1st NPO Toury for Comb. de Boey

1st Division South-West/GP Around Paris against 5,563 pigeons.

Current loft layout:

75 per cent of the pigeon stock consists of pigeons from Peter van de Merwe, supplemented by a few sourced directly from, amongst others, the Scheele brothers, Tj. & J. Elzinga, and J. Hendriks & Sons. At the start of the season, we began with 14 racing pairs in full widowhood and 5 cocks without a partner.

Care:

The De Boeij & Zoon team consists of father Werner, mother Christianne and son Gerben. The overall care is therefore shared between the three of them. In the afternoon, the young birds are let out, after which the cocks have their training session at 16.45, followed by the hens’ training session at 18.45. At the start of the season, these are compulsory training sessions, but as the season progresses, both Monday and Tuesday sessions are left to the pigeons’ own discretion. When basketing takes place on a Thursday, the pigeons are released very early in the morning in Oudenaarde (60 km), after which they are allowed to stay together for approximately 1 to 2 hours upon their return home. After this period, the pigeons are separated and taken away so that they can settle calmly into their baskets.

Throughout the racing season, the pigeons are fed twice a day with a mixture consisting of: Beyers Galaxy Sport Light, Beyers Galaxy Sport Energy and Beyers Wal Zoontjes. As the races become more demanding, this ratio is adjusted.

In the evening, all pigeons are given a homemade grit mix containing some treat seeds, hemp seeds, peanuts, tovo and egg yolk.

In terms of supplements, we generally stick to WonderPigeon products, and since this year these have been supplemented with Winmix & Curol from Comed and Keto-Fly from DoCoPharma.

Winning Hen: ‘Maud’

She is a two-year-old hen who has been performing strongly since the start of the season. She opened the season with a number of early arrivals but continued to race each time until one of the cocks had returned home, which meant she missed out on early placings. After a few less successful races, she was nevertheless entered in the National Chateauroux race, where she managed to qualify fairly high up the field once again. In the race from Toury – which is 378 km for us – she was the only pigeon in the entire division to reach home at over 1,100 mpm. Unlike on other occasions, this time she came out of the sky at tremendous speed and headed straight for the loft. This blue hen is a daughter of our foundation cock ‘Emilius’, who himself was 1st Provincial Ace Pigeon in the One-Day Long Distance in 2021 and is currently the (grand)father of three NPO winners.

Congratulations to Team Comb. de Boey from Team Herbots!