We had a smash toss yesterday.

The K-factor was in the red zone (we did not check before the toss – our fault) and the temperature swings from 40 degrees at release rapidly warming to 85 degrees.

The winds also kicked up to 15-20 mph SW cross winds turning into head winds later in the day.

As of this morning, we had 180 or so home – and they are trickling in. We will upload at end of day again.

The Arizona Federation also had MASSIVE losses yesterday with many flyers NO REPORT and not having birds.

My loft had 13/30 home on the day.

So we will pause here and reset again. Our planned 75 and 90 mile tosses will be pushed out later in the week and so will our 150 mile race ~!

Will add more comments later as the day progresses – just not a good day ~!

Birds are on the road everyday that is not windy or rain. We had several days of wind or rain this week - and took the birds out shorter than we wanted to go. This next tosses are 35-45-55-75. They have had ample short tosses - we are being overly cautious on these windy days as we lost one basket on our initial 25 mile toss.

Last Friday and Saturday was wind and rain. Our Federation course from our 250 mile OLR station was headwinds 10-20 all the way - we did manage to get another Federation win this season at 950+ ypm several minutes ahead.

Unusual weather patterns everywhere - we just have to be prudent on distance, days and time that we train ~~!

Birds are on the road ~!

This week we will try to stretch them out.... the windy last week saw damaging gusts, dust storms on several days and culminated in an 87 mph Federation race from 200 miles on Saturday (YES - 87 MPH - possibly a record ~~!!)

We are being overly cautious - trying to get those repetitive short tosses in - before we take them out further.

Birds have been working EXTREMELY hard this past week. Combination of loft flying, open loft, flagging, short tosses, hawks and dealing with winds.

Seems like one group got in trouble today - we had some winds kick up late morning and all afternoon. We should see most of those missing trickling back in.

Will rest up the birds on Monday (loft flying only with a couple hours open loft in the morning) - give them a chance to recharge and build their confidence back - and will reset at 10 miles and birds will go every day this week starting Tuesday, Wed, Thur, Friday, Sunday.

We had some upload issues today. Also not able to do Live Mobile streaming as we do not have 1000 Youtube subscribers - so will setup a regular cam to the computer for the races. But be sure to watch our YouTube Channel "Arizona Classic Derby" for clips everyday this past week.

These short tosses are meaningless for clocking purposes as we don't want the birds to just get 20 minutes flight time and in the loft - so they are being locked out to get some additional flying time in on these shorter tosses. We will continue that until  tosses are about 1 hr on the wing. We will tighten up the feed as we get longer to get them trapping well - right now the goal is just orienting and wing time and one crate at a time ~!

The OLR birds are on the same race-course as the Arizona Federation Old Bird season, so training is aligned perfect for me. We were lucky to have 1st Federation yesterday 36 lofts, 800 birds from 145 miles - the OLR birds are on the same system as our OB race team - so that is a good correlation checkpoint to gauge our health, feeding, training regimen.

Based on where the birds are at today with the wing time (wind, weather and hawks) - this is our schedule.

The birds have been in basket at end of lot, and a few repetitive short tosses this week. Our first published training will be 25 miles.

Schedule (will most likely pull-in as training progress with 4 weeks of official training). Our regimen has always been 5-7 days max between races.

Race 150 – 21 mar

Race 190 – 26 mar

Race 230 – 1 apr (Entry fees)

Race 275 – 7 apr

Race 350 – 13 apr

We are testing out the Live Stream every day this week:

Arizona Classic Derby - YouTube

Birds have been out every day for the past week from 11am to dark. With the breezy afternoons and return of the hawks, theu have been getting  air time. All birds are out in one group. We had some gusty weather Friday evening and windy Saturday - but the time is here to get them on the road.

Like the rest of the country - weird weather patterns. We are expecting gusts to 30 Tuesday and rain along the course Wednesday - so have to wait a couple more days.

This weekend, will have our Live uoutube channel streaming "arizona classic derby" - will send the details if uou are unable to find it.

best regards

Birds are on open loft every daybthis week - gettting them built back up and up flying.

Some of them were really beaten up between the nasty storms that came thru that caught us by surprise.

One group was still outside when the winds came thru, then followed 3 days of wind, cold and rain making it tough for them to make their way back. Two weeks of unusual from 40 deg to 80 deg, rain, snow around...
The next 7 days is supposed to be great weather - and we will have them on open loft every day and then on the road ~!!

Nature like everything else is upside-down. It normally is 65-70 and beautiful training weather !!
Windy and 2 days of rain last week with birds only out once. 
We were caught by surprise and Had 2 casualties with a handful missing.

Today another powerful storm is here  with rain,and snow even in the surrounding valley.

Sunday thru Tuesday rain, only opportunity to let birds out will be on Wednesday Where we do our next inventory.
Another rain and snow-maker makes its way on Thursday - Friday.

So we are unpredictably on hold for these next few days...this is not typical !!!

Three days of intense loft cleaning/scrubbing - inside and under loft ~! We find that a deep cleaning pre-training removing/minimizing all dust alleviates potential respiratory during the training season before our roadwork begins. The birds have been babied enough ~!

We will put some dates to this shortly (monitoring some weather this week windy/rain) - but this is our base training regimen to 100 miles the last few years -

10 miles (several times until birds AND handler are comfortable)

15 -25-35-45-45

55 (several times)

75 (twice)

100 miles

Once races start typically 2-3 tosses between races 50-75-50... and 5-7 days max between races ~!

Best regards ~~! 

Best wishes for 2021 ~!

Windy days here - will have another clocking up shortly starting tomorrow~!

Birds are progressing and slowly learning the new section for trapping - should have the last group trapping where we want them to - reduced feed and a temporary wire aviary on the trap has helped ~! We are hesitant to force fly in this scenario as these birds are lots of late hatches that we don't want to encourage a fly-away.

Other than that - the majority of birds have slicked out - and looking really nice - ZERO health issues~!

Best regards