On the first international flight of the season from Pau, 3,368 old birds started for Belgium. The first pigeon was clocked around 5:09 am in the morning of the father and son combination Guido & Tom De Ryck in Lier, Antwerp. Their 2-year-old hen achieved an exceptional performance and also won international silver. 

For this colony, after 3 provincial victories from Narbonne with the yearlings in 2017-2018 and 2019, finally their big victory in their pigeon career.

The pigeons do not breed during the winter period, they are coupled for the first time at the end of February and then raise a pair of youngsters. During their first litter they are also let out again and the training is restarted. They don't participate in laps here, they go to Vilvoorde once, which is 30 km for them and then they can go to their first Quievrain. They always fly 100 or 200 km in good weather. The message is to basket as many pigeons as possible and fly the middle distance every week in May to rack up the kilometres. Afterwards they fly 2x longer middle distance races and then the group is split up for the nesting game. 

The daily training at home is as follows when they are in the nest, the cocks train in the morning and the hens in the afternoon. Then the flag will come up so that they can fly for 45 minutes every day. After a few days they know this rhythm inside and out. 

The pigeons are kept purely in widowhood until the longer middle distance and are then raced in a nest. The team will then be divided between Pau, Marseille, Agen, Barcelona and Narbonne. An attempt is always made to basket the pigeons when they have been incubating for 8 days, or youngsters that are a few days old. If there was a good cock among us, we would dare to race it on a large youngster. The winner of Pau's eggs hatched on the day of release. 

The power supply used in the beginning comes from Van Camp. Once we go to the overnight flights, we make full use of Aidi's schedule. The medical situation is also very limited here, the pigeons are given a cure against paratyphoid in the autumn and it is checked whether a vaccination is necessary. No preventive measures are taken, Tom does his own checks during the season to see if anything is wrong. We work weekly with Kristof Mortelmans' yellow drops for safety purposes and we use Pigeon Vitality products as natural supplements.

BE 22-4124317 Checkered Hen
1st National Pau 3,368 olds
2nd International Pau 

Arrival : 05:09:33
Avg.Speed ​​: 1036.49 m/min
Distance : 942.736km

Guido & Tom congratulations on this great victory from the entire HERBOTS TEAM. Buelens Kim