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The Right Thing with the Wrong Birds
By Jim Wiley
(Excerpted from the new and revised book "The New Winning")

When I re-entered the sport as an adult, I acquired some very fine hard weather long distance birds. These were mainly Opels and Opel crosses. My problem was I had a short/ middle distance temperament. I just wanted to win every race and therefore trained as though possessed by demons

Well, I did actually improve the performance of this family and won at both short and middle distances with them. But, guess what? I fell on my face when shipping to the 400 and 500 mile races. With the family I had, this is where the birds, by virtue of their breeding and ability should have done their best. I had ruined their long distance abilities by trying to win the short races.

This is an easy trap to fall into if you're of a very competitive nature and possess only one family of birds. It's just as easy to slowly bring along a short middle distance family hoping to improve their long distance results. You may actually accomplish this, but they probably won't beat the quality long distance birds you compete against, and, at the same time, they're wasted at the distances they were developed for.

I remember receiving a phone call from Jon McKinney of Portland, Oregon. Jon had lots of questions and the subject finally got around to what kind of pigeons I had. I told him I had Janssens and he told me he had a fine family of long distance Sions.

He asked, "How do you think your Janssens would cross with my Sions"?

I replied, "Well, why would you want to slow the Janssens down"? There was dead silence on the other end of the phone, he was proud of his Sions and obviously stunned by my remark.

"What do you mean," he asked?

"Well, your family and my family were developed to do different jobs, by crossing them you'll diminish both their qualities," I replied.

Jon did acquire birds from me and, yes, he did cross them for a few years. He later bred them straight, finding that the crosses were good, but not as good as the straight Janssens at short middle or the straight Sions at the long distance.

You can take a short distance family and handle them for long distance races and improve their performances. You can also take a long distance pigeon and work them very hard and improve their short distance performances. Both processes, at best, will produce mediocre results. The champions work their two families in different ways to produce winnings at all distances.

If you're just beginning with pigeons or just want to improve your results, get out your race schedule and do your own arithmetic. After you have your ratio, then get to the business of developing your two families of birds to get the job done. To simplify, if your young bird team is 50 birds, then 38 should be short middle and 12 long distance. On a 30 old bird team 23 would be short middle, and 7 long distance.