Still many questions (06-02-26)
Still many questions
No, I never had to chase dinosaurs out of my garden, I have the second ice age from the books and Napoleon never asked me for an autograph either. But that I am no longer the youngest is unfortunately a given. And when are you no longer the youngest? If you feel tormented by that question, I have some clues.
You
are an older, hopefully still scratchy guy if.... :
- You still remember the crisis around the Bay of Pigs.
- If your father was paid in cash in an envelope at the time. In 1950 it was an average of 50 guilders (23 euros) per week. Then a beer cost 40 cents (18 eurocents) and an ice cream 10 cents. (4 euro cents).
- If you have seen the farmer ploughing with his horse.
- If the whistling kettle was needed to indicate that the water was boiling.
- If you helped your father straighten nails.
- If you were still wearing a underskirt and slipover.
- If you still sat on a plank to do your ‘big errand’.
- If you had your own coal shed, and your own pig, the milkman, the greengrocer and the scissors sharpener came along. (I will never forget that screech of a pig that was slaughtered by the village butcher with his own hands. Or that ladder the next day with the pig cut open hanging upside down with that pool of blood underneath).
- If the streets were still white, a colored person had a lot of attention and you could still make yourself understood everywhere in Dutch.
- If an unmarried woman who was pregnant had to move.
- That someone who didn't smoke was an eccentric.
- That the meadows were still full of lapwings and black-tailed godwits?
- If you still sat on a school desk with a round hole with an inkwell in it and your mother still made ink patches and darned socks?
- If you could only become a member of a pigeon club if someone had died or stopped because of a membership stop due to too much growth?
YES THEN
Yes, so I also belong to the club, so I can call myself an expert by experience, but to my shame I have to confess that after half a century of being a fancier there are still countless things that I don't understand at all.
BREEDING
Take breeding for example. It reminds me of what I experienced in 2019. Two fine cocks were no longer fertile.
Normally you remove them, but because they had given me so much joy, they were allowed to stay.
But in the loft of the foster birds. But who can imagine my surprise when they fertilized again a year later, without any intervention.
Unfortunately it was of no use to them, because they were now paired with a 'nurse hen'. Klak once experienced something similar.
Two old blue cocks (brothers) in a separate loft that have not fertilized for two years. They looked very vital. Much better than their totally worn out father who... everything still DID fertilize.
ARRIVALS
What also often surprises me are the arrivals of flights. How often does it happen that pigeons get home together, then nothing for a while and then again some at the same time. It even happened that two pigeons arrived together from Barcelona.
Did they stay together from the liberation?
Did they find each other during the journey home because they recognise loft mates?
We may one day get an answer with those GPS rings.
BAYTRIL
The controversial Baytril is another thing. It seemed to be THE means to suppress paratyphoid. Until a few years ago when there were outbreaks after a treatment. Multiple antibiograms showed that Baytril was not what we had hoped.
Too much salmonella in pigeons turned out to be insensitive to Baytril.
So forget Baytril quickly?
I thought so too, yes. But once again, the Baytril story took a turn. That was after paratyphoid was detected in the champion loft of H. They had an antibiogram made, so the best thing one can do in such a situation, and what advice did he get? Could hardly believe it: Cures with Baytril.
The salmonella were still sensitive to that.
How is such a thing possible? Think too many different strains of pathogens.
NAMES AND BREEDS
In pigeon sport, other names (or 'breeds') are popular every few years. Who didn't have Janssen pigeons in the years after the war? Which long distance racer did not race the Aardens?
Today Leo Heremans ‘strain’ is popular. Although, 'strain?’
So you can read everywhere. But talking about 'Hereman' strains' shows a naiveite that is almost endearing.
Leo had no strain and never intended to form one.
He was only interested in the good pigeon, he got it where it was, preferably in his own environment. He never claimed to have his own strain, others did.
And now that I mentioned a name, in Belgium J Thone and E Limbourg are National top. And they live up to their name in the results. I have never understood why their pigeons have never really become popular in the Netherlands.
WOOD PIGEONS
It is teeming with birds of prey, especially buzzards, geese and wood pigeons here. Those buzzards don't do much harm, I even find it fascinating how they can differ in color. I hate wood pigeons. Now there have been two couples in my garden for several years. I'm almost certain that they are always the same ones. The birds of prey ignore them. My racing pigeons they are after.
NEITHER
What I cannot understand is that I can regularly breed super pigeon without any knowledge of eyes. I must have been very lucky throughout so many years.