I'm Dan I'm in my 30s and before this season I had absolutely no experience of racing pigeons
but I did document it so there's loads of videos on my YouTube channel that you can watch now I
can honestly say that I'm hooked if you've clicked on this video that suggests that you have at least
some interest in the sport and I'm going to do my best to give you an idea of what you need to do
to get involved some of the things to consider an idea of cost time and the equipment you're going
to need now I don't know if it's just an English thing with historical class structures but the
general response I got when I first told anyone I was interested in racing pigeons was mostly a
negative one filthy things said my nana why would you want to do that said most of my mates as long
as I don't have to look after them said my wife can I have some said my kids but if you're even
thinking about getting some bird yourself or are interested in what the sport is about ignore the
naysayers chances are they don't know the first thing about it and they're just repeating the
opinions of someone else who hasn't the faintest clue about racing pigeons honestly if you're like
me a guy looking for a sport or a hobby that you can really get your teeth into you like
animal husbandry you like being outside and want to maybe even win a few quid don't worry about the
reputation and stigma Pigeon Racing once had things are changing now I'm a big sports fan
I'll watch anything from football rugby Formula One boxing but I'm rubbish at all sports equally
I couldn't afford to buy a Formula One team couldn't buy a football team even greyhound
racing is out of my price range but Pigeon Racing if was good enough for the queen then it's good
enough for little old me so I've got hours and hours of video footage but only one measly season
of young Bird racing under my belt but I thought that it might be enough to help other new starters
with their questions so I'm going to run through this as quickly as I can for YouTube though when
the documentary is eventually finished which is something I'm working on in the background it
should be more comprehensive subscribe to the channel and join the Facebook page to find out
more about that so here we go I might sound a bit scripted but that's because I'm reading a script
and I struggle to talk in my natural way even when I've written it myself but by writing this I
can make sure I get the main points across in the video without missing anything crucial disclaimer
the info and examples I give in this video are for racing pigeons not one love racing or fancy
also I live in Nottinghamshire England and my union is the rpra to your local union or governing
body may have slightly different rules but from what I know they're mostly the same so the video
should be useful to you no matter where you live in the world also because this is important
if you like this video please share it on your Facebook page or email it or Whatsapp it to
anyone who you think might like to get into racing Visions or anyone that already races
pigeons and get them to pass it on to anyone they know that might want to get into racing Visions
you're confused don't be just share out of it we're really trying to reverse the decline in
participation truth be told most flies are getting on a bit and either retiring or unfortunately
just dying so we need new people to join and fly and to compete against to keep the sport
going now assuming you already know the basics of Pigeon Racing if you don't briefly fit like this
in its simplest form you have a shed full of racing pigeons that you have never flown
these are young birds you train them to learn that your shed or loft is home and as they get
older they fly further away but always come back to their home whilst they're learning
the ropes the racing season will have already started for the other members in the clubs who
have older Birds once their season ends your young bird season begins you will take your
young birds to a club along with everyone else in your area pay an entry fee our club charges
under one pound per hour and the club will then send all the birds away to the race start point
it starts at a relatively close distance to the 56 miles and the race distance then starts to
increase as the birds become more experienced and the season progresses the following day
the birds will all be released at the same time and they should all race back their respective
homes you wait nervously to scan in the sky check in your watch bringing your friends to
see if any of their birds have arrived and eventually you'll see a bird come by tuck
its wings in and it comes down to your left and it's really really exciting you'll see all the
birds fly over and they're not yours that's demoralizing but sometimes you'll just get
surprise and it's a really great feeling you'll have a digital clock and a sensor in your Loft and
as soon as the bird enters the Loft a microchip on its leg a little bit like my watch will register
the time the exact time that that bird enters the Loft and the clock stores that time later
in the day you take the clock back to your Club along with everyone else and they work out which
birds flew the race distance in the shortest time if you lose you congratulate the winner
think of some excuses the weather training the position of the moon but if you win straight
off to the Ferrari dealership so the most common question I see and what I ask myself are up next
foreign how do I start how much time does it require how much cash would it cost so it's
really a sliding scale you can just convert your garden shed get a small team of young birds and
get racing and that's probably the best thing to do and not too dissimilar to what I did a small
team a single Loft might only take 10 minutes of your time each day if you love fly daily and train
them regularly which you will have to do in racing season especially if you want to win then it could
be an hour or two hours a day location first thing you need to decide is where you want to keep your
birds if you want to keep them at home in your garden or yard you will have to check a few things
number one if you rent you may need your landlords or housing authorities permission number two if
you intend to have a big Loft make sure you're following any planning laws most UK planning
authorities are fine with a standard 12x8 Loft some are fine with 32 feet Lofts but just check
it's only a Google search away number three your neighbors if you get on with them it'll be fine
I have four neighboring properties and they all like the fact that they can see the birds fly nail
formation however if I had a problem neighbor then I can see how keeping pigeons in my garden would
be fuel to the fire noise cite the Loft away from neighboring houses or Windows the cooing of the
Cox is quite a relaxing sound compared to jackdaws crows dogs and kids but not everyone will welcome
it at 4am in the summer when their windows are open alternatively you can have them left on an
allotment Garden a lot of Big Lots do this where I grew up in the mining towns I'm Nottinghamshire
the allotments were full of Big Lots just be aware you'll need power to feed your clock and
any lighting and you will be there most days all year round snow and mud included also allotment
loss are more vulnerable to vandalism and thefts unfortunately I've seen a few posts this year
where people have had their loss burned down most seem to be on allotments but that might not be
exclusively bottom line is think about security The Loft itself you're going to need a suitable
house for your birds they're called pigeon office and you can buy proper wooden locks from a bunch
of suppliers Loft Builders feel free to link your website or Facebook page and I'll post it in the
description below please include the country and the area everyone else can check the description
below for links to Life Builders think this is worth doing because it's quite hard finding that
most Lofts will have rooms or sections I built my own first lot and I had one dividing wall in
the middle each section is approximately six foot wide by eight foot deep pigeons generally need at
least two square foot per third having sections means you can separate the birds by sex and age
my life was fine for my first year it only had young birds next season those young birds will
become yearly I'll need to find room for them or the new Young Birds Plus any stock birds I
may decide to buy in this is about the eighth time I've read this and I constantly keep fluffing my
words so you need a loft with at least a couple of sections you can pick up a new one in the UK
for around fifteen hundred pounds maybe that's eighteen hundred dollars if I don't know how
much they are in America probably a lot cheaper they've got more more natural resources than we
do you can buy second hand Loft for a lot less just be aware that a lot will need repairs around
the bottom planks and the floor as that's where they're most likely to rot if you're handy with
tools and you can erect it yourself this might be a good cheaper option alternatively do as I did
and just build yourself one you can also convert a standard shed into a lot The Loft needs to be
raised off the ground ideally by a foot or 30 centimeters to help prevent damp and importantly
stop rats and mice living underneath it's best to have it facing south or west if you can mine faces
North try not to have it directly under telephone wires as birds can hit these if you don't have a
choice try and get to Cork circles fitted over the wires some telephone authorities will do that for
you or if you live in a 1980s housing estate then just tie a pair of all trainers together
sling them up over the wires you'll also need a way of getting the birds back into the Loft
this is called trapped and it can be simple fog wires like what I had or more fancy systems like
Sputnik traps one thing I wish I had is another small holding section between my Bob wires and
the main locked sections like a corridor and this is just so that I can let latecomers into
the lock without worrying about letting cats stragglers or Hawks into the whole lot itself
it helps identify which birds come in late as usually you'll get some arriving after you've
taken down the electronic Timing System which records the bird and its race finish time going
solo or team up so whether you want to fly by yourself or whether you want to deal with a mate
or a family member that's one thing to consider it's a lot of work especially if you want to
win if there's somebody there to help share the workload then that can be super handy a lot of
unions will charge still charging double fees even if you're in a partnership phone number when to
start so this was one of the biggest things for me actually when I didn't know anything about racing
pigeons I had no clue as to when in the year I could start because obviously there are seasons
now if you want to be starting with young birds which you which is the most likely way into it
um like I said it's the only way into it really isn't it um if you want to start with
young birds then you're going to have to plan in advance because you want to have your Loft
set up and order your young birds before they're paired before people start reading their numbers
that's the best way otherwise you can still do it closer Before the Race season starts but the the
sooner you can start thinking about it hi our Race season started in August September and I
started building my loss Loft in October November the previous year and my birds arrived in March
um which you'll see you again in the videos so I was I was training them up I was training myself
before the race actually Race season started and that was super handy this coming season 2023 that
will be my first old Bird racing season I'll have my yearlings and then I'll straight after
that I'll have my young birds so the season will be twice as long for me um and probably twice too
but I have actually I just went on a tangent there let me say what I've said what I've read I started
with young birds young birds are basically racing pigeons born on that year and will race against
other young birds in that same year you can buy or often will be given young birds for your first
season the Temptation and I had this temptation myself is to buy in stock birds and breed your own
young birds honestly unless you have a previous experience I would avoid doing this you can spend
a lot of money on something you don't really know anything about I went to a pigeon show and an
auction and some of the cheapest Birds they were selling there started at hundreds of pounds and
every pigeon look the same problem in the colors I didn't really know the difference if you join
the club they will likely welcome you with open arms especially if you're a new flyer and there
will likely be one or two top players in the club who will be willing to breed you some young birds
if you give them enough notice some may charge 20 quid or so pervert to cover the cost of corn
Etc the members of the not South Road Federation were excellent with me and Brett me my first uh
younger team it was all gifted or they were all gifted but don't expect that to be the
norm it might not be I was given a lot of great advice from the members of the not South Road
Federation and there are two bits that I want to pass on try and get all of your young bird
team at the same time or at least within two weeks of each other this is harder to do in reality as
you will get the birds when they're good and ready and you can't be picky if they're given to you but
don't do as I didn't accept the young birds over a month after the first one arrives despite my best
efforts the later editions fell by the wayside on training tosses because of illness and Races
they just weren't as prepared whereas I still have all of the first batch that I got from my mentors
other than one mishap with the inoculation and another that was taken by sparrowhawk
in its first week of flying around the Loft it's hard harder for the new Birds to catch up unless
you're retired and you have separate sections and time to train multiple groups of young birds then
um yeah I would just give yourself a cut off date again disclaimer this advice is what I was given
but I failed to follow but I should have followed it the second piece is don't take birds from lots
of different Lots if you can get a dozen birds from one lot and a thousand birds from another
Loft then that's ideal you're still getting a selection of birds from different Lofts but you're
not introducing as many different pathogens into the Loft in one go think of them like kids as soon
as they go back to school they all bring germs from wherever they've been on holiday and family
visits around the country and a week later the whole class is ill and they all bring it home and
we get it the same goes for pigeons but they're more likely to die next thing join a club as I
mentioned if you want to racing clubs which is a good starting point you will need to find and
join one quick Google will show you the relevant governing body in your area and their website will
have a list of all the clubs Affiliated to them find a club Local to you and ring the secretary
they will tell you if you're within the boundary clubs all have boundaries that Lofts Must Fall
within and they'll probably invite you to the club to chat things over I highly recommend doing that
and your union membership and club membership will usually cost less than 100 pounds uh per
year for both uh join a governing body you're going to need to do that to get yourself a loft
number and you need the Loft number so that you can race when birds are sent to a race all the
birds entered into the race at the same start point this is called The Liberation site they're
released altogether at the same time but they have different endpoints your birds will race back to
you all lost which might be five miles closer to the start Point than the next member in your
Club so the governing body or racing pigeon organization in your area will allocate you
a love number that is linked to the longitude and latitude of your Loft the club secretary will use
your Loft number to find out where your registered location is so they can work out how quickly your
bird's completed the race it's basically distance of the race to divided by the time taken to
complete the result is the velocity and the bird with the highest velocity in the club wins brings
me on to the electronic Timing System or ETS or clock as I mentioned earlier some clubs still use
the old-fashioned manual clocks and rubbers whilst I quite like that idea the reality is that you're
going to need an ETS there are a few main Brands brick on Unicon eye pigeon and Benzene I would
wait until you've joined a club before purchasing an ETS it's better if you have a system that the
club is familiar with or are willing to integrate with in its simplest configuration the ETS will
have a clock that records the birds entered into the race like the each bird registration number
and the race point that the races starts from and a sensor pad at The Loft location and the clock is
connected to that so that when the bird returns to The Loft it records the time a secondhand
ETS system is around 150 quid whilst a brand new starter kit will be anywhere between 300
and 800 pounds I bought secondhand brick on and whilst the technology feels dated it does a job
and it cost me about 180 quid for the clock and two pads so just to read cap you know that
you're going to need a loft it could be free it could be 300 quid could be 1500 quid for a new
one join a club or governing body approximately 100 pounds get yourself a bird team it could be
free if the members breed them for you or you might be paying 10 to 20 pounds per bird buy an
ETS system 150 quid to 800 quid or if you can borrow one then that saves you some money too
so there's loads more to add to this but it looks like I'm going to be running out of time so I'm
going to need to make a part two to this video If this video is popular and worth doing in that I
will cover baskets training health and medication other equipment and the first race so I hope you
find that useful again please like subscribe tick that little bell and notification so that you get
a notification every time I release a video which isn't very often I can say if you know anybody
that's interested in racing pigeons or want to know a little bit more about how you get involved
then feel free send them this video and hopefully we'll get more people into the sport cheers guys
thank you