How the Fosters Turned the Corner in Young Bird Racing

Or 

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining 

                                                

     By J. Marles

     Sylvan Lofts

 

It was certainly a pleasure to do the interview with Ken and Liz Foster of the Up North Combine. People like the Fosters are the backbone of our sport because they truly give something back to their fellow fanciers. One example occurred during my visit there with Ron Buchholz. Ken was helping out another combine member, Joe Arigenello who had recently lost his birds due to a cat attack. Ken was loaning him some top stock birds and combine winners. I have since heard back that Joe has done extremely well with these pigeons and is indebted to the generosity of both Ken and Liz Foster. Without people like Ken and Liz fanciers such as Joe just may decide that there are too many lows in this sport and quit.

 

In 1995 Ken and his wife decided that they would place their youngsters on the dark system. That year they started with forty-two youngsters. Ken's young bird loft is ten by twenty feet with a corridor running the full length of the loft. The loft is divided into three sections and each section was darkened for sixteen hours a day. From the hours of two in the afternoon until ten at night the birds had either natural light or artificial light. Four weeks before the first race he started to train the young birds. During this training period he had the birds up to Parry Sound ( approximately ninety miles ) three times before the first race which is Burks Falls (100 miles). According to Ken and Liz the young birds looked very good and were pooled accordingly. Then disaster hit!! Out of the twenty-five birds shipped to the race they lost sixteen. The weather was fine and other lofts in his club did not have abnormal losses. As Ken said," I was depressed. I didn't know what went wrong. I needed to talk with someone who had flown the dark system and ask some questions." Ken spoke to a number of people including Steve Wilson about possible reasons for the losses. Several possible answers were fleshed out , but as is the case in our sport it is usually very difficult to pinpoint one specific definitive answer. Now if the story ended here it would leave most people as depressed as Ken and Liz after the first race. Luckily for the Fosters and you readers this was to be a turning point. You see they decided to continue racing with the sixteen pigeons that they had left and at the end of young bird season when the dust had settled Ken and Liz Foster had won Young Bird Average in the Up North Combine ( 150 members ). Also they had five young birds that finished in the top fifteen of the entire combine. Mathematically speaking they had 33% of the Ace pigeons in a Combine that ships up to two thousand and six hundred pigeons. How did this happen? Read on and you be the judge and jury of the possible reasons for their success. 

 

When talking to Ken he seemed to be very puzzled by the whole scenario. The following are the facts of the case according to the Fosters ( so help me God).

 

In the Beginning

The birds were put together the third week of February and hatched towards the end of March. The forty-two young birds were weaned in April to the young bird loft and darkened. The birds were fed on Number One Mix from Elizabeth Mills on Dawes Road.

Medication

Before the race season the birds were medicated using Amprol for coccidiosis and then they were wormed. On return from the race every week they were treated with an anti-trichomonas drug such as  Emtryl. Then on Sunday and Monday they were given Amprol for coccidiosis. Next, every Tuesday they were given clear water. Then on Wednesday and Thursday vitamins were put into the water.

 

Feeding

On return from the race and Sundays the birds received fifty percent barley and fifty percent Elizabeth Feed's Number One. Then by the beginning of the week the birds were fed just the Number One Mix without barley.

Training

As mentioned above, the birds were trained four weeks in advance of the first young bird race. They were taken to a distance equal to the first race on three separate occasions. After the first race the birds were generally trained three times a week. One forty-five mile toss and two sixty mile tosses. Generally speaking these birds were put on Bob Moody's trailer at night time to be released with a group of birds the next morning. He tried to separate the cocks from the hens for training. That meant if the cocks were placed on the trailer then the hens would be trained by an alternative method. Once the birds arrived home in the morning from training they were fed a small amount of number one feed and then Liz would put them into their own section and darken the loft until two o'clock in the afternoon. Once the young birds started racing Ken liked to ship them every week. In the evening when Ken got home from work he loft flew the two sexes separately. The hens typically flew for about twenty-five minutes while the cocks exercised for about forty minutes.

Lofts

The ten by twenty loft is made of wood with a corridor

(approximately three feet by twenty feet) running the entire length of the loft. There is a solid false ceiling in each of the three compartments. Each compartment is approximately six by seven feet. In the corridor the ceiling has wire for ventilation. This makes for very good air flow with absolutely no drafts on the pigeons which are kept in the dark at the back in the compartments. Keep in mind that when these birds reached top form there were only sixteen ( five cocks and eleven hens ) in the entire loft. Another key important factor was that the floor was heated. According to Ken he left it on throughout the entire young bird season.  He used the same wiring that they use on roofs just in front of the eaves troughs. This is packed with styrofoam insulation. This is enough to warm the floor and therefore take away some of the humidity and dampness on a rainy day. Also, in September when we experience our first frosts the floor warmer buffers the temperature variation and is instrumental in maintaining the birds' hormones. 

Birds and Their Backgrounds

One of his top performers was a hen 95-1960 scoring many times in the Combine results. At one race she arrived with her mate, but due to being a poor trapper she waited for four and a half minutes. 1960 was still second in the Lake Simcoe Gold band race. She ended up being Fourth Ace young bird in the Combine. This hen is an inbred Janssen from birds from F. Weening. Ken was able to obtain a seventeen year old Janssen from F. Weening. Ken mated him back to his daughter to get four cocks and one hen. After culling two cocks he flew the other three. Next, he bred brother to sister and that produced 1960. Ken has two lines of inbred Janssens.

Unfortunately, one of his top performers from that year the '64' was picked out of the air and killed by a hawk.