Dirk & Frans Maris from Itegem win with super hen “Tully” 1st Nat Ace Pigeon Long Distance yearlings KBDB 2024

In the long distance races for yearlings it used to be the case that you were eligible for a national ace pigeon with 2 top results. They have now changed this to 3 flights and the message is to participate and seize your chance. There were 6 flights in 2024 of which top pigeon “Tully” flew 5. She only did not fly 1 flight because of really warm temperatures and then she flew La Souterraine that weekend. 

But she proved that she can handle the rhythm and kilometers on her last 2 flights. She flew 765km on Bergerac on Sunday at a low speed and almost 12 hours of flying, she won nationally in the zone with almost 50 m/min lead. So she came home on Sunday evening and had to go back into the basket for Tulle on Wednesday evening if she still wanted to have a shot at the national ace pigeon title. Father Frans and son Dirk did not agree about racing the pigeon but she went anyway. The hen “Tully” did not disappoint and won 13th National of 5,753 pigeons. A fantastic performance after she previously won 1st National zone on Tulle with a 25m/min lead. After that flight it became clear that she became 1st National Ace Pigeon long distance yearlings KBDB 2024 and for Frans & Dirk Maris a new boost for their career with their new top hen. From now on she will join the breeding loft just like her sister “Claudia” who also has a fantastic record of achievements but mainly on the heavy middle distance.

These 2 hens come from a joint breeding with the top colony Freddy & Jacques Vandenheede on their father's side, where they brought their national ace pigeon "Martha". Our goal with this joint breeding was to bring endurance into our pigeons. The mother of these 2 hens is an original Yves & Jules Engels pigeon with the very best of their colony. 

1 World Best Pigeon Marathon 2024
1 Nat Ace Pigeon Long Distance Yearlings KBDB 2024
4 Nat Champion Middle Distance Young KBDB 2024
20 Nat Ace Pigeon All Round Old Yearlings KBDB 2024

System

The cocks and hens are both raced here on classic widowhood with partners staying at home. The cocks did not breed in the winter, but they did go outside a lot. We are going to try not to give them a hen for as long as possible, we will of course wait and see how this will turn out.

The racing hens were paired on January 20 and were allowed to raise a youngster, of the 16 hens 12 were paired and the other 4 we brought back to the aviary. We are not going to force them here if they do not want to pair at that moment. As a result, the hens are now outside for about 2 weeks and they are already flying very smoothly.

The hens have been in the aviary day and night in front of the racing loft for the breeding period, a pigeon can easily suffer a bit in the winter for us by being able to withstand the cold without us training them.

After breeding, we immediately darkened the hens and will continue to do so until 3 weeks before the first national flight at the end of May. We do not use extra lighting here because we will be taking it easy here at the beginning of August and focusing on the young pigeons. 

The best racing hens and a few special breeders are then paired again to have a group of late youngsters. We then set these aside for ourselves and also fly out for an entire winter. We also often drive with this because summer youngsters are really not smart at the beginning. So that is why we drive with this and they will join the dance when we start the season. This is now the second time that we have tried this and last year we also had a top pigeon in this group.

How are the hens during the week? 

We only let our pigeons train once a day. This is usually in the morning. They are then mainly in the aviary in front of the flying loft on Sundays and Mondays and as soon as we notice that they are more eager to mate, we take them to the resting loft during the day. We used to use elastic bands on the floor but have removed them and have now made doors on the small resting boxes. So we lock them up so that they mate with each other.

In the last 5 weeks we noticed that the hens at home did not feel like training anymore. For us that is no longer necessary when the pigeons fly so many kilometers in the weekend. That is why we released them one by one on Wednesday at 15 km. The top hen “Tully” always went straight home while the other hens flew for an hour. 

On the last flight to Tulle we paired them with their cock and let her cock mate with another hen so that she was jealous of this and could fight with her for a while. We had to do something for motivation because it was the last flight, normally we never do nothing on the other flights.

Two full sisters can present a fantastic track record

BE 23-6020319 “Tully” Checkered Hen
1 World Best Pigeon Marathon 2024
1 Nat Ace Pigeon Long Distance Yearlings KBDB 2024

  1 Nat (z) Tulle                    1.146p ( 5 NAT 5.751p )
  1 Nat (z) Bergerac               638p ( 22 NAT 3.180p )
  9 Nat (z) Tulle                    1.569p ( 13 NAT 5.753p )
50 NAT Souillac                  4.073p

Her full sister is BE 21-6036125 “Claudia” Blue Hen

  3 Nat (z) Issoudun            1.921p ( 54 NAT 12.349p )
  4 Nat (z) Bourges             2.658p ( 15 NAT 18.707p )
  6 Nat (z) Bourges             2.290p ( 85 NAT 20.796p )
  9 Nat (z) Argenton           2.121p ( 97 NAT 18.763p )
11 Nat (z) La Souterraine    587p ( 105 NAT 6.761p )
19 Nat (z) Chateauroux       674p ( 71 NAT 5.720p )
55 Nat (z) La Souterraine 1.634p
66 Nat (z) Bourges            3.029p
86 Nat (z) Bourges            1.219p
91 Nat (z) Bourges            1.429p
93 Nat (z) Argenton          1.280p

Father BE 19-6035520 Son Martha
Co-breeding between F & J Vandenheede & D & F Maris
Son of “398/17” Doctrine x “627/17” Martha, she won 1 Olympiad Pigeon Cat.G Poznan 2019 and 1 Nat Ace Pigeon M.D. KBDB 2018

Mother BE 19-6103821 Granddaughter Gaston
Orig. Jules & Yves Engels
Daughter of “768/17” Son Gaston is full brother of top breeder “762” 
who became father of 4 + 7 Nat Ace Pigeon GMD KBDB x “765/17” is granddaughter of the 2 base breeders “178” and “Argenton"

The grandmother of these 2 top pigeons is "Martha", she was herself 1st national ace pigeon middle distance kbdb and olympiad pigeon. 
The real top pigeons are not sold here, especially joint breeding with other top colonies is the strategy here to then further build a stock together against the very best pigeons.

Young pigeons

We breed 2 rounds of our breeders here to race ourselves, usually this is 65 to 70 young pigeons. We do not need more. 

The young pigeons are darkened and also lightened. Otherwise we cannot complete the season. The hens are mainly used for the national flights while the cocks mainly remain on the middle distance. Only the last flight from Chateauroux we had 6 cocks with us, some of which certainly showed their worth. But racing multiple national flights with young cocks is not our goal.

After the youngsters have flown Noyon once or twice, they are put on the sliding door. We do not use this as motivation but mainly to get the training back into it. The pigeons are raced a lot here and the basket will show which ones can and which cannot. 

The youngsters are vaccinated twice against paramyxo rota, followed by a vaccination against paratyphoid and smallpox with the brush.

Feeding 

We use the Aidi mixtures here. In the winter period this is mainly the rest mixture which is ideal to keep the pigeons at a good weight and yet not let them get fat. Afterwards when the hens are paired we switch to breeding of course. Once the youngsters are gone we use Rest again in combination with flight mix 1 and 3 in the season itself. It is also a matter of feeling which flights you want to play in the coming week, we cannot draw up a feeding schedule ourselves because the ratio we give differs week after week. The pigeons of course also get sweets and peanuts as an extra towards basketing. They are fed twice a day but on the day of basketing this can increase to 5 or 6 times. 

When they come home they get electrolytes in the drinking water and Protein Plus from Aidi is added to the food. Every other week we then alternate the day after with Condition powder or Vitamineral from Dr.Mariën. With this vitamineral we also add Calcium from Aidi. For tricho or coccidiosis we never treat separately here. Once a month we use the condition syrup as disinfection.

Top results 2024

Noyon 1,444 pigeons old & yearlings : 1-3-42-49-69-70-76-114-… (19/36 )
Sermaises 1,484 yearlings : 38-49-55-60-84-94-118-… (11/28)
Bourges Nat zone 2,272 yearlings : 4-19-37-67-119-165-166-183-191-… (15/24)
Sancoins Nat 12,958 yearlings : 81-86-637 (3/3)
La Souterraine Nat 7,368 yearlings : 140-144-162…. (4/4)
Tulle Nat 5,751 yearlings : 5-33-998 (3/13)
Limoges Nat 6,838 yearlings : 43-338-444-588-… (7/10 )
Souillac Nat 4,073 yearlings : 37-50-170 ( 3/10 )
Bergerac Nat zone 638 yearlings : 1-5-49 ( 3/4)
Tulle Nat 5,753 yearlings : 13-300 (2/2)

Quievrain 286 youngsters : 1-7-8-10-19-21-22-… (18/50)
Quievrain 1,888 youngsters : 1-6-20-68-72-73-80-109-117-.... (29/40)
Noyon 1,599 young pigeons: 1-31-33-63-…. (10/18)
Noyon 1,410 young pigeons: 2-8-61-100-130-... (19/41)
Melun 685 young pigeons: 2-3-12-24-35-42-48-…. (10/26)
Melun 1,712 young pigeons : 3-52-131-132-155-174-175-… (9/14)
Melun 905 young pigeons : 23-28-29-56-73-… (8/10)
Ecouen 3,303 young pigeons : 8-36-57-65-108-147-179-184-308-…. (20/38)
Bourges Nat 26,549 young pigeons : 41-236-759-804-1864-… (8/16)

Dirk & Frans, congratulations on your new national ace pigeon from the entire HERBOTS TEAM.

Buelens Kim