As has been the case for years, I do the selection of these pigeons in mid-December, when the youngsters have almost gone through the moult. This suits me fine because I have now found out that physically youngsters still change quite a bit in that period, sometimes to the detriment but usually in a positive way.
Also this year I invited fellow club member Henk Spiering. In my eyes, Henk is a pure pigeon connoisseur, not only as a judge, but certainly also when it comes to recognizing a good racing pigeon. Pigeon connoisseur as far as that is possible in our sport, because I always hear real connoisseurs say that they know very little about it 😉 Of course I was also curious if my knowledge has grown somewhat in the last year. I have handled the pigeons a lot in recent months and my feeling was that I have a very good team (in my hand). It is therefore nice to see that the pigeons that are high on my list, could actually all get Henk's approval.
All in all, he was very pleased with the health and quality of the pigeons that are there now. My feeling that this year was going to be a difficult selection is therefore true, because in the end only a handful of pigeons were selected that passed the lower limit or of which we were almost certain that they could not handle the one day long distance. I will have to make the other choices based on performance, lineage or feeling. But that in itself is a good sign, because it means that the average quality of the loft is going up.
Making the last choices in the coming days and then we can also couple the racing team in a few weeks. Whether I like it or not, the expectations for next season have clearly not been lowered after today. But good Pietertje remains Pietertje
Finally, we also passed through a number of breeding pigeons, whereby Henk was especially curious about the Koopmannen. He liked a number of them very much, although we disagreed about 1 hen. Time will tell who is right 😉
The breeders are largely sitting on eggs and it is now reasonably quiet in the loft. Bring on the first boy!
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