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I loose alot of birds.I loose alot of birds and I know why. I am new and don't know what breeders produce what. Alot of new breeding and lots of losses. Some birds I know were good last year and I have been able to keep their young very well but with new pairings you just never know. I know I have got mixed up with other people training and stuff and that also does not help. So, I have to breed more pigeons just to have a decient size team.
Well, I decided to do a experiment I had 20 yb coming up I would call them late hatches, most were end of may. I want to catch these upto my yb team so I decided to train them out right away. 2 weeks ago I let them out of the loft to loft fly for 3 days. Then started training. Started 500 yards, 1/2 mile, 1.5 mile, 3, 5, 8, 15, 25, I took them day after day. I droped them at 70 miles with my yb's mon. and have 14 left out of 20. This is a better percentage than the rest of my year for sure. You always here people say loft fly them until they are routing but maybe if should be road train them until them are routing.  
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Tony
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BIG T "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank
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First out about a month and a half probably. They are 2 months now give or take a week or 2 (they were not all born at exactly the same time) and they are out to 70 miles.
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That makes since, the wings are strong enough and at 500 yards they are close enough to spot the loft as they circle. You forced them to route by releasing them a small distance from the loft. Good plan and glad it worked out for you.
Happy Flying, Tony Did you fly them with older birds?
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BIG T "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank Last edited by Big T; 28th July 2009 at 06:33 PM.
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I did something like that last year, but this year has been crazy and I haven't been able to do as I planned.
But anyways, after a couple weeks of the newly weaned youngsters being in the loft (takes about a week for them to come in and out regularly and another week to get used to flying good), I would take them out in the yard and release them in clear sight of the loft. Next day, a little farther. Then I'd move to other points around the property counterclockwise, until finally I was at the farthest point I could, which the loft was not in sight from there (that was the 7th and last point, making a week of "yard training"). By then, they had gotten the idea of flock flying, and soon they would zoom out when I let the doors down, and they quickly started routing. I think it's important to get them in the habits early on, but I wouldn't take them on the road until they were routing well enough. No need to rush things unless you have to, IMO. This year I wasn't able to do that with all my birds, just the first batch, and with the new loft and all, soon it didn't matter, and I wished now that I had been able to do everything the way I had wanted from the beginning. But, I think we'll manage 
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Becky M. L. RKM Lofts | RKM Art "It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds." - Aesop  ~Semper Fidelis~
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If you train your late hatch with your older Yb`s,all they are doing is FOLLOWING the pack...That`s the one thing you do not want on race day..You want your birds to be LEADERS...Leaders win,followers don`t win...It is best to do as others have said here...After the late hatches have been tripping by themselves,with no other birds with them,you can start their training at 1 mile....then 3 miles...then 5 miles...If they are doing well,go to 10 miles,then 15 miles,then 20 miles...Once they are making 20 miles by themselves,you can now add them to your older birds for training,,Give alot of 40 mile tosses,at a SPOT you want them to break for home,if they happen to be with other race birds...Many of the short races are won at the 40 mile location from the winning lofts...
They need to know that area like the feathers on their wings...A training SPOT that has something that sticks out(LANDMARK),and the birds notice right away is the best...I used to tease my dad about the EMPIRE STATE building...What a great landmark..His birds could probally see that building from 25 miles away...But he used to train from Trenton,NJ,and there were plenty of landmarks (buildings) etc, for the birds to home in on...Check your line of flight,and find a LANDMARK 30 to 40 miles from your loft,and train,train,train from there.....Good Luck.....Alamo
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maybe if you got those other birds out when they were younger you wouldnt lose so many.. not ment to be harsh just something I have learned over time about settling birds and getting them to learn their way
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I already had them out past 30 miles by themselves. Landmarks here are a problem. We have corn, benas, wheat, and woods. It all looks the same from the sky except the cities and that is not on my line of flight. There is a big river right through the middle of our course and that is great for most but I am 15 miles off line so no good for me. Our course runs right down this river also (man you should hear the uproar when I bring up changing the course) but supposedly this has no bearing on the outcome of any race. LOL Last edited by ohiogsp; 30th July 2009 at 09:18 PM.
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I had my older young birds out since march and road trained them out early also just not to the extreme of the forth time out of the loft they were on the road.
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OHIOGSP,I am in the same boat as you...The nearest loft to me is 30/35 miles NE of me...We fly a WSW course(WSW of Latrobe Pa),and the prevailing wind is SW..Well,as you know,I live in WVa,20 miles south of Morgantown,WVa...So the race stations are not WSW for my birds,and all we have is HILLS....And add that I am giving up at least 30 + miles in overfly to all flyers,up to as many as 105 miles to some...
Our race stations are: Parkersburg,WVa...Athens,Ohio,...Jeffersonville,Oh io....Cincy,Ohio...and Louisville,Ky are out YB race stations......All you and me can do is train as well as we can,and hope our birds are out in front,and don`t follow the rest of the pack......Alamo
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Also, you would be surprised at how well pigeons can identify things. They're probably picking up on landmarks you wouldn't think they would use as landmarks
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Becky M. L. RKM Lofts | RKM Art "It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds." - Aesop ~Semper Fidelis~
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Well we race first one sun so we will see how my birds are coming along then. I think they are doing good this year. Only one way to find out.
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Well, I sent some of these young ones to our first race. I am on the north end and the wind was blowing strong to the south so it was not my day. I was 20 minutes from winning but one of the young ones was my first bird home and I had 100 percent returns for the race. That was a first for me.
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Many flyers do their very first training toss from forty miles away. If your birds "have it", they will home. Going by yards (50 yards, 100 yards, 500 yards, 1 mile, 1.5 miles) is actually a waste of time. The first toss could easily be one or two miles and then 20 miles. Then forty or more.
As I said. Many start at 40 miles and do just fine. Of course, it depends on how you obtained your birds, I suppose. If you got them from some guy who had a barn full of homing pigeons, then maybe it is not a good idea. But if you got them from a respectable pigeon racer, then you are wasting time with those numerous short tosses. In my humble opinion.
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My first rookie year as an adult was 2003. That year I started with 14 birds and completed the entire series of 9 races and lost a single bird. I assume that I must have had some of the basics down, as far as health and being in condition. I also assume that I had better genetics then most, but I attribute the lack of large losses, not to better genetics, but to a clean loft, with fresh clean air, and not being overcrowded. IMHO, lack of good health and condition, is the main reason that losses occur. And perhaps in most situations, the winning birds were simply in better health and condition. I also hold the very radical idea, that well bred healthy pigeons, DO NOT require you to "teach" them how to find home. That ability has already been bred into them. For me, road training is mainly for conditioning, and at the margin, getting them to "race" home, instead of simply coming home. The other side bar, is the concept that one must breed larger numbers in order to overcome the losses. In my very humble opinion, if you overcrowd in order to prepare for large numbers of losses, then you will create a situation where your actions become a self fullfilling prophecy. You will lose birds, until you get down to the number which fits your loft. So, in other words, if your loft and perch space has room for say 20 pigeons, and you attempt to overcrowd 40 birds into this space, like magic, Mother Nature will reduce that number to 20 automatically for you. I know this now to be true. Last year, like a new guy, I attempted to expand my numbers to have a larger team, thinking I would end up with a nice large team. Lost more in my first race, then I even flew in 2003. After that race, I was down to the number my loft could handle, and for the rest of the season, and the following 8 races, I lost a total of two birds. Perhaps some day, I will experience some large losses that people speak of. When that happens, unless it was a bad release into rain or a storm front etc, I will assume that an error in the management occured. There may be exceptions, but I contend, that 90% of the time, human error of some sort was involved.
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