Herbots | Tulle: Old Pigeons

National winner Tulle and also the fastest of all 13,634 Tulle racers became the beautiful red cock "B22-4095137" of known marathon player Marnix Leutenez from Kruisem. Marnix is anything but an unknown as he has previously won several Top-10 national listings and was crowned 1st national long-distance KBDB champion in 2019.
Marnix has nothing more to prove in pigeon racing and that also allows him to handle his colony in a calm manner, without little pressure. Is this a big part of his success ? Possibly yes, because in his favourite field, the long distance, forcing is out of the question. Those who force and misjudge the condition of the pigeons lose pigeons on the battlefield. "For the very long distance, a pigeon must, as it were, ask to fly itself" is one of Marnix's theses. For Marnix, this behaviour is the signal that a pigeon is ready to tackle the next flight.
As a summary of this intro a proof that Marnix mainly soigns and observes and surely, based on his results, we can say that this is a good and proven path to success !

Quality

Choosing the extreme long distance races is choosing quality with a big Q. They have to be able to do it. If you don’t have pigeons with the talent for this heavy work than nature will select for you…as they just will stay behind from a race.
Marnix has known this already since decades and from the start of the composition of his team he looked out for pigeons who were able to do this. From the moment he started racing pigeons (the eighties from the former century) he knocked at the door of Rene De Meester in Ouwegem. Rene had a long distance loft mainly based on pigeons of Gerard & Michel Vanhee from Wervik. At Rene, Marnix got his Marseille (an injured pigeon from Rene) and he became straight away a good breeder. This was being accomplished with pigeons from the long distance top fanciers Santens Brothers from Oudenaarde and Georges Carteus from Ronse. The base was laid and a few provincial victories and national top results were set. In a more recent period he had success with pigeons from Frans Balcaen from Nokere, and Patrick Houfflijn from Wortegem-Petegem, Jean Pijcke from Ronse (strain Delbar), Roger Debusschere from Lokeren (pigeons Chris Hebberecht), Johan De Meulemeester from Zulte and Luc Bafort from Temse.
When you cook with the best ingredients…and if you are able to cook a bit (read ‘if you are a bit of a fancier’) than the results will taste very well and sweat ! And this is how ‘Eurodiamond’ was bred who won the 4th International Perpgignan and won 4x on Barcelona. He turned out to be a good breeder afterwards as well. Coupled to ‘Nina’ the top pigeons followed easy out of Perpignan, Barcelona, Agen, Narbonne and so on……
These pigeons get the time to grow out and to get experience. But once grown up they have to perform and the though races will do their selection.

Perfect organisation and care

Marnix is the guy of a strict and good care and organisation. The focus is on the extreme long distance races and a few long distance race for the year birds. He breeds out of about 15 to 20 breeding couples, who were placed recently in breeding boxes. Coupling around the 6th of December and about 45 youngsters are for own use. The youngsters are being trained thorough but don’t have to go further than 200 to 300km their first year. The selection is being done by hand and pedigree. The youngsters will go in the training basket and results are of no importance. Grow out quietly is the message. The pigeons only will do fully at their grown up age of 2 years.
The racing team exists out of 15 old pigeons and about 15 year birds. He doesn’t race hens, only cocks on the classic widowhood system. The pigeons reside on spacious and airfull garden lofts with very few pigeons in one loft. Marnix has the space to double or even triple the team, but this isn’t something he likes to do.
The racing team is being coupled on the 2nd of February and can breed for a few days. Afterwards when the weather circumstances are good enough to train, there will be another coupling of a few days. After the season the racing pigeons don’t breed. So it is perfectly normal that a 5-year old racing pigeon never had to raise youngsters.
The year birds are being trained very good as well and have to race towards the end of the season races as Limoges, Libourne, Tulle. The old pigeons are being raced on the extreme long distance and have to do normally 2 international long distance races.

Like a bolt
Marnix says: "Suddenly I saw a pigeon flying very low over the ground towards the sputnik. I was a bit startled by this way of coming home and was even more startled when I saw it was a Tulle flyer. Unexpected arrivals are always good but I was not expecting a national win now anyway. The "137" was scheduled for St Vincent and Tulle was his preparation flight.

Because of his national win, he will not see the release point of St Vincent again, because thanks to the professional care of Herbots, he will have a new owner.