Breeding and then racing?

[Airbaby]

Hello, Do any of you have any experience on racing a bird after you have used it for a breeder? We have a 2008 bird we trained out to 40 miles several times and decided to breed out of it, we had only a few pigions at the time with only a few breeders, so we had to pick a few birds to breed out of with the only thing to go off of was there pedigrees. Now we dont want to use this bird to breed again (well atleast my Dad dont) and want to try racing it next OB season. A big part of me thinks there is no way this bird will do well after sitting in the breeding loft for almost a year. Any feedback or comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Roy

[1981]

IMO the bird can be condition to be in shape so it can compete next year. What I would do is loft fly the bird and road train the bird all direction to at least 100 mile as you would do when training a YB. IMO Doing this would help because the bird is already at an disadvantage. If you don't have the time to devote the bird, IMO, you should not race it or else it will get lost on the first race. But if you train it well then, who know, it may become a great bird.

[ohiogsp]

I know a guy that doesn't race yb's every year and is one of the best ob flyers in the country so yes it can be done.

[Brummie]

I seem to agree with otheir comment's. It's a lot harder to take a "breeder" to race than the other way around...Why did you put it into the category of breeder in the first place?

[Lovebirds]

IMO, whether the bird can go from sitting in the loft 24/7 back to racing is totally on the owners shoulders.
The bird is STILL a homing pigeon. They don't "forget" how to come home. But whether they can travel the distance is on you. If YOU can get the bird back into shape, there's no reason for it not to race, but if you send the bird 100 miles and it's in shape to fly MAYBE 20, you'll probably never see it again. IF you decide to race it, I would hold it back to the shorter races and see how it does, then next year go for the gusto.
I would train it hard but slow. And I wouldn't stop at a 40 mile training toss.

[Airbaby]

Thanks for all the feedback, we will give it our best shot and see what happens. We actually have 2 hens that will be converted from breeders to racers. The reason they were made breeders because we just started racing again after not having birds for 20 years or so and didnt have many birds at the time to breed out of...so via pedigree's and handleing of the birds we made our best effort to pick some of them to breed out of without racing some of them, we also only had 7 YB's left after YB season so that was a big reason also, we had to go with what we had.