Hi everyone,
The weather looks mainly sunny all the way for tomorrow and it should be a very good 400/645. We just finished shipping the birds and they appear to be in very good condition.
Prizes will be:
5404, 4053, 2702 & 1351
As advertised this year, first drop rule applies.
Best of luck to everyone.
The 400 mile/645km race will be flown, we will start training in the next few days and if you are interested in entering, please let us know asap so that we can put those birds in the group that is loft flown and trained.
Thank you
Hello everyone,
Congratulations to Richard Ridder and his whole family who were in attendance when their pigeon "Riel Glory" arrived on her own after 8 hours and 20 minutes of flying. This phenominal pigeon also won 1st Ace pigeon and was 1st or on 1st drop in all 4 races, just a fantastic performance !! Congratulations on all other day birds and even 2nd day birds, any bird that was on the day did an outstanding job and are certainly worth putting in your breeding loft in my opinion.
The race turned out a lot tougher than most expected. There were 3 combines/federations racing on the same day from same direction (not on our line) and they had very similar results as us with low speeds and limited day birds, many had no day birds and these were experienced, well conditioned pigeons that had been to many races already (near end of the season).
We will do an inventory tomorrow. From there we need to know who is interested in racing the 400 ? We would need to have at least somewhere around 30 pigeons entered to make a go of it. Many have already told me that they would like to get their bird(s) back. With that said, I will be at the Oshawa Gold Bond shipping Thursday evening Sep. 26th, if you are going there or want to meet me there I can take your bird(s) with us. For South Western Ontario, Nick Oud is coming here the weekend of Oct. 19th/20th and will take your bird(s) back with him for anyone further West. For the US pigeons, we will be mailing those out on Monday Oct. 14th. Some have told us they do not want their birds back. With those we have 2 options, we will donate those to beginners or we can race them in old birds in our club/combine. This has to be the breeders decision.
Please send us an email tomorrow after the inventory is up with what you would like to do. E-mail: dutchtoucholr@gmail.com
We would like to really thank everyone for their support this season, it has been a very difficult & stressful year to say the least. We will make some changes for next year and are counting on a much better 2020 season. We will post/advertise that in the near future.
Thank you,
Linda & Oscar
Good morning everyone,
The race is ON, the birds were released at 08:00, mainly sunny skies with a light headwind (6-9k/h or 4-6m/h) They will encounter a headwind all the way which is forecast to be between 10 & 20k/h or 6 & 12m/h. It will be warm with high temperatures of 27C feel like 33C or 81F / 91F. This should make for a fantastic race !! We expect the birds to arrive between 15:00 & 16:00.
We hand scanned the birds last night and had 1 e-ring not working. We also hand scan (official basketing) every race, if you do not do this you run the risk of having missing or lost birds clock that did not even go to the race. The birds were in outstanding condition so here is hoping for a great race, but as this year has shown here and in many other OLR lofts, you never know it seems.
The tent is set up and the meal will be served starting at 13:30. After we will do draw prizes etc and than "relax" and wait for the birds to arrive.
Best of luck to everyone !!!
Good evening everyone,
First of congratulations to the Calgary Boys with the first one through the trap. Congratulations to Calgary Boys and Bet to Win on each winning a free team entry for next year. Once again the first group of birds did fantastic and made it look easy. I was about half an hour from home when Linda called to tell me the first group was already in. Hard to believe but there are still 16 birds within 1 minute of 1st for average speed. It should be a great main race to decide the average speed winner !!
Speaking of the main event, the weather for Sunday & Monday morning shows T-storms and rain from 175-200 miles and up making it impossible to have the rave. Therefore we had to make a decision and we decided the best would be to have the main race Saturday Sep. 21. We have to decide now because changes to be made in regards to the tent and catering. I guess we should have expected this with the way this year has gone.
Now for Saturday it looks to be a terrific working day with warm temps with highs of 28C (82F) feels like 34C (93F) and light to moderate headwinds. This should make the winning bird(s) something special and will see a real champion of the average speed as well. In my opinion, any pigeon that is within 15 or so minutes (40+ birds) has a shot at winning that title !!
That main race will be flown from where hwy 672 & 101 meet, there is nice open area North of hwy 101. It is 30 miles East of Matheson and 34 miles WSW of La Sarre. The distance is approx. 512.700km or 318.550 miles.
As we do not expect birds to arrive till after 15:00 the meal will be served at 13:30 and will have draws for prizes after.
Anyone wanting a class race sheet, please email us at dutchtoucholr@gmail.com
We are aware of a problem that happened with the result from Thursday's race. Terry Gilmore (Wincompanion) will fix it. The race file is automatically saved in the race program and it will be restored from there. It should be back to the origional by the end of the day.
Thank you.
Hi Everyone,
First the bad news. We or the birds just can't seem to catch a break. Took them on a trainer yesterday and with the 2nd group a Peregrin hit them, the 1st run he did not get one as it seems these birds are pretty wise to them. He/she went back up and the birds went low, on the 2nd attempt it looked like most of the birds dove/crashed into the bush, again it did not look like it got one this time either but the birds had disappeared in between the trees. Most birds arrived home in the next couple of hours but there are a few missing. they were coming in like missles, it got me thinking that maybe the reason they are racing so hard is that they just don't want to be outside, this year has been exceptionally bad for B of P. Unfortunately we had a power outage at the loft and birds did not get clocked.
Thursday we will have the 3rd race. We will hand scan each bird as normal and post the shipping list tonight for tomorrow's race. Conditions are forecast to be good with a light to moderate side tail (* from the wrong side) to side wind closer to home.
* What I mean is that when we race from the North and we get a NE side tail wind the race is always tougher and slower than when you get the same angle (or even less tail) from the NW side.
The race will be from Ville Marie which is 401.454km or 249.303M. At this time our quess is that it will take the first birds 5 to 5:15 hours to arrive.
There are still some birds not paid for. Any not paid for will become available Monday Sep. 16 at 12:00 Eastern on a first come basis.
Any birds that did not go to the first race but came back after and are in good condition to go to the main race, the breeder will have first option to activate his or her bird. If they choose not to activate their bird they will also become available Monday Sep. 16 at 12:00 Eastern on a first come basis.
If interested you must send an email and the time of email time decides who gets the bird, this way there is no cunfusion as to who gets the bird.
We will be changing the foremat for next year, therefore there will not be perch fees up for grabs but the 1st 2 birds in the clock will each win 1 free 5 bird team for 2020
Prizes for the main race and average speed. Some prizes will be added if any of the not activated birds get activated.
What a day Thursday We basketed the birds Wednesday evening by hand scanning each bird, once again they appeared to be a great condition. I was going to get a couple hours sleep and than head out, couldn’t really sleep so decided to go and get a few hours at the release place. Left before 02:00 and everything went fine, beautiful clear skies full of stars and almost no traffic. Just past Petawawa (1/2 way) suddenly the low oil pressure warning comes on, I look at gauge and it’s just above the red line, I pull over to the side of the highway (almost no shoulder) and turn engine off, smoke coming from under the hood, I’m thinking, don’t catch on fire, quickly thinking how to unhook trailer and get it away from truck just in case it did. Luckily no fire, I open the hood and the whole engine compartment is covered in oil. Then I see there a puncture hole in the oil filter. Needless to say but I’m not going anywhere. I call Linda for the road assist number, they were great and were coming to get me right away but would not take trailer, than they told me to call back when Linda was about an hour out, called Linda back to come with her truck right away, she arrive shortly after 06:30, hooked up trailer and we headed toward release place. We would likely not make it to the planned release point till after 09:00, than water them and let the birds sit it would get too late so decided to go a bit shorter but save well over an hour. Going the next day or Saturday was not an option with rain forecast for both days. Birds were released at 09:00and cleared immediately. With mostly blue skies and pretty much calm conditions, even on the way back, most flags we saw were mostly hanging down. We got home just before 13:00 not really expecting birds to be home yet, to our surprise the majority was already in the loft, they looked a bit stressed, that look when they really race hard but after a bit of relaxing in the flight pens outside they looked great again.Congratulations to Zhengloft with 1st and all birds on 1st drop. The competition is fantastic with the 1st bird leading the average by 1/10 of a second over 2nd and 27 still within 1 minute of 1st.Sorry about this delayed update, needless to say, I was pretty burned out by yesterday afternoon. And now we get to drive a few hours up the road again today to pick up my truck (I hope) as it was taken to the nearest dealer.
We had our 1st race today which was actually planned for Sunday but there were showers forecast for Sunday (which now seem to be for late in the day) and light rain Monday morning making it more difficult for 2nd day birds for birds that made a mistake in race one. So we made the decision as we were driving home from shipping our club/combine birds to crate up the birds when we got home and have race one today (Saturday) When we got home we set everything up and handled each bird and hand scanned them before putting them in the trailer. Most birds handled fantastic !! We have always done this hand scanning for each race that counts for something, be it average speed or prizes. We strongly feel that this is only right way of doing it, this way you find out if there are any dead bands (found 2) and this way NO lost or missing birds can be clocked as if they were in the race. Unfortunately we are still having some problems with the upload program and did not get the basketting list uploaded. We will work with Terry Monday to resolve this before the 2nd race.
With some cloud and fog in the hills on the Quebec side (East side) early, in my opinion at this time of the year the earliest release should be minimal 1 hour after sunrise (06:31), birds orientate better so you get a btter race. Fog lifted and it sun was out nicely by 07:30/07:35 , I released the birds at 07:45, they shot out of the trailer and took off like rockets, not even a half circle and headed in the right direction, a few that came out of trailer 10-15 seconds behind did not even catch up to the flock.
The birds did an outstanding job and smoked me getting home and beat me by about 35 minutes, by the time I got home over 250 birds were clocked and they were looking great.
Congratulations to Nicholls Loft from BC as 1st one in and everyone else as well. It looks like it will be a fantastic and very exciting race series !!
Good morning everyone,The birds are doing fantastic, they had a 45 mile toss on Monday but had hydro outage so no results. Thursday they went 60 miles and did great. Today we are having the 1st race, we have had to make a change to the planned races due to the set backs we had this year. Instead of having a 120 and a 160 mile races we will start today with a 140 mile race today.More updates to followBest of luck to everyone !!
