Hello Everyone. Good news. Once all the replacements are here we should have over 280 birds. This is our best year yet and next year we should reach our maximum of 325 birds. In fact, next year will be the 1st time we will recommend prepaying to ensure having your birds be able to participate.
All the birds look great at this time but we will know in about a month if we escaped the young bird sickness.
Good luck to all,
Bobby
(479) 719-3995
Hello Everyone. The flood waters along the Arkansas River have gone back down! We are just a few miles from the Arkansas River but we are high enough that floods won't reach us.
We have a lot of birds coming this week. So far no young bird sickness. We are trap training and lofting birds at this time. So far only a few birds have been lost. I will be contacting breeders for their replacements.
Many of you know California has a quarantine due to chickens having Newcastle disease. Although this doesn't affect pigeons, they included them anyway. Unfortunately for us, this made breeders unable to send out birds to one loft races. This cost us approximately 40 birds this year. It's very disappointing but nothing can be done. Fortunately, next year we will have our California supporters back plus new flyers as well. This will get us to our 300 bird goal. We will take a few more, but 325 will be the maximum.
Hello Everyone. We continue to receive birds for our race series. We have confirmation of many more birds coming.
The article about our last race series has been submitted to the Racing Pigeon Digest. It will be published in the July issue. There are lists of all the winners along with pictures and a write-up. If you subscribe to the Digest, you know what a great magazine it is. If you haven't subscribed yet, call Gene Yoes at (337) 474-1289 and subscribe now. It is well worth the money.
Hello Everyone! I hope you are all doing great and breeding many winners. We have almost 200 birds in the loft with many more coming soon. The birds are very healthy and we have been blessed, so far, with no young bird sickness. We are trap-training and lofting-in group after group with great success so far. We will be accepting birds until June 15th.
We will have the "B" Race again this year when we fly the 325-mile race. The "B" Race is optional. If you want to participate it is an additional $200 per bird. Only the birds nominated for the "B" Race will compete for this prize pool.
After the Race Series ends we plan to fly the Bonus Race again this year. Depending on the weather, it could be 340 to 400 miles. Everyone can send their birds for $15 per bird. We will have an optional "B" Race along with this one also. If you want to participate in the optional "B" Race it will be $100 per bird.
Invite your friends and club members to participate. The more birds we have the bigger the prizes will be.
Yours in the Sport,
The last 2 birds are going out today (Monday). The last checks will be mailed today also. If you haven't received your check please contact me as soon as possible.
We will have 40 birds in the loft in a few more days. We will be accepting birds until June 15th.
I am about to write and submit our report to the Racing Pigeon Digest for our last race series. I will let you know which issue it will be in.
Thank you all,
bobbydpollock @yahoo.com
Our Race season has ended. Thank you for participating! Please know we did everything in our power to give every single one of your pigeons a chance to perform well. As a breeder we fully understand all the time, planning, work and hope you put into creating these birds you entrust us with. We take that responsibility very serious.
If you won $600 or more send us a W-9. You can go to irs.gov and download a copy. Fill it out and mail it to us as soon as possible.
If you won less than this amount we will be sending you a check soon.
Let us know if you want your birds back. If we don't hear from you in about one more week they will become our property.
We are receiving birds for our next series now. As most of you know we take birds until June 15th. We are a later race and never intend to start the series before sometime in November. Weather and bird health can affect this date.
We are convinced we have been having trouble with the mountains to our south. To solve this problem we will change our line of flight this season. We plan to fly more from the west (a little south of west) to prevent this from ever being a problem again. We have been flying from the southwest so this will not be a major change.
We will submit an article about our race series, some pics, and race results in the Racing Pigeon Digest. I will let you all know which magazine it will appear in. If you don't subscribe to The Racing Pigeon Digest you should. Call Gene Yoes at (337) 474-1289 and sign up over the phone.
Everyone from the River Valley Roundup Race says thank you!
bobbydpollock@yahoo.com
The birds were watered yesterday evening on the way to the release site. They were watered for 30 minutes prior to being released this morning.
We were able to release into sunny skies with light headwinds at 7:30.
After looking at the weather forecast again early this morning and taking into account the predicted head winds with gusts. We released the birds from 336 miles in an effort to make 9 hours flying time. Everyone knows how subjective this is but I made the best prediction I could. If the birds fly 37 mph this is right at 9 hours. If they go down for water it will be later. At this speed the 1st birds would arrive at 4:30 and have a little over a one hour window before dusk.
Good luck to everyone.
We will release the birds at 7:30 or 7:45 from Salado Texas, south of Waco Texas tomorrow (Sunday).
Hello Everyone. We are watching the weather really close. Yesterday we had rain and low clouds all day. Today we are supposed to have some rain and wind gusts up to about 35 mph. It looks like we can fly our Bonus Race this Sunday. We will be tossing the birds south of Waco Texas at 7:30 or 7:45. This will be 350 miles with stiff headwinds all the way. This will be a very difficult race and in my opinion as hard or somewhat harder than a 400 mile race with calm winds. If the weather forecast holds I think the birds will be in the air at least 9 and 1/2 hours.
It looks like we have 86 birds going to the race. 41 of those birds are competing for prizes.
Since it appears we have $4100 in the prize pool I'm thinking we would award the 1st 5 birds as follows: 1st - $1200, 2nd - $1000, 3rd - $800, 4th - $600, and 5th $500. Prizes will be paid by trapping order.
We are giving the 1st bird to trap, not in the Prize pool, 50 Unikon ETS Bands.
I will look at the weather reports one last time before noon and alert everyone.
Hello everyone. Our Bonus Race is a go. Right now we have about 39 birds in the prize pool and about 85 birds going to the race. I'm still waiting on a few more responses.
We are thinking this Sunday will be the day. We are watching the weather carefully.
The birds look great. They all loft fly with a lot of energy.
