Good evening everyone.
Firstly a couple of things to point out about Benzing – all of our trainings are measured in miles, but for some reason it says kilometres, and 511 is not the number of pigeons which went training, its the number of pigeons which were assigned. Generally, please assume that the number that go training is the same as those that returned from the previous training, give or take a few.
The birds went 8 miles yesterday, and 13 miles today. It was a bit of a gamble to step up so soon, but we are on a time schedule to be ready for the first race on 5th August. That is one month away, but take out the weekends and we have 20 possible days to train. In an ideal world that would mean 20 training days, but this is England, so that will be unlikely! We need to train whenever possible, and really educate when we do train.
The vast majority beat me home from 8 miles yesterday, so we went to 13 today, and apart from the odd one they all came together just as I pulled up with the trailer. I have a plan and currently it’s going well – we’ll certainly be ready for Hotspot 1. The admin team are currently putting together some information about pooling in the hot spots, so look out for that on the website and in the BHW.
The birds will now have the weekend off from training. They’ll loft fly tomorrow for a couple of hours and then stay in on Sunday with limited feed, as I’m a bit disappointed with how the final 20/30 are trapping – they will be spot on in a couple of days.
Have a good weekend racing.
Jonathan