News and Updates
Apr-23-2024
TRAINING AND ACTIVATION UPDATE

High Desert Breeders,

Your birds have been crushing it. This has been a fun group to push down the road. They have been making the right breaks for home recently which is always nice to see. Plan is to go 88 miles tomorrow. Then we have some weather rolling in. Hoping to do 108 miles Sunday or Monday. Then either Tuesday or Wednesday we will be the Activation Race. Lose plan but those are the goals depending on the weather. If the birds roll in nicely from the Activation Race, we won't take long to go out 200 miles. Please be telling your friends that activation is close. 

We will be doing a little test run on Wincompanion this week on how we will separate the yearlings and two year olds on race day.

Rick Franks from St. George, Utah will be delivering us birds for next year's series April 29th or 30th. If you live in that area or are located along his pathway he would be glad to help out. If you need his contact information let us know. 

That is all I can think of for now. Until the next update. 

Kenny and Corey
Apr-18-2024
TRAINING Hello Breeders,

Birds had a great toss yesterday. Put them out in some tough conditions and they delivered. Took them 65+ minutes to go 40 miles. Shows us they can navigate home well when the winds are pushing them in the wrong direction. We gave them the day off today and we might bump up to 50 miles tomorrow. We will do a few at 50 miles and from there jump to 75 miles. All depends on what the birds are showing us. Overall we have been very pleased with this group and how they have been road training. 

Sexes are seperated. Cocks are marked C on Wincompanion. These are not 100% accurate, we will be moving birds back and forth for awhile as we try and figure out the trickier ones and will update Wincompanion when we do so. 

Until the next update.

Kenny and Corey 
Apr-15-2024
TRAINING High Desert Breeders,

Windy day in the valley. The next two days are windy, not as bad as today, so I think we might be able to sneak in some tosses. Overall the birds are doing well. Many birds are learning how to get back on there own. They have had several educational tosses where they have followed the wrong leader. 

Yesterday and today we are working on getting the sexes seperated. The two year olds will be mixed in with the yearlings to finish up our training series before we head to activation. Aiming for Activation being near the end of the month and again it all depends on how the tosses go and how the birds are performing. We are going to incorporate a few more long tosses this year before activation.

On race day the yearlings will be released first and 30 minutes later the 2 year olds will be released. Basically like a Club A and B race. We are getting close to doing a trial run to see how Wincompanion will separate the yearlings and two year olds on Wincompanion. The 2 year olds will also have a separate sheet for average speed. 

Yesterday's 40 miles toss is a few miles west of the previous two we did. Based on how they returned the group went on the West side of a ridge and the other two tosses they went on the East side. The West side shoots them 5-10 miles west of the loft and if they are in go mode and have tail winds, which yesterday did have, they end up going past. The East side shoots them basically straight in line with the loft.  Yesterdays toss ended up being a great educational toss for the birds as they had to break from the pack. 

Until the next update.

Kenny and Corey
Apr-05-2024
STORMS ROLLING THROUGH Good Evening,

Training has continued to go well. We have storms that rolled in today through Saturday. Should be back on the road Sunday. We will go out to our 15 mile release site. 

Until the next update. 

Kenny and Corey 
Mar-31-2024
ROAD TRAINING High Desert Breeders,

The birds have had a great week of training. Despite a less than stellar week of weather we were able to find small windows to get the birds out everyday but Thursday and today. Rain and snow all day today.

Overall the birds have done really well and are learning how to navigate home. We will continue to spend the next week or so with short tosses and mix up our direction we are releasing from. We will also spend time releasing them in smaller groups. The Friday toss was a great learning experience for about 60 of them. They played follow the incorrect leader and ended up who knows where. The great thing is if they have homing ability they make it home and should be tough to loose from here on out. 

The 2 year olds went 50 miles on Friday and all but a handful were back when I pulled in the driveway. The current 2 year old series is 105 birds. We are working with Wincompanion to get something set up to simulate what a race day will look like with having the yearlings and 2 year olds released a half hour apart. Thanks for your patience as we navigate this.

Reminder that yearlings have a Team Number of 1 and 2 year olds have a Team Number of 2. The yearlings and  2 year olds are currently seperated. Once the yearlings are out to 40 miles we will mix them again. The sexes will be seperated once we are at the 40 mile station. 

We spent the day day yesterday cleaning out from underneath the lofts and getting ready for spring.

Last thing all the birds listed under High Desert Yearling Classic are for sale. None of these birds we have collected a perch fee on. $100 and they are yours. A handful are two year olds. And there are also 4 yearlings for sale. Those yearlings we were going to hold onto until next year and fly them as 2 year olds for Mario Rodriguez. Unfortunately he passed away recently. If you knew Mario he was a great man. We were fortunate enough to meet him in person when he came to visit us last fall. 

I am sure I am forgetting something. If you have any questions email, call or text. 

Thank you for letting us test your birds. We are finally to the fun part. Until the next update.

Kenny and Corey
Mar-23-2024
ROAD TRAINING UNDERWAY High Desert Breeders,

The past week the weather was fantastic and the birds were able to get out everyday. Birds were routing nicely and flying for over an hour. Smaller groups would take off and be gone for very long extended periods of time. They are starting to come into form and are looking like a team. 

Today was the first toss and they did well. Released them in a few big groups. We do a lot of smaller group releases on the shorter tosses. Once we hit 40 miles we will start a single release or sexed releases. We also do smaller group releases a few times from 40 miles. The few late stranglers are trapped into a separate section so they can be checked out for either a learning experience or injury. 

The weather for the upcoming week is very hit or miss if we will be able to road train. We had a small window this morning to get the birds out before a storm rolled in. We might have a small window again tomorrow before high winds roll in. The first nasty day the birds are kept in we will separate the yearling and two year old's and also do a hand scan.

We are very happy with where the birds are at and how they are looking. Looking forward to getting this team down the road. Until the next update. 

Kenny and Corey
Mar-13-2024
WEATHER AND LOFT FLYING High Desert Breeders,

Nasty weather today but the forecast for the next week is looking awesome! All groups are starting to route again and birds are up for an hour plus. Another couple of weeks of good weather and routing, then we will start road training. Once we are ready for road training we will separate the yearlings and two year olds. The two year olds will continue to loft fly as we do short tosses with the yearlings. Once the yearlings are out 25-40 miles we will start to road train the two year olds as well. Sexes will be separated once we hit 40 miles. 

Two big groups collided the other day hurting several wings with the ones that made it back. Birds overall are looking very good and are getting in good condition. Looking forward to nicer weather for the birds and road training. 

Until the next update.

Kenny and Corey
Mar-05-2024
WINTERY WEATHER THE PAST WEEK

Good Afternoon,

 
The past week has been typical winter weather; snow, wind and rain. The weather should be looking more spring like in the coming week. With that we will be able to get the birds out consistently again. The team is ready for warmer weather and hitting the skies. 
 
Until the next update.
 
Kenny and Corey
Feb-24-2024
LOFT FLYING High Desert Breeders,

The birds have had a great week of weather and have progressed very nicely in the air. Birds are up 45 minutes now, with a large portion flying for over an hour. This next week it is looking like half the days will be good flying weather and the other half have high winds or storms projected. We are very happy with where the birds are at. If this weather continues the birds will be on track to start road training end of March. 

Until the next update. 

Kenny and Corey
Feb-18-2024
UPDATE High Desert Breeders,

Snow covered fields this morning and chilly. Next week's weather is looking to be decent so we can keep making some progress with the birds. This past week they were out all but two days because of weather. This time of year and spring one thing we have to watch out for in this valley are winds. Birds are making slow and steady progress after sitting for over a month. Forcing them to fly a few minutes currently. That will increase rapidly as they add a little tone onto their muscles. Some birds fly the minimum while others are up flying 45 minutes +. Don't worry about trapping at this point since the birds are at all different levels of flying time.

We updated the website. Most pages have been revamped and edited. We also added a page with a Google Map of the Release points. We added a Rules 2024 page and a Rules 2025 page. Everything is the same other than we are increasing the Entry $50 for next years race, to $250. Trying to increase the payout but also we want to stay "affordable." With having the birds for a whole year and the continued increases of the basic supplies we needed to create a little more revenue to offset the costs. We have debated on whether to increase perch costs for the initial intake or to have a second perch cost after activation. We decided to keep it simple and cheaper with what we started this year and have our extra perch fee come in the form of the 10% deduction from the Entry Money. We will see how it goes this year and if more people want them separated, Perch and Entry, we will be happy to do that. We post a google sheet of all the money and payouts so you can see where all the money went. You can see last years Payouts Here. 

For the Two Year Old Series, in 2025, it will be a Two and Three year old series. And that Entry price increased from $150 this year to $200 next year. We are happy to adjust and change based on what the breeders would like. 

A couple of other reminders:
Sexes are separated once we get out to 40 miles. Trying to create an even playing field for all. We have always separated the sexes.

We do Hand Scan the birds before every race. Always have done that as well. Facebook has really evolved and changed the game over the last few years for One Loft Races. We are a little late to the game but we will utilize Facebook more this year. We did create a Facebook Page for the High Desert Yearling Classic last year. Our goal is to be more active posting videos this year. 

Yearlings and Two Year Olds will run the same series this year. The two year olds will be released a half hour after. 

That is all for know. Best wishes for your breeding season. Sorry for the long update. Until the next update. 

Kenny and Corey
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