| Conditioning by Brian Mccormick |
| My opinion and exercises in conditioning.
I am routinely commended for the condition of my show birds, and told that often, that is the little edge they needed to win champion. I mainly show Wests and if everything goes right in the next few shows, I should achieve my Master Breeder. I'm only 112 points away. I only show my helmets maybe twice a year simply because there are virtually no Helmet shows around here. I attribute the massive number of championships and point earning positions due to condition of my birds versus those of others. When two birds are near identical, condition is often the deciding factor for a judge. In breeds such as ours, the competition is getting better and better every year, resulting in condition being the deciding factor at many shows. Point blank, I am super anal retentive about conditioning. There is nothing that discourages me more than seeing what should be a quality pigeon, sporting stained backs, rumps and tails, primaries and secondaries that look like they have been shot at with a shotgun, or worse, active live parasites. Broken and frayed feathers often can tell you right off the bat that the owner has overcrowding conditions and his birds are not living in an environment that is condusive to positive conditioning enhancement. Here are some of the things that I do. First of all, my main breed is Wests, which have muffed feet. The fact their feet are feathered stipulates my loft and perch designs. We go to great lengths to protect the muffs of our birds, largely because Wests are so damn active and energetic in the loft, to the point of owner frustration. Generally this isn't an overwhelming concern for my Helmets. But If I plan on showing a few of my old helmet cocks, I have to remove them from the clean leg holding lofts and move them to my West conditioning lofts. Some of you might wonder, what is clean leg holding lofts versus conditioning lofts. The answer is simple. I use traditional 12"x12" box perches in my clean leg holding pens. Feather foot pigeons cannot use these type without destroying their muffs and tail feathers. Helmets on the other hand can use them, just like my American Rollers and Birmingham Rollers. But if I want my Helmets to get into top conditioning form, I have to make sure and move them to my West lofts, preferably during or near the end of their molt. All of my lofts are wood sub floored. Each loft pen is either 8x8 or 8x6. I have built a few 4x4 lofts that are six feet high for the rowdy cocks that require "special attention". All of the lofts are enclosed on three sides to provide protective backstops for pedastal perches which extend from each of the three walls and spaced far enough apart so that the birds cannot fight or come in contact with one another when on a perch. The perches extend about 10 inches from the wall where the base perching pad is. This keeps the bird from rubbing its tail and end flights on the wall or any other obstruction. These perches should be scrapped routinely during the show season. For an 8x6 pen, I generally have around 30-40 pedastal perches mounted in rows on the three walls. The cock pens generally have less perches. During the show season I try to limit the number of birds in a pen to half of the number of perches. For example, if there are 30 perches, I only put in 15 birds, especially when it comes to the cock birds. This typically helps to decrease the fighting a little bit. There is little "cure" for overactive cock birds and hormone-supercharged hens in conditioning pens. About the only thing I find that will calm them a bit is to give them some aureomycin which will take the sting out of their attitude for a few days. This time of year I try to pay close attention to who are the trouble makers in each loft and move those birds around to other conditioning lofts to help "curb" their appetite for destructive behavior. It doesn't eliminate the problem, but it does tend to change their attitude a little bit makes them sit on a perch more than ruckus around on the floor. I am fortunate to live in pretty arid climate and for the most part, it stays very dry most of the year. Dry lofts are the most critical issue when it comes to conditioning. I use to clean my loft floors regularly down to bare wood, but found over time that because of my arid conditions I got better results by leaving a layer of dry crap chips on the floor and only removing the lumps that develop under the perches. During the show season I add layers of shavings and corn cob bedding to each loft about every two weeks, slowly allowing it to build up. This helps to keep the birds feet clean and lessens the likelihood that they will mess up their tails and flights on the floor, or stain their undersides when resting in the floor corners. I allow the birds to bath about once a week. The pans are put on the floor in each loft. I do have a few smaller lofts with fly pens which have plywood floors on the fly pens instead of wire. For those pens the bath pan is put on the fly pens, but in both cases, I add more shavings around the bath pan. The bath water contains bluing, Permectrin II and apple cider vinegar. The bluing acts as a whitener, the Permectrin helps to keep lice under control and the apple cider vinegar both acidifies the loft environment while helping to open up the feather casings of molting birds. One of the biggest advantages I have had in condition (excluding the benifits of an arid climate) was when I developed my own mix of feed. In 2000 I decided I wanted to try and improve the resilence of my bird's feather quality while helping to add some body to my active young birds. The process took about six months to get the mix right. The end result is that the birds grow amazingly good feather and body. I've taken birds from other lofts and after three months on this mix, they look competely different, and much better. The bottom line in this regard is that if you want good conditioned birds, you have to have a good conditioning feed, something that is additionally paramount during the molt. My mix contains about nine different seeds. The list includes: milo, wheat, Austrian peas (no other peas), popcorn, safflower, rape, yellow millet, red millet and canary mix. It is 15.5 percent protein and 7 percent fat. And yes, I feed thise mix year around. The breeders love it as it contains no large seeds which they find uncomfortable to feed to their babies. I add apple cider vinegar to each lofts water at least once a week. Except for during the summer where the pens have to be watered daily, the rest of the year the water is only changed about every three days. At least once a week I add Vita-Pro combo with pro bios to the water. Several days before a show I will add DMG to the water to help build the birds up a bit to allow them to better handle the stresses of boxing up and showing. I never medicate my birds unless they need it. The wood floors allows me to keep an eye on the droppings and I look my birds over every day to make sure no one looks droopy. Any bird that appears down is removed and put into an individual pen with clear view to the other birds. They are medicated in these pens where I can more closely observe the droppings and monitor their feed intake. Some other notable things I do is for all of my conditioning lofts, I position patio shade cloth above the front openings to every loft to minimize direct contact with the sun. The shade cloth is about 80 percent, so they still get some sunlight benifit, but their color doesn't fade. Each loft is pretty well ventilated with ports at the corners and through the gaps in the roof joists. Something else I think is important is to not over handle your birds during the show season. This tends to rough up their feathers, especially those people who are rather rough when handling their birds. I will put birds into the show pens about once a week if I have time, but do so carefully so as to not disturb the natural binding of the feathers. Obviously great care must be taken when trimming our Helmets and handling them. Probably the last thing on the list is the show boxes we take our birds to shows in. It is futile to attempt to condition your birds in the lofts, yet cram them into antiquated carrying boxes where their feathers get all messed up. I personally prefer the widowhood boxes where I remove every other partition. A 16 bird widowhood carrier then becomes an 8 bird carrier. I do use some open boxes, but only put enough birds (hens) in those to allow each bird to have its own space. All of the carriers have deep shavings litter in them. These are just some of the things in general that I do at my own lofts to try and provide the best conditioning environment for the birds as possible. Conditioning is not something you can do in two weeks or even a month. It has to be done year around, most importantly starting attentively before the show season. Good feed, grit and water coupled with dry, spacious lofts where the birds are allowed to have a place of their own is paramount. Brian. |
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| Red MFC bred by Brian Mccormick |
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