The numbers in our Sport is shrinking

It is a worldwide phenomenon, the pigeon sport is shrinking and it is no secret that the increase in costs is the major contributor to this fact. The amount spend in some lofts on medication often supersede the feeding costs, more especially in the beginning of the season, when it has become a custom amongst 99% of pigeon fanciers, to medicate heavily for 6 weeks prior to the race season. This the “Muti pushers” professed will kill all viruses and bacteria to start with and then again for the 20 weeks to follow every Sunday to Wednesday all sorts of antibiotics and sulpha drugs will be mixed to kill any germ that dare to come closer than 10 meters from the loft.

Performance enhancers

The late Piet Schoeman followed by his son Peter, sadly now also deceased, wrote books on the “Art” of medication and low and behold their followers had, and still have great success with these methods. Many races was and is still won on “Piets Mix” and “Mayfair salts” names like “Groen mamba” and ‘Pienk poeier” Bifuren and NR and Nefco was whispered in club corners where the other fanciers, the “KOKOLOLIES” as they were called could not hear. It was said and believed that you can’t repeat last week’s recipe because it does not work two weeks in a row. It was thought and believed that it would be impossible to race pigeons should products such as Tylan, Sulphamethazine and Furosol be made redundant. The fact that the outbreak of young-bird disease at the beginning of every racing season certainly raises the eyebrows, are we not overmedicating at that period, totally destroying the young-birds natural resistance?

Pharmaceutical Companies are coining R1000M

Pigeon fanciers has become ‘Avian Quacks’ we all know every disease in the book and the Veterinary pharmaceutical manufacturing companies are coining millions from this so called “knowledge” obtained from books published by avian pharmaceutical manufacturers with the specific aim of pedalling their products. Microscopes and other laboratory equipment is standard equipment for top pigeon fanciers so that they can medicate when necessary.  Thousands of birds are being killed during every racing season for post-mortem testing by very expensive laboratories. Sadly the results, mostly negative are sometimes only available after the racing season when most the “diseases” also disappeared. Proving that all that was really needed was rest and no medication.

The Poultry Industry

So what am I professing, that we all stop trying to improve our bird’s performances?      Certainly not, that would really turn our beloved sport into something very uninteresting.

What I am certain of is that we can and should learn from and study the poultry industry.

This is a multibillion dollar industry worldwide, with the availability of all the required monetary resources to optimize profit i.e. cost of feed against price obtained for meat, all within 42 days.

They too relied on and in South Africa still rely on, what the industry refer to as ‘Performance boosters” with the very familiar names such as Tylosin, Fosback and Sulphamethazine .and many, many more. In all pelletized broiler feed-mixtures available today in South Africa, you will find a combination of two antibiotics and a sulpha drug.

In the 80’ties broilers reached optimum weight at 60 days, today at the inflated feed cost, if the chicken has not reached optimum slaughter weight at 42 days the farmer is in for a loss. Meaning the input cost of raising the bird for 42 days must be 30% less than the selling price to the chicken abattoir or end distributor.

The poultry industry applied the same method as did the pigeon fanciers by administering small quantities of medication, you allow the available energy from the food absorbed to be applied to performance (Growth or racing) instead of fighting diseases such as E Coli and or Mycoplasma. The difference being that the broiler’s lifespan is 42 days and the viruses and bacteria present at slaughter dies with the bird (we hope) and thus does not have time nor need to build natural resistance

The racing pigeon again must perform a lot longer and is thus exposed over 2 or three years to this small quantities of “performance enhancers’ and so are the viruses and other bad bacteria, who now starts building a resistance against these small dosages of medication which does not kill them but rather teases them to become more immune against certain medications.

PH control, control Super Bugs.

It is not a secret that drug resistant viruses is causing a great concern amongst the medical profession and the need to develop stronger medication is ever ongoing, so much so that Europe and the USA has now legislated against the use of antibiotics as “performance enhancers” in the poultry Industry and after tens of thousands tests they found that by lowering the Ph of the birds crop, they also cause the bad bugs within the crop to suffer and struggle to survive and multiply.

How was this done? With acidifiers of which there are many on the market some better than others and yes ACF (apple cider vinegar) is one of them. I prefer an acidifier boosted with probiotics like Acid Pak which I have been administering 365 days a year since 2009 and the bugs are still inactive and harmless.

Trichomoniasis presence does not hamper performance

The Microscope still comes in handy and that brought about the greatest surprise, THE TRICHOMANOSIS IN THE CROP IS ALIVE AND PRESENT BUT STILL THE BIRDS ARE PERFORMING WEEK AFTER WEEK and all the experts told us that is impossible. That means their habitat has been changed and somehow that prevents the harm (poor Performance) they were known to cause.

Water Purifiers

Remember now we are talking “in the crop and perhaps the intestines and Gizzard” Definitely not in the blood, if you should be able to change the Ph of the blood the bird will die. But what about Mycoplasma, Malaria and Ornithosis and all the other terrible diseases we so diligently studied that lives in the blood and that enters the bird’s body through the skin and the air that they breathe?

The Canary breeders for many years has kept their birds healthy by using water purifiers such as Jik and Milton or other forms of chlorine in the drinking water. This method were also applied by the racing pigeon fraternity with great success until it was discovered that concentrated Vitamin C, which is proved to be much stronger that Chemotherapy, mixed with glycerine and called Bio-Flavonoid kills all the other bad guys prior to entering the birds body, definitely when the mixture is administered in the drinking water (with the Acid Pak) as well as sprayed daily over the birds with a fogger as used in the poultry and pig farming industry.

That means you can now keep your pigeons healthy all year round at a fraction of the cost by changing the Ph (4.5) of your birds drinking water and simultaneously adding a good water purifier which you also use to sterilise the air the birds breath.

You may even, should you still insist on medicating add you vitamins and medication to the Acid Pak and Bio-Flavonoid water.

Don’t believe this!! Try it, it works and next time you suffer from an upset stomach drink a glass of this mixture not only does it taste great it will cure your ailment in no time.