Herbots | Claeys Patrick - Maria Aalter: 1st National Bourges 10,359 yearbirds

Maria-Aalter: Last week the speed of the national winners had to be calculated to 4 decimal places to know the winner and now on Bourges national category yearlings it was almost the same. Onkerzelenaar Koen Crucke was in first place with a speed of 1337.14 m/m but 18min and 20sec later the sound of an EC plane echoed through the steel blue sky in Maria-Aalter. It was the registration of "B21-4121062" of Patrick Claeys and he beat very narrowly the cock of Koen Crucke with a speed of 1337.23 m/m. An exceptional close finish where Patrick is the winner. "At his homecoming he made a big tour", Patrick tells us "fortunately not too big because it really comes down to a second or so.

Patrick, 64 years young and a retired employee of SNCB, used to be a pur-sang speed player who nailed 15 victories against the proverbial ceiling every year. "Since about 4 seasons I switched to the national races" our Bourges winner starts his story "for that reason I bought pigeons from Bert Vanden Berghe, Norbert Ally, Herbots Gebroeders and Van den Abbeel-Van Paesschen. Consciously looking for quality and not quantity because the pigeon sport must remain a hobby and rather a smaller team takes perfect care of it then the pigeons will also reward you as a fancier."

The national winner, like his loftmates, did winter breeding and raised a pair of youngsters. The widowers train once a day and for the rest the care is like in many places. On arrival at home, electrolytes are given in the drinking water and they are fed from light to heavy, whereby in the last days before basketing they are fed a lot of energy mix.

From a medical point of view, the pigeons receive a treatment against tricho before the start and nothing else is given. "My widowers loft is quite deep with an adjacent aviary and since I have a very airy loft, I never have to treat against head diseases.

Once the condition is there, I take care of it and at the end of the year, the results will determine the selection, where the number of prizes won per ten is decisive."

Whether my national winner was specially motivated? Well, normally when I basket the pigeons, I watch their hen for about 15 minutes, but now they stayed together for about 3 hours. Apparently this stimulated him to go to the extreme.

Patrick again congratulations from the whole Herbots team.

B21-4121062
1st National Bourges 10,359 yearbirds

Distance: 453km
Velocity: 1337.23 m/m