I just came outside to let the birds out to have their afternoon fly and it's actually started
raining a little bit, but it's just a light shower so I think they might enjoy a flight in the rain.
Let's get them outside and have a look at the rest of the birds.
Now that the flying birds are out I'll put the younger birds out on the landing board.
You can see I still haven't replaced the landing board, I actually went to
the hardware store and they didn't have any timber, so i wasn't able to replace it.
But it is on the to-do list! All right now that most of the birds are outside
I've got to catch this guy. This is a young cock bird. I've trained him to use the traps
but I am actually going to keep this one as a breeder, so let's move him into the stock side.
So this young cock bird, the reason I'm keeping him and not racing him is because I need him for
my yellow project. Usually most of my colour project birds do still get raced and flown
but the reason I'm keeping this one is because his father is actually very old and there is a chance
that if I lose this guy I might not be able to replace him. So because of that I've decided to keep
him in the stock side. I might even race him as a two-year-old in the future but for the moment I
would just like to keep him as a breeder. Whilst we're in with the breeders we should have a look
at the babies. This is a nice dark red checker and the blue checker nest mate. This one will
definitely be a hen, this one could be a hen or or a cock, I'm thinking it's probably a cock though.
And here we have another single nester, this one has a little bit of angel wing and it's
sibling from the previous round was the same, but thankfully in pigeons angel wing is usually a
self-correcting problem, it doesn't cause too many problems as they grow up.
Some more babies here, checker pied, and this one is just a plain blue checker. I love these feisty babies.
Fills me with confidence that they're going to be good racing pigeons when they grow up.
And then we have the youngest babies. This one is definitely a grizzle, you can tell by the white
feathers at the top and the dark feathers on the flights. Definitely a grizzle. And this
one's quite dark, probably a checker or a blue. Now this is back in the second racing section,
you might have noticed when we're looking at the red checker that I've taken this top nest box out,
and I'm about to get rid of these ones and then we're going to fill this with perches
for the race birds. Because the team is actually getting quite full now. There's our fantails...
so I really need to get these perches built so the birds can be nice and comfortable.
Back outside there's a few birds flying around here, the rest of them have taken off somewhere.
I think I might stop recording and if they come back I'll show you the birds flying.
Whilst the other birds are out I thought it'd be nice to try and do some training with the fantails.
I just tried to record the red one but the recording didn't work so let's try again with the
black one. Now these fan tails actually can't fly too well so I haven't bothered cutting their wings.
This is only their second time out of the loft but let's see how this guy goes.
Perfect, exactly what I wanted to see. And right on time some of the flying birds are back!
I'm very happy with these guys though, I'm glad they didn't land on the roof or
anywhere else. I might not actually have to cut their wings.
I get stressed every time they fly through those wires. Unfortunately last week we did actually
lose one of the young birds to a collision with this wire, which was very upsetting.
All right well some of them have decided to come down now. Well, that one wants to go back up, but it might be
about time to get some food for these young birds. This blue bar here hasn't been very well recently
and he was losing a lot of weight, so I'm quite happy to see that he's finally eating for himself.
You'll have to forgive me for the dirty floor, I cleaned this two days ago but they've made this
much mess already. All right well here's the rest of the birds, let's call them in.
Well the rain's really set in now but the birds have just about finished having their food,
I'm just giving them a few peanuts as a bit of a treat. I would like to show you something
interesting though, let's have a look at this bird. So this is a young grizzle, it's actually
a recessive opal grizzle but the colour is actually not the interesting thing about it.
If you look at the front you'll see it's actually a frill neck. I really wasn't expecting to breed
a frill, I definitely wasn't planning on trying to, but it's a very nice surprise!
It's not super uncommon in racing pigeons, it actually comes from the old owl pigeons
that were originally used when the breed was developed. And frill is actually quite
interesting genetically, it's the combination of two different genes.
It's the combination of a recessive gene and a sex-linked recessive gene, so I always think it's
interesting when one pops out like this. I know it's been a little while since the last video,
I will try and film a few this week so that you don't have to wait so long for the next one, but
to tide you over until then click here; here's a video you'll enjoy, and I'll catch you next time!