A new inventory is now posted. Since the last inventory we have 24 less birds. We lost at least 3 to hawks, and 8 or 9 to a sickness that hit our birds very late in the process. Also we had another bird with a wing injury that never healed.
We just completed worming the birds again, treating them for Tricho, and are now finishing a 7 day treatment of Ecol-Tonic. We will start a 14 day respiratory treatment next week. All the birds appear healthy now.
THE GOOD NEWS: The birds are being flagged everyday and almost all are staying up for about 1 hour. We have the birds in 2 groups. Each group of birds are mostly flying in one group during their exercise period.
Late next week we will release the birds a couple of times in the field in front of the loft. We will release them from the trailer for their loft-fly.
Good luck to all,
Bobby
(479) 719-3995
We are teaching the birds to eat and drink in the shipping crates in our trailer. We have 15 birds in each crate. We seperated the cocks and the hens to avoid problems with mating and driving. We have about half the birds in the trailer at this time. We will switch them in a few days and train the other half. If birds don't drink on the longer races it will be a disaster. Too many birds in the crates and NOT teaching them to eat and drink would create a terrible race season. If too many birds are in the crates the dominate pigeons will fight the ones in the back of the crate and prevent them from getting to the water. This training is an absolute must.
An Inventory List has been posted. We have 318 birds. We have 6 birds on the list that needs their info to be adjusted. We will resolve this soon.
Our new trailer has arrived! If you haven't seen what it looks like, scroll to the bottom of our home page.
We have a new gazebo for race day spectators. Click on the 'FB UPDATES' Tab on the Home Page or go to our Facebook Page to see the pictures.
The heat index is about 112 degrees here today. It is supposed to cool down starting tomorrow.
Good luck to everyone,
We will post an inventory tomorrow.
Hello Everyone! Things are still going great here. All the birds have been vaccinated twice for salmonella and twice for PMV/herpies. They have been poxed and had their 9th & 10th flights cut. They were treated for trichomoniasis. We just wormed them again also. Our final group is being trap-trained and lofted. We have lost very few birds settling them. This has been our best season ever, so far, for NOT losing birds.
Nothing exciting to report.
Stay tuned.
Hello Everyone. I hope you are all doing well. Everything is still going well here. Nothing exciting. We continue to trap-train and loft-in all the birds. We have been really blessed this year. We have lost very few birds lofting them so far.
We had a little sickness in the next to last group. We kept them isolated and treated them. We lost about 6 birds and the owners were contacted. This was over a month ago and it looks as though we are past that part of the season.
It is hot and humid! The heat index is high, with real-feel temps over 100 degrees each day. the birds have expanded metal floors now. The loft is 4ft. off the ground. We have a 'loft within a loft' which means the sections have a big space between the tops of the perch sections and the actual loft roof. The roof is vented. We also have open windows along the back of the loft. All this promotes air flow to help the birds stay comfortable.
That's all for now,
Hello Everyone! Everything is going well here so far. We have half the birds lofted in and have been outside many times. We are working on trap-training another group of about 50 birds. They will go outside in about one week.
We hand entered every single bird today. We have 329 birds here right now and a few replacements on the way. We plan to scan each bird and post an inventory list in a few days.
Check out our Homepage on our website at rivervalleyroundup.com. We have pictures and if you scroll down the page you will see our trailer that is being built by Jackson Creek Manufacturing in Denton, North Carolina.
Good Luck to All,
Hello Everyone! It's been hot and humid!
Everything is going scary good so far. We've had no youngbird sickness so far. We have still only lost about 3 birds lofting them in. Replacements have been received.
There's not a lot to report. We have many more birds arriving here tomorrow thru next week. Final birds are being mailed out on Monday. We should have around 325 at least. We anticipate losing a few more as we loft them in and will allow replacements for these.
We have a group of about 50 that will be going out for their 2nd time tomorrow, if the winds die down. We had 40 mph gusts here today (06/09/20).
Good luck to all!
Hello Everyone! I hope you are all doing well and staying safe.
Everything is going great at the River Valley Roundup Race. We continue to receive birds each week. We should have over 200 birds this next week with many more to come.
We have close to 100 birds fully lofted at this time and have more birds finishing their trap-training and preparing to go outside for open-loft soon.
We have only lost 3 birds so far. We have contacted the owners for replacements.
We made a few changes to our website. We are hoping to add weekly short video clips in a couple of weeks.
Although we advertised "Highpoint Bird" Prizes for this year, we are going to change over to "Average Speed" Prizes. Each approach has it's good and bad points, but after 6 years of "Highpoint Bird" we will try "Average Speed" for a while.
That's all for now. Good luck to all!
Hello Everyone. We are sending Steve Helfrich's 2 birds back on Monday. If anyone else has birds here they want back, let me know asap.
Good luck and stay safe.
