John Clements' Dax Hens

Details: Published: 01 January 2020; Hits: 1357

TOP RACING PIGEONS

JOHN CLEMENTS'

DAX HENS

Getting John to provide details of his best pigeons has been like extracting teeth, and not a little frustrating because in recent times from some of our longest racepoints he has put together a very impressive sequence of results; in addition to his two Dax hens featured here, there's his 1st section Pau hen, his two top birds from 2013 Tarbes 709 miles (he was one of only two fanciers in Section L to record more than one entry - take a bow Brian Harrison of Southport) and a fabulous performance from the BICC Narbonne at well over 700 miles. - Cameron Stansfield.

John writes: 'My two Dax hens are sisters bred from cheq pied cock 90Z08547 bred by Carson Bros of Winster, Derbyshire. This pigeon was 8th section 243rd open Pau 1993 and 14th section 269th open Pau 1994. These two hens represent a dramatic change in training technique. The Dax Hen was trained by car for the Dax race and so was Double Cream for her Dax race a year later. While writing my book ‘Long Distance Pigeon Racing’ and interviewing Herman Brinkman of Tuk, Jelle Outhuyse of Harlingen and the Frenchman Robert Ben of Calais (who does not own a car) I realised that flagging the pigeons around the loft was in fact a cheaper and more productive training schedule than releasing them after driving miles. The result was that Double Cream, my second bird home from Tarbes in 2009, improved her performance and standing despite being a rather old pigeon (she was 8 years old at the time). I firmly believe the Dax Hen would have become a very good Tarbes pigeon (high in the section) if she had been flagged instead of trained by car. The ability to learn from one’s mistakes is essential. Not all progress is dependent on replacing one’s stock for something better in all probability you already have good pigeons that can be dramatically improved by a simple change in management.'