Through other eyes (04-02-25)
Usually a short chat is enough to be able to say of someone whether he has talent as a fancier. Or... that he is a tinkerer and will remain so. You can give such a man the best pigeons of the world, they won't perform for him.
Because they don't see 'it' and because they don't see 'it', they will continue to make the same mistakes.
A common mistake is the use, or better abuse, of medicines. Medicines that are given to pigeons to fight non-existent diseases.
Fortunately, many of these men continue to enjoy pigeons, despite bad results due to so many 'setbacks'. So 'setbacks' in quotation marks because they rarely are.
What they call 'setbacks' are usually the consequences of their own mistakes. Fanciers who do have 'it' are the men who raced well from the moment they started with pigeons. It must be said that sometimes you can be wrong.
I did that especially with Bart when he came to say that he, like his father, was going to race pigeons about 2 decades ago. 'Too bad, but that's not going to work out well', it went through my mind.
GOOD SIGN
His start was promising. I had to select his pigeons. Although I can't pick out the good ones either, I have another quality: point out the junks.
I tried that with Bart's pigeons with the result that about 10% remained. Then you expect a disappointed and reluctant beginner, but nothing of it.
The ex-baker was a beginner, but one who knew his place, who wanted to listen to good advice and did not come up with excuses not to have to remove the selected rubbish. Usually such an excuse is: the pedigree, a pigeon that is very far related to a good racer, it has been paid for. Anyway, to make a long story short; The ex-baker did not become a loser and also not a gray mouse. Rather a cunning fancier with 'business blood in the veins'. I had misjudged him.
QUESTIONS
Whether you are dealing with 'a fast learner' you often notice from the questions he asks. Some are only interested in medicines.
They are the losers. Medicines once also had my attention, by the way. Even very much so. If someone stood out, I also thought, like most: 'I would like to know what he puts in his drinker.' But that was a long time ago.
FORMERLY
Medical guidance, I thought of little else. I couldn't open a pigeon magazine without looking for the subheading 'medical guidance' in reports.
Especially in the German magazine ‘Die Brieftaube’ you got your money's worth. Because as a newspaper you give the people what they ask for. Even if it is the sound of hollow vessels. After all, the belief in medicine is deeply ingrained in (many) Germans. If you met such an Eastern neighbor, he often had two main questions:
-'Welche Rasse haben Sie?' (what strain do you have?) and
-'Was gibst du den Tauben?' (What do you give your pigeons?).
So I used to be like that too. I spent countless hours reading about diseases and medicines. It diminished when I became a regular guest at the Janssens and Klak and never saw anything but 'very healthy' pigeons that were never given medicine. Legendary Klak also changed my view of feed and feeding long way back. You didn't come across simpler systems than with him, (all pigeons always the same mixture). Neither were pigeons that were healthier than his.
LEARNING
After fairly well-known veterinarians openly confessed that pigeons were hardly or not at all discussed in their training, I accidentally came into contact with some scientists who were interested in pigeons. It was in the time that pigeons, because of their large numbers, still had a reasonable economic importance, which became less as the number of fanciers dwindled.
That was also the reason why 'Janssen pharmaceutics' (a world name from nearby Beerse) stopped marketing Spartrix, Spartakon and so on.
The scientist who was in charge of pigeon stuff and others didn't make me any dumber. Also the conversations with five-star scientistist dr. Lemahieu were very instructive.
CONTACTS
According to Jan Hermans, Prof. van Grembergen, (the first to point out the effect of yellow drops) was a fan of my columns.
I had good contacts with him. Before I was twenty his name had already caught my eye by winning National Barcelona. It was at the time that Demaret won this ‘race of races’ twice with the same pigeon. Back then, that was still possible, because the winners did not get visits from Chinese.
The professor took me seriously and sometimes I even received letters from him.
Dr. Stam was another authority with whom I had good contacts.
As avid smokers we had found each other in Tokyo (Olympiad).
Dr. Stam was the first Dutchman to bring Suanovil to the attention. Older Dutch fanciers may still remember his 'S and A powder'. (Suanovil and Aureomycin).
Then there was this other scientist. He once told me something so 'bizarre' that it was stored in the deepest caverns of my memory.
A pigeon bred by me that made Verkerk famous.
'Fanciers have to be careful with all those medicines. Pigeons often get the diseases they are most cured against.'
PRACTICE
When Antwerp residents talk about medicines, it is often about respiratory problems. And where do you mainly see problems? There! The same story as in Germany, by the way. We would all like 'super pigeons' and knowing that they will not bring them to our homes Willem de Bruijn and I could regularly be found in the lofts of 'prominent Flemings'. Some made no secret of the fact that they frequently cured against coccidiosis. That turned out to be necessary, because almost all of them suffered from it.
Did the birds get sick easily because of the many cures?' I still doubt the answer. The chicken or the egg. Incidentally, it is now known what frequent use of antibiotics leads to.
Some really do not know how to open a wing properly