Vandenabeele's and Macaloney's of the Bluegrass
Thought I’d share a few photos of my birds on a fine spring afternoon as they made scores of trips to the yard to gather nesting material.
Jimmy Combs, who handles our birds in the Gulf Coast Homing club for the Classic race, has scored a big win in old birds with 2012 AU Kastle 11. He finished 2nd place, 150 miles, 1084 birds with a blistering speed of 2094 ypm. Congratulations also to Jim, as the first place bird was also his, but flown by another loft.
Kastle 11 is by Waddy, our son of Kannibaal’s Gold, and out of Widow’s 20, a double grand-daughter of Black Widow. Kastle 11 was our best finisher in last December’s Classic race, finishing in the money and the top 10%. Clicking the image below will take you to the complete results.
Congratulations to Tory for another outstanding science fair – her second of two award-winning projects involving our racers. This year, she won first place at her school and just yesterday she won 7th grade district champion. We are very proud of her and wish her the best at regional competition.
This year, her project was comparing diets high in fats and carbs to see if they affected the flight speeds of our birds. She tested them at pretty short distances, but the results were still very interesting. Below is an excerpt from her abstract.
What is the effect of a diet high in fats or carbohydrates on the flight time of a homing pigeon? My purpose is to help pigeon racers like me decide what types of food make the pigeons perform better. My hypothesis is that the pigeons that ate the high carbs diet are going to be quicker because carbs give you energy quicker, whereas fats are a more long-term energy source and don’t burn off fast. From the results of my experiment, I learned that a diet of high fats makes the pigeons fly 0.45 miles per hour faster on average than on a high carb filled diet.
We’ve wrapped up 2012 here at Kastle Loft. We were happy to add a total of six first place wins in club racing during the young bird season.
Our biggest win of the young bird season, however, came in the Gulf Coast Classic. Our handler, Jim Combs, did a great job with our birds. AU 2012 Kastle 11 finished the Classic race in 204th place. Out of 2052 birds and 101 lofts, that finish was good enough to get us in the top 10% and in the money in some of the toughest competition in the country. We plan to send more birds to Jim in 2013.
Kastle 11 is a daughter of Waddy (a direct son of Kannibaal’s Gold) and Widow’s 20 (a double grand-daughter of Black Widow and Aviator).
We also enjoyed finishing up Tory’s 7th grade science fair project where she compared flight speeds of our birds on various carb & fat diets. We wish her the best in upcoming competition.
Here’s looking back to a fun, although sometimes frustrating 2012, and to hopeful success in 2013.
The Pigeon Talk Classic, hosted in 2012 by Mr. Walt Conditionfreak, had 16 birds in this release in Lexington, Ky., on Sept. 16 at the Wal-Mart parking lot (results here). Our Kastle bird is still in the mix and finished 8th out of the 16 today.
Going along for the ride with his 16 birds were another thousand or so from lofts across southern and central Ohio. It was quite a rush to see such a flock released. Beautiful sight.