 How do you prepare young birds for a race? .................................................................... 25 How do you prepare old birds for a race? ......................................................................... 26 Do you have a specific health program? explain? ............................................................. 27 When do you wean youngsters? ........................................................................................ 27 Any advice for long distance races? .................................................................................. 27 Any advice for short distance races? ................................................................................. 27 Describe your ideal pigeon? .............................................................................................. 28 Do you raise birds out of race birds?................................................................................. 28 Do you bring in new stock every year? ............................................................................. 28 Any advice on stock selection? ......................................................................................... 29 Any advice on feeding and nutrition? ............................................................................... 29 Any advice on Breeding? .................................................................................................. 29 Any advice on training? .................................................................................................... 30 How should a racing loft be set up? .................................................................................. 30 How do you handle disease in the loft? ............................................................................ 30 What are the most common diseases a fancier should know about? and how should they be handled? ........................................................................................................................ 30 I'm a new fancier, what should I know first? .................................................................... 31

What qualities do you look for in a racing pigeon? Without exception, I want pigeons that pull back when I pull on their beaks, and I want pigeons that do not have gray tongues. Again, in my loft there are no exceptions to this rule! I prefer smaller lighter pigeons that are longer cast and with longer flights. I do not like flights that are too wide in the middle. The pigeons must have a strong bone structure and good vent bones that cannot be easily felt when I pass my hand under them. Vents must round under and there should be approximately a one-finger space from the end of the keel to the vent bones.

What in your opinion is the most important aspect of quality of a champion loft? I guess that before it is possible to answer this question, it would be important to define what we consider to be a champion loft. There are many fanciers today that rely on medication, excessive road training, and systems (darkening and lighting) to obtain what many would consider to be champion type results. However, there is almost always a difference between hard work and quality pigeons, and from my perspective, I am interested in the latter. I always say that the more work you do for your pigeons, the less they will do for you. Obviously, fanciers want to be successful, and if they can’t manage that, they want to appear successful. Excessive work is one way to appear successful. The problem herein is what I call the confusion factor. As part of wanting to be successful, most fanciers are willing to purchase from successful stock. The problem is that often they do not realize the difference between success and the appearance of success, and there is way more of the latter than the former, so while attempting to upgrade, most fanciers buy into a house of cards. If our focus here is on champion pigeons, then it seems reasonable that our pigeons should be the ones doing the work. There are pigeons out there that can obtain and maintain condition without a great deal of work and, frankly, these are the pigeons that I want to build around in my loft! This isn’t to say that we should do no work, but there probably needs to be a happy medium. Pigeons need enough work to bring them into shape, but then it should be up to them to show that they can do the work without a great deal of help. Beating them into shape only promotes more work in the long run.

Think of it this way. You are the boss and you have a smart employee and a stupid employee. The stupid employee can work at the same level as the smart employee, if you spend your entire day managing him one-on-one. Now you want to go on vacation, so which one are you going to leave in charge? Let me clarify something else. When I say champion pigeons, I am really not interested in the performance of an individual pigeon. Instead, when I am talking about champion pigeons, I am talking about a family of pigeons that performs well, and again, I want them to perform well without a great deal of work. Clearly, there are going to be individual champions within these families, but in my view this is more of an indicator of the family’s potential than it is an indicator that this pigeon will breed any better than the rest. In fact, for the most part, individual champions are usually derived from some sort of outcross and, as a result, they are actually less likely to make good breeder. We should be looking for families that maintain an average quality that is statistically better than the average of the sport. In reality, I am not interested in an individual champion pigeons other than it is important that a quality family is capable of producing them. Champion pigeons are nothing more than an indicator that the family is on the right track overall and that the bloodlines are still hot. These individual champions may breed and they may not, but I certainly do not expect them to breed any better because they are champions. In fact, because most champions are derived from outcrosses, they usually do not breed very well at all. Instead what I am interested in is the overall quality level of the supporting cast because that is true indicator of the strength of the family.

How do you select birds for breeding? There are three types of pigeons, those that are designed for racing and those that are designed for breeding, and those that are of no benefit. By definition, true winners have the right amount of everything, and this is proven out by the fact that they were able to win. Now, I say “true winners” because the race sheet is one of the biggest liars out there. The above definition assumes that we really are talking about a “true winner”. When you mate winners to winners, the physical traits tend to diminish over the generations. Therefore, to maintain a winning balance, you need to have pigeons with too much of everything. This is the definition of a breeder class pigeon. These pigeons are critically important to the success of the loft! However, they have their own complications. First, since they cannot be identified through performance, most fanciers have difficulty identifying them in the first place. Second, when they are recognized, it is because they have

somehow become the foundation pigeon for the loft. Third, while they are important to the loft, their type can quickly overrun a loft. Fourth, mating breeders to breeders begets more breeders, and if I remember right we were trying to win races. As a helpful hint, breeder type pigeons are always cocks, and you should never keep more than one or two of them at a time.

How do you select birds when pairing? When I was younger, my teacher, Don Falkenborg, told me many times, “Always stay in the middle of the road. If you leave the middle of the road, you will get lost and then you will have to find your way back to the middle of the road. You only live so long, so stay in the middle of the road.” In my view, this saying is as much a philosophy on life as it is about pigeons, but I have worked diligently to apply this philosophy to my pigeons. Unfortunately, this is a sport of extreme personalities, and we tend to take everything that seems to work to the extreme. For example, if eyesign appears to work, soon there are numbers of fanciers that are interested in nothing else but eyesign. If peanuts seem to work for the long distance, fanciers are cramming them down the pigeons throat with a pencil. If a little road training works a lot of road training will work even better. The list is endless. Pigeon racing is about observation and learning how to appropriately apply what we observe. More is better until it isn’t. Therefore, I restrain my impulses to go too far in any one direction. When it comes to breeding I like a specific phenotype, and I build around that phenotype. That phenotype is something of an average (middle of the road) of all of the true champions that I have handled over time. Since I select to that phenotype, the phenotype tends to remain the same, and because I tend to breed quite closely, eventually the phenotype meets up with the genotype. I am very big on the concept of compatibility, and compatibility is all about “staying in the middle of the road”. In any given family, the most valuable pigeons are also the most compatible pigeons. The most compatible families are also the most central to the population. Without a doubt, the most central family to the overall population is the Janssen family. What makes them most central is their compatibility not only amongst themselves, but their compatibility with others. I select those that enter my breeding loft based on quality. I keep those that demonstrate compatibility. A few years back I bred two brothers out of a very good pair. One brother bred with everything, and the other brother, although

successful at times, proved to be difficult to breed. Now I am working with one brother. Some readers may be reading this and saying, “He is not answering the question,” but in fact, I have answered the question, just not in the way you are used to hearing it answered.

What is the best breeding strategy in your opinion? And why? I don’t know that any strategy is better than any other. I have selected out pigeons from a variety of lofts on phenotype alone, I have line-bred, and I have inbred, and all have been equally successful. The fact is that no matter what I do, the pigeons come out looking pretty much the same because I have a picture in my mind of what a pigeon should look like (phenotype), and eventually they come out looking like that picture (genotype). The fact of the matter is that most races are won by hybrids. Today, because I have more time and space available for inbreeding, I have gone to a two family inbreeding system in an effort to produce the inbreds necessary to produce hybrids. Back when I worked with phenotype alone, I sometimes was able to bring in a pigeon from a true line-bred family. Most of my biggest successes occurred when I crossed these pigeons into my existing pigeons. The newcomers had the genetics and my existing pigeons were functionally correct. This translated to what would be classified as weak hybrids. My Hall of Fame winner, who won the 400, 500, and 600-mile races, was a weak hybrid. At the time, I thought that it might be fun to work more with this concept, but when you are racing, it is difficult to impossible to find the time and space to work on these concepts. Now that I no longer race, I have the time and space to dedicate to creating hybrids for others. It is amazing how much of an impact an single hybrid can have on a family.

How many young birds do you breed each season? Generally, when I am racing, I raise approximately 120, and then I work with the best 70.

When I am not racing I raise 120 youngsters. Approximately 40 are hybrids that I send to the races for testing. Approximately 80 are inbreds. Of these 80, I generally select 30 for sales and stock.

Youngsters Mid-Breakfast

What racing system do you use most? Today, I would probably not focus too much on young birds. Frankly, the systems have changed the young bird sport to the point where an average guy with average pigeons and a good location can dominate. If that is what fanciers want to do with their time that is fine with me. I am interested in proving out pigeons, not winning races with systems. While there are still systems in old birds, the seasons are usually long enough and the distances long enough that it is difficult to rely totally on system. I used

to fly widowhood hens with great success. However, today I help certain fanciers around the world with their racing, and for the most part we employ a territorial widowhood cock system. I chose this system because it is simple, it requires very few pigeons, they fly themselves into shape around the loft, the cocks stay in shape longer, and the best hybrids are cocks.

How do you train your birds? I am not much of a trainer. As I said earlier, some years back, I realized that the more I did for my pigeons, the less they did for me and, frankly when you think about it, there are two ways you can look at this sport. Either the sport is about the fancier or it is about the pigeon and for the most part a fancier’s philosophy centers around one or the other. Steven van Breemen once sent me a picture of his teacher holding one of his super champions. Judging by the picture, I would put this sometime in the ‘50s. There was a great deal of pride in that picture, but unlike today, that pride was in the achievement of the pigeon and not in the achievement of the fancier. Today, the sport has shifted focus from the pigeon to the fancier, and the pigeons have become widgets in a system. You know, I watch a lot of basketball, and the same thing has happened there as well. Where basketball used to be about the team, today it is about the superstar, and I think that has hurt that sport as well.

From left to right – Eddy Noel, Assistant Editor, Winning Magazine; myself; Steven van Breemen, Editor Winning Magazine (all operating on 5 hours sleep during a particularly busy portion of the lecturing and grading tour in Holland and Belgium).

Everyone likes to win, but as I said earlier, I am interested in proving pigeons first and if it comes to it, winning races with quality pigeon. To me that is the right order to the universe. For this reason, I limit my training to once a week. I do the same thing every week, and I let the pigeons adjust themselves to what I do. If they are successful, they will eventually go into stock. If they are not successful, they are removed from the team. At the same time, I limit the number of pigeons that I bring into the loft from other sources, so eventually, pretty much everything in the breeding loft has proven itself under my systems. The system is the same every week and the pigeon either adapts or it doesn’t.

Do you have any feeding and nutrition tips? I generally like to feed about 14% protein to my race pigeons and 17% protein to my breeders. I only use mixes with popcorn. When I am racing I only use Austrian Peas (instead of Canadian or Maple)in my mix.

How do you get your birds ready before a race? Today, we are doing more and more single tossing, especially early on. I am finding that pigeons actually make fewer mistakes during early training when they are single tossed. Youngsters are like children. They tend to follow the leader, but just because someone decided to lead, doesn’t mean that they know where they are going. Youngsters that are single tossed tend to pay better attention to what they are doing, and the earlier they get this into their head, the better off they are. Generally, we road train our youngsters 15 to 20 times, starting at 30 miles, before the first race, and about ten of those times are single tosses. Generally, I like my pigeons to fly around the loft from 1 to 1 ½ hours without flagging. I never flag my pigeons because I believe this turns them into loft watchers. I want them to enjoy loft flying because that is what they were bred to do, not because I am forcing them to do it. Good athletes enjoy unforced exercise.

Do you have any tips for pigeon health? If the fancier has control of the basics (a good loft, clean water, good food, and clean grit) there really shouldn’t be any health problems. Next to cockroaches and rats, pigeons are the next hardiest species. What gets most fanciers in trouble is the condition of the loft, number, and quality of their pigeons. Many lofts are too drafty. Very simply there should be no air coming in from the back wall period. All perches should be on that wall. If you need to have more perches, then you have too many pigeons in that section. The sidewalls, floor, and ceiling should be solid for four feet out from the back wall. I was in Europe several years back when I visited a loft of a fancier who used to race pretty well. Because he helped set up one of my grading sessions, he asked if I would take a look at his loft. I wasn’t in the loft for more then thirty seconds, and I knew why he wasn’t winning. Here he was an experienced fancier, and his loft was like a wind tunnel. I made a number of suggestions, which according to his article he implemented, and suddenly he was the long distance champion of his combine.

When the loft is right, the next biggest problem is almost always the number of pigeons contained in the loft. In the off-season, I never keep more than 20 pigeons in a 6w X 8d section, and during the young bird racing season, I never keep more than 15 in that same size section. Because of the nests, I keep old birds a little differently in that I never keep more than six in this same size section for cocks and 15 for hens. When the loft is right an the numbers of pigeons within the loft are reasonable, the next most common problem is the quality of the pigeons themselves. Bad pigeons are bad for a reason. Some pigeons just do not have the immune system to stay healthy. The only answer here is to avoid keeping bad pigeons. Many years ago, I became friends with a guy who at that point was not a very good pigeon fancier. I helped him make some changes to his loft, and while that helped a little, it didn’t solve the health problems within his pigeons. I told him that I would give him better pigeons if he was willing to get rid of all of his existing pigeons. On this point, I was unrelenting. Within a couple of weeks he agreed. We thoroughly sanitized the loft twice, and then I gave him the pigeons that I had promised. He never had another sick pigeon, and he actually started winning from a pretty difficult location. The point is that if you start with a good loft and good pigeons, keeping them healthy is really pretty simple. Most people feed their pigeons too much, especially during the off-season. This is when they should be feed the least. For the most part pigeons are just like us. When they sit around with nothing to do, they get fat and it generally leads to respiratory and other problems. For this reason, when pigeons are sitting, I cut the race mix with 1/3 barley and I make them clean it up. It is also very important that you feed each section one handful of flax every day. Finally, and I cannot say this enough. Every pigeon must get a bath every week. When I am grading pigeons, I am often horrified by the fact that some people’s pigeons actually stink from a lack of a bath. Pigeons use the bath as an opportunity to remove bloom and to oil their feathers before the new bloom is developed. To damage from parasites, I recommend that you use a handful of Borax in the bathwater once every two months. Again, this is simple and basic stuff.

What do you like to race more, cocks or hens? And why? Probably before choosing his pigeons, the fancier should first consider what he wants to accomplish. For instance, it probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense to

buy pigeons from a short distance fancier if your focus is going to be on the long races. Some families have better hens and some have better cocks, and it is probably pretty important to get the right family for the right task. Having raced both, I would say that the cocks have an edge on the short races and the hens have an edge on the long races, but I have won with either at either end of the scale, so these are hardly hard fast rules. Back when I made things more complicated for myself, I used to prefer the hens because I hated turning over nest bowls, and showing hens to the cocks. Today, I have eliminated all of that from the cocks system, and now I think the hens are too much work. As clubs continue to trim the longer distance races, I think the advantage in racing the cocks continues to grow.

What are the 5 most important things you think every fancier should know? 1. Most success in this sport is achieved at the front end of the respective combine. 2. Success on the race sheet is way way overrated. 3. The more fanciers do for their pigeons, the less the pigeons for the fancier. 4. Super champion racers rarely make good breeders. 5. A good loft, small numbers, and lots of space.

What are your views on eyesign? Bone structure, muscle, and the wing bring the pigeon home. When these things are right and only when these things are right does the eye become important. At that point the eye becomes extremely important. Everyone knows an eyesign expert that can’t fly his way out of a paper bag, but this hardly refutes the concept. This sport is filled with fanciers that believe in nothing, the basket, one thing to excess, or everything carried to the extreme. Power to each and every one of them! Confusion provides opportunity.

Young Bird Eye 2009

What in your opinion are the most important elements to pigeon racing? (ex. breeding, training... etc)

As we have said several times here, with a lot of work you can make almost anything win. The question for each fancier to answer for himself, is whether he can maintain that level of work for the rest of his time in the sport, and when the time come for him to quit is it because he is finished with the sport or is it because he is no longer capable of or willing to do the work. It would be sad to quit something you love, simply because you were too inflexible to change your ways. Today, I see many fanciers with 300+ pigeons. I only have 60 and even at that number it is a lot of work! Either these fanciers are beating themselves into the ground, or they are not taking proper care of their pigeons. It seems to me that we could all be doing a lot more with a lot less.

What is your favorite pigeon strain? and why? Sometimes I think the concept of strains was conjured up to sell pigeons to Americans. There has not been a new strain developed in well over 50 years, and at best all pigeons are strained based (Hofkens based, Janssen based, Horemans based). To say something is pure this or that is pretty silly. Of the based strains, I would say that my three favorite are/were the Janssen’s, the Horemans and the Huyskens-Van Riel’s.

What can a fancier do to correct losing birds? There are many reasons that fanciers lose pigeons. They don’t have quality, they overcrowd, they rely on medications, they train too hard, they don’t train at all, they send too many, and they send them tired to name a few. Today, many fanciers are all wound up in bringing in the latest and the greatest. They don’t give the pigeons a chance to acclimate and they don’t have any or enough relatives to work around these pigeons. By the time it gets down to their level, they are buying grandchildren to a champion and flying great grandchildren, and they are even a generation farther away from either of the original base families. Many of these pigeons come from Europe where competition is greater. However, while it does require faster pigeons to compete in these massive releases, in the vast majority of cases, the pigeons do not have an opportunity to break up so their homing ability is never tested. Here in the US where we fly smaller numbers, our pigeons do break up more often, and at that point their homing ability does get tested, and guess what, many of these pigeons do not have any homing ability. Ultimately, these losses may be a very good thing because they tend to weed out those pigeons that are deficient to then needs of our specific combines.

Do you vaccinate for anything in your loft? what? Since virtually all of my pigeons come from a single source, and since the couple of others, come from reliable sources, I do not vaccinate and I have not medicated at all for over three years. However, if I were racing, I would vaccinate for Pox and PMV.

How did you acquire your current pigeons? Although I first met the great American Champion, Ed Lorenz, back in 1998, it was while I was speaking at the Snowbird convention in 2001, that we again became reacquainted when he asked me over to his house to go through his pigeons. Since then we have remained in very close contact. Shortly after Ed quit racing in 2004, he offered me my choice of his Horemans. I started off with three pairs, but quickly expanded the number to five, and I have been adding a couple of pairs a year ever since. The original four Horemans actually belonged to Ed’s brother Pete, but he soon shared them with Ed, and the each of them brought in different pigeons to cross with their version of the Horemans family. As both flew the Snowbird Race for many years, they were able to test some of the best bloodlines in the United States and then include them into their families. Ed incorporated the average speed winner from the Summer Classic Race, 93 SYV 1207. This pigeon was bred by our mutual friend Dave Hunsicker and it was crossed against the two super champions 1192 and 737. I have a number of grandchildren from these matings, and they are the foundation for my A family.

The inbred Super Cock with his mate and inbred sister Super Fly. This is the foundation cock to the A Family.

Pete incorporated two Janssen’s, one from Virginia Kruft and one from Campbell Strange. From this, Pete eventually bred his Hit Pair that went on to breed many many winners and found several lofts over the next ten years. Very few pairs have had this kind of success. Upon Pete’s passing, the birds were divided up amongst 10 fanciers. Eventually, Ed ended up with an outstanding daughter of Pete’s Hit Pair, a burnt red son of the 700 mile hen and a son of the Hit Pair, and an old cock that went back to the base Horemans called the “92 Cock”. From these, Ed built up his version of the Pete line. Since 2006, I have been building these into what I call my B family.

Grandson of the “92 Cock” from the B Family.

Do you have any so called pigeon racing "secrets" you can share? I think I have already shared it. The more you do for your pigeons, the less they do for you.

How many old birds are on your race team? As I said, I no longer race, but I do help certain fanciers around the world with their racing. As I mentioned earlier, we generally fly the territorial cocks system,

and our teams are usually comprised of 8 to 12 cocks. What makes this fun is that these are primarily fanciers with small teams and poor airlines yet now each and every one of them is at the top of their combine. I have met most of these guys while on grading trips. These lofts also afford a variety of environmental challenges, including one of my favorites, open ocean racing. I communicate with each of these fanciers on a daily basis during the racing season, and we work extremely closely together throughout the rest of the year as well. Interestingly, I was on three questions down on this questionnaire when received the following email from one of my students in Denmark: Hi Book, We had a good race today, I had just looked at the teletext and they were just starting to clock on the southern island with a best speed of 1114 mpm, so I was quite surprised when I saw one of ours birds drop in only a half hour later. Usually, you can adds 45 min to an hour to their time, so I just knew our speed of 1145 mpm was going to be very good. There was a light wind from the east and it helped a little at the end of the race, but unfortunately, it also helped a few pigeons slip by to the extreme northwest where they gained time as they went. They have an advantage on a day like this because of where the initial group generally hits land, but we were still not far behind and we were way ahead of the other sections in our combine including the entire Copenhagen area. I think there are 34 clubs on Zealand, and we finished 8th overall. There was a little gap between the first and second pigeon, but then they really started to come. Some of these should place pretty well also. I will admit that I was more than a little concerned when you wanted to return the whole team, especially since the conditions were not ideal, but all 8 were home in less than one hour, which given the conditions is pretty amazing. You were right about last week’s race shocking them into much better shape! After eating, they just started chasing each other around on the floor, and I took a few pics that I will send you later. Given how tough the race was last week, it is amazing that they could have done so well and look so good after two pretty tough races. The yearling that was first last week was second this time. The other yearling was the last one in but he gained some experience, so we will

see. It is sure going to help when I get your pigeons over here! It is finally looking like we might have the quarantine worked out. I will tell you about it tomorrow so that you can talk to your friend in Taiwan. We can talk about that tomorrow when you call. I will send the pics later tonight. Rene

When do you pair up your birds? Over the last couple of years, I paired them early so that I could get my hybrids out to the races. This has been sort of a pain because I mate the pairs early to produce hybrids and then switch them around to produce inbreds. Starting this year, I should have enough inbreds available from both the A and B family so that I no longer have to make the switch. As a result, I will mate the hybrid pairs early, and then come on with the inbred pairs later in the year as this is when I believe the pairs produce their offspring.

How many hatches are allowed? The truth is that I do not breed a set number of rounds. Instead, I examine the quality of the youngsters being produced. If the quality is not there, I break up the pair. I don’t like yearlings breeding any more than three rounds, especially when there are yearling hens involved. They are still growing themselves and I believe that anything more than three rounds puts too much of a strain on them. Tired parents are not going to breed quality youngsters, so while you might push them to breed more, the youngsters are not going to be as good. Generally, I never breed them more than four rounds. When I remember, I like to check the eggs to be sure they are both good. When one is no good, I chuck them both, because I do not believe that the parents like to raise singles. When they have a single, they tend to get right back to mating, and the baby often becomes an after thought.

How do you prepare young birds for a race? I encourage the guys that I help to avoid road training as much as possible, loft fly once a day, and send to the races as often as the pigeons are ready.

Depending on how they are working around the loft they may go as many as 8 weeks in a row. In Australia, they only have one season that combines a yearling and old bird section. One year, there were two yearling brothers on the team and one flew 16 weeks in a row before it was killed by a wild cat on the race truck (yes you read that right) and the other went 18 weeks in a row and it actually won its last race. When you get them working like this, it doesn’t take many to get the job done. My students have written several articles about our racing exploits, which area available at (ehoremans@comcast.net). Generally, I work with my students during the old birds series. This is primarily because of time. I like the students to race young birds where possible, as this gives the pigeons the experience they need for old birds. However, some areas race young birds and old birds back to back or even simultaneously like they do in Denmark. It becomes very difficult to focus on two seasons that occurring simultaneously and most fanciers wear out trying to race them back to back. Therefore we generally take a pretty low key approach to young bird racing. The one exception to this approach is my student in Taiwan. He actually lives in the US but like a number of Taiwanese-Americans, he travels back over there to race. In fact he left about two days ago. In Taiwan, they race three young bird series, and there is no old bird series. Generally, I would not have gotten involved with this situation but for three reasons, I have known the guy for over 10 years, I was interested in learning about Taiwanese racing, and most importantly, I love ocean racing. It took a while to get our lines of communication straightened out, but ultimately, we wound up doing very well on our first attempt. Assuming that he can get them settled and flying well around the loft, I would expect that we will do even better this time around. Again, you can find an article about racing in Taiwan up on my website.

How do you prepare old birds for a race? In old birds, our pigeons are flown around the loft in the morning for an hour to an hour and half. To get them ready for the races, we train twice a week, and once the races start, they generally get one toss a week unless the weather is bad or them are tired. When they are tired, I don’t even let them out to fly around the loft. Sometimes they may not get out until Thursday for a Friday shipping. As I said earlier, they are good athletes, so they do not need much training.

Do you have a specific health program? explain? To be honest, the pigeons were very healthy to begin with. Ed did very little medicating, and I have carried on that tradition. The last time the pigeons received any medication was about five years ago. In my view medication helps the weak as the expense of the strong. Earlier, I mentioned that I encourage my students to race young birds. However, I also encourage them to keep things simple. This means no medication and no systems. I want to see which ones like to race, and which ones break down easily. When you only start with 8 to 12 old birds, they probably had better be good.

When do you wean youngsters? There is no real set time to weaning my youngsters. It is hot here toward the end of the breeding season, so I generally work to the closest weekend to the 25 day mark. That way I am more likely to be home to be sure that they drink. For the most part, I breed in individual sections, and I try to keep the food and water on the same shelf as the youngsters. That way they learn to eat and drink starting at about 19 days old. This way, when I transfer them to the young bird section, they generally already know how to eat and drink, which only makes my job easier.

Any advice for long distance races? Once we hit 400 miles, we generally only ship pigeons every other week. Often they don’t really want to fly that well by that point in the season, but that’s OK. Let them do what they want. From 400 up, I am very careful about what I send. Generally, I am pretty laid back in my approach to pigeons; however, I won’t send a pigeon unless it has a good chance of doing well. In my view it is unsportsmanlike to ship pigeons in an effort to lose them.

Any advice for short distance races? For the most part success in the short distance races comes down to airlines, systems, the fancier and pigeons and pretty much in that order. If you want to double your chance of winning pigeon races, especially short races, buy a good airline. For the last 15 or so years, the systems guys have killed the short races in young birds. Unfortunately, they have continued to improve on these systems

to the point where they can now pretty much win all the way through. Don’t get me wrong, if I were interested in winning young bird races, I would be right in the middle of the systems, because that is what it takes to win, but that doesn’t mean that I think it is good for the sport or that I like it. If you have a good airline, a good system and you are willing to put in the time training, you can pretty much win every race, but as you are studying your trophies, think about what they cost a piece. Then turn around and look at your family and add that cost in too. Probably in there some place this quits being about the pigeons and starts being all about you!

Describe your ideal pigeon? Personally, I like somewhat longer cast light pigeons with good wings and no excess body fat. Other than the length of the body and wing, my longer distance pigeons are pretty much like my short distance pigeons. I have always tried to keep the longer and shorter distance pigeons structurally the same because I often cross one to the other.

Do you raise birds out of race birds? Personally, years back, I tried raising pigeons from my race team, but with little success. As I have pretty well stated I only race one sex at a time, and while that sex tends to be made up of very good pigeons, the best of the opposite sex is in the breeding loft. Assuming that I am selecting the right pigeons for stock, I don’t see how youngsters with one good parent and one bad parent can be nearly as good as pigeons with two good parents, and my results pretty well proved this out. To me breeding off the race team is more about producing numbers than it is about quality, and you can guess how I feel about that.

Do you bring in new stock every year? Personally, I don’t like to bring in new stock very often. In the first place, pigeons don’t acclimate easily here, and this usually means that I must wait a year so that they can go through a full molt before I am able to use them. I say acclimate easily here, but the fact is that while it might be harder here, they don’t acclimate well anywhere in less than a year. If you think differently, then you need to observe these pigeons more closely.

That being said, I have been adding to my Horemans family every year since 2004. Generally I try to breed two rounds out of these newcomers when it is cool, and to be honest I never mate them to their best advantage in that first year. My main hope in pairing them at all is that they generally molt better because of it. We are rapidly nearing the end of this transition period, and at that point, I will only bring in an occasional outcross.

Any advice on stock selection? Although there are many breeding farms with top champions around today, I really think that buying good pigeons today is harder than it has ever been. It would be difficult to name five fanciers that have a true family anymore. Today fanciers are all tangled up in champion pigeons, and unfortunately the vast majority of these are hybrids and therefore low percentage breeders. Sure they have big race records, and sure they appear to breed winners, but how many were bred to produce those few winners, and were any of the winners at the same level of the champion parent? While some of these hybrids might breed better were they backcrossed in with a relative, there are generally no relatives to be had. If this is your formula for success have your checkbook in hand, and try not to be too concerned about results. The fact of the matter is that by the time you are working with the offspring of these champions, you are working with grandchildren of the original parents of the champion. By that time, the winning genes of the champion are pretty diluted, and the fancier is relying pretty heavily on the breeder’s ability to select a quality mate and pair the pigeons correctly. Unless you are buying several related pigeons along with your purchase, good luck.

Any advice on feeding and nutrition? Like the health industry with humans, I really think this area is being overplayed. You can literally buy from thousands for pigeon healthcare products, and most of them do nothing but cost the fancier money. I am not saying that they are all bad, but I am saying that many of them have a great deal of sugar in them and if anything they are bad for the pigeons on a long-term basis.

Any advice on Breeding? Breed from those that win under your system. If you do not have a consistent system, create one and stick to it. This is the only way that you will ever

improve your breeding loft because it is the only way you will ever develop continuous measurable results. I wrote an article about this recently and it is up on my site. If you are trying to breed winners, look into buying inbred pigeons to mix into your. This is by far the biggest bang for the buck. Only one or two good inbreds can have a huge impact on the any loft

Any advice on training? The vast majority of fanciers over-train. Fanciers do this because they want to make things happen instead of letting them happen. This is the American way, and it gets back to doing the work for your pigeons instead of letting them do the work for you.

How should a racing loft be set up? I have already said that the back wall, roof and sidewalls must be solid from the back wall to four feet forward. I like sub ceilings and subfloors, so that I can pick up air below the floor and exit it out through a vent in the sub ceiling into the attic space. Again any air coming in or leaving must be four feet from the back wall and maybe a little farther if the nests are deep. If you must ventilate from the front, do it as close to the floor as possible and try to break up the air flow so it does not blow straight into the perch area.

How do you handle disease in the loft? I once had a bout with E. Coli that was caused nest pads that were shipped to me wet in plastic bags. Fortunately when I discovered the problem I rectified it an the problem went away. Here again like health products, it appeared to be a good idea, until it wasn’t.

What are the most common diseases a fancier should know about? and how should they be handled? You know, I think pigeon fanciers make very poor vets, and vets make very poor pigeon flyers. Probably you should buy from reliable sources, keep you lofts clean, and give them reasonable care. Fly the offspring, and if they are slow coming home single toss them and see which one cannot hang, and then remove them and their parents. You are not going to find success in a bottle, or by reading diagnostics out of book when every symptom reads almost exactly the

same. Breed, test, and eliminate, these are the simple keys to both health problems and success.

I'm a new fancier, what should I know first? You will never have good pigeons given to you, and spending big money is no guarantee for success. When you do not know what you are doing, you are placing both your money and trust in the hands of the person you are dealing with. Do you have any reason to trust them and do you really know if they know what they are doing. Remember it is pretty hard to know if they know what they are doing when you don’t know what you are doing…and salesmen count on that.

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