Pogohawk
175 posts
Jul 02, 2010
6:07 AM
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I know this is a little of topic, I apologize. But I had to tell somebody. Today I took my young racing homers out for their first training toss of the season. I must of completely forgotten the anxiety that goes along with taking birds down the road. The first few tosses are always the worst as the birds are just getting used to what they do. I guess this is one of the few times I'll actually get to watch the birds come in since they will be beating me home later on down the road. As "new recruits" it takes them a while to get their barrings and fly straight home. DANG I am so anxious! Where are they.......? ;)
Ty
"Forever a student of the sport"
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JDA
GOLD MEMBER
885 posts
Jul 02, 2010
7:01 AM
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Ty....How do you train,feed can, traps, roof, then free fly before you take them off? I also hope you get them back. JDA
Last Edited by on Jul 02, 2010 8:57 AM
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Oldfart
GOLD MEMBER
1894 posts
Jul 02, 2010
7:09 AM
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Ty, I hope you get them all back! :)
Good luck!
Thom
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Pogohawk
176 posts
Jul 02, 2010
9:18 AM
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JDA - Thats exactly what I do. Once they are loft flying and routing for and hour and half to two hours they get taken down the road. I like to train mine early at about 4 months old. And I always release them before 9:00am. If the sun gets too high they will head the wrong direction quite often. One of them actually beat me home. I wrote that last post and then found him in the loft. Then a group of about 30 did a fly by 5 min later and they were home. I'm only missing two at this point and I'm sure they'll be in later today. When I released them this morning they circled for about 5 min and then took off in the wrong direction, I just prayed they would make it and they did.
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JDA
GOLD MEMBER
886 posts
Jul 02, 2010
9:41 AM
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Ty...Great, Sounds like you are having a good day after all.Hope you have the other two back before I sign JDA. JDA lol
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BA Rollers
348 posts
Jul 02, 2010
1:45 PM
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I have found that I prefer they get a little lost, it challenges them to think rather than just follow the flock. If you are at a new release point be sure to let them sit in the crates for 20 minutes or more to get their bearings. It helps them get gone in the right direction faster rather than fly around in circles trying to figure it out in the air. Anything less than a 10 mile toss and a lot of times they won't come straight home anyways because typically when loft flying they can range out 10-20 miles in any direction. So rather than come straight home they just course around and come home when they feel like it. If they loft fly for an hour you can generally assume they have covered 40+ miles in that time, usually more. Some morning when four or five of us are loft flying our young birds all of the flocks will join up somewhere in town and I'll get a 200 bird flock come over then they venture off out of sight. When they get tired or hungry they come home. I call it their play time :)
Last Edited by on Jul 02, 2010 1:48 PM
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