BRIAN SHEPPARD of. Trowbridge. 1st & 2nd Open International Dax. Interviewed by Cameron Stansfield

Transcription

1 BRIAN SHEPPARD of Trowbridge 1st & 2nd Open International Dax Interviewed by Cameron Stansfield Brian and other UK fanciers who competed in the 2003 Dax International, pictured at the garden party put on by Geoff and Catherine Cooper to commemorate Brian s magnificent achievement in becoming the first UK flier to win 1st Open International. It s a Saturday evening in Bournemouth in February 2001, and I m in the lounge of the Wessex Hotel, a guest as the then editor of the BHW, of the Central Southern Classic at their annual prize presentation. A group of us are sat in a corner talking about International racing, when we catch the eye of Brian Sheppard who is walking across the lobby and invite him over. Why, I ask him, does he not have a go at the Internationals? Because, he replies, It s not a level playing field. But if we went there in greater numbers and some of the top widowhood men sent, we could win it!

2 It s Monday July 10th 2003 and things have moved on. The National Flying Club, thanks to the efforts of a few, not least the then President Bill Harris, is competing in an International race for the first time ever. I telephone Brian Leadbeater. He s down in Frome for the Dax marking and I ask him what he knows? Only that Brian Sheppard has just lifted his basket up so I can have a look at his team of widowhood cocks and they are out of this world. I come off the phone and walk down to Marie s office at the other end of the BHW building. Marie has a white marker board, so I pick up a felt pen and write on it: Brian Sheppard will win the International! It s the following Saturday evening. The UK pigeons, sent either through the BICC or the NFC, number 1400, by far this country s biggest ever send to an International, and as part of the 17,000-strong International convoy they were liberated at 6.00am that morning. Like a lot of other people my mind is on the race all through the day and we are all asking can we do it. At half seven that night I log onto the NFC s website and click the button which lets you know of any early times, more of a just-in-case rather than in expectation. And there it is: 1. B. S. Sheppard Trowbridge 505 miles I give Sid, the National secretary, a ring to confirm it and he tells me he s been onto the Entente Belge, the race organisers, and it is the best bird they ve heard of and the rest is history.

3 A painting of the Legend. Photo by Daniel Broda of France. It is the autumn of 2006 and Brian is reflecting on that first International success. He chuckles when I tell him about the conversation I had with Brian Leadbeater. He recalls: I said to Brian, Well if any bugger s got pigeons fitter than these, he s doing something I know nothing about. I knew I was going to get one on the night. In fact we arranged a garden party and had 11 people waiting with us. Everything was right the day, the

4 wind and the form of the pigeons. Thirteen days earlier I had 6 pigeons in 10 minutes from the National in an east wind. I thought I would get a pigeon between 7 and 7.30 that night. Everybody was looking, and my friend Kevin shouts: Here s one coming down the rank like a train. Because so many people were in the garden, he pitched on the garage but then as soon as he heard my voice he was down and in. He was in absolutely brilliant condition. I wasn t excited at that stage because I ve flown pigeons long enough to know that when there s one pigeon about there s generally another somewhere else. So no, I wasn t confident he would win the National let alone the International. The sire of the dam of The Legend. I asked Brian to recall how things unfolded the following week when his birds were drug tested: When I won it they were over here like a shot! There were three independent testers a Belgian, a German and a Frenchman. They took every pigeon which I timed 8 in all and put them in different crates. They waited for 3 pigeons, including the winner, to pass a dropping and then put each dropping in a separate jar. Then they waited for a second dropping from the same pigeons and put those in separate jars. They also went into the loft and took a dropping from every box. They said to me that if a first sample proved positive and I wanted to appeal I could pay 50 to have the second sample tested. I had to sign a piece of paper.

5 Was Brian at all worried that they might find something? I did wonder if anything I d been using had anything in it that it shouldn t have. God knows, you only have the manufacturer s word for it that a product contains what it says it does. Anyway I wasn t worried but when it got to three weeks and I hadn t heard anything, well it got the mind thinking. I was getting all this publicity so if anything happened, I d have been embarrassed. In the end they sent a fax to the NFC and I found out it I was all clear when Bill Harris rang me up. The widowhood loft. A first-ever International winner to these shores was obviously going to attract the attention of would-be buyers and so it was that the International winner, The Legend, came to be sold. Looking back, does Brian have any regrets about letting him go? None. It was the best thing I ve ever done. I was 68 and I ve never been a rich man. That little bit of money meant I could do things and go places I never dreamed of seeing, like South Africa and Las Vegas. Anyway, I didn t have the facilities to keep him and breed youngsters off him to sell. Perhaps if I d had a place I d have got my grandson to put the pedigrees on computer, but then again there was always the risk of someone stealing him. No, it s been a blessing.

6 Just to show though that Brian is a racing man through and through and not someone who has ever actively tried to cash in on his success, consider this: The following year Brian won 2nd Open Dax International but rather than sell or retire this pigeon, he continued to race it. It was his misfortune that he sent it along with his entire intended Dax team of 2005 to the infamous BICC Tours disaster. He got all of them home over a three-week period except one the 2nd International cock! Did losing this cock not upset him? No. I just get on with it. You ve got to send your best. I m not sentimental; if you lose them you lose them. Even my best pigeons like Jingles and Reggie raced to five and six years of age. Cheq cock. 1st Section, 3rd Open NFC Nantes and 1st Section, 12th Open NFC Nantes in successive years. Out of curiosity, had Brian been as confident of success the year he was 2nd Open? Yes but the wind beat me. He arrived from out of the east so I suspect he came around the back of the Isle of Wight. I think that performance was as good as when winning it, especially as the pigeon was only 18 months old. If we d gone to Dax in 2006 I d have been confident of doing well again. On the same weekend as the International were at Dax I sent intended Dax birds to the Isle of Wight and won that race by 10 minutes. Ok, I know it s only the Isle of Wight but my winner came so fast that if you d blinked you d

7 have missed him. He d come into form on that weekend as a result of months of planning. All my season had been geared to it. Let s take as our cue Brian s reference to months of planning so that his birds peak in mid July and try and find some kind of staring point to this planning. One thing which I wanted to get to the bottom of, knowing he always pairs in December, is at what stage of the wing moult his birds are in at the time, particularly given that his young cocks will have been on darkness and will have raced well into September. He said that for years now he has had all his birds (barring a few exceptions) through a complete moult by the end of November so it wasn t an issue. He added: If I was pairing widowers in December and they still had one or two flights to go, I d be a worried man.

8 Brian with his good friend Kevin Emery at the Dax International presentation in Belgium. Brian s old birds do not go out at all during the autumn. He explains: The widowers are locked up as soon as they are re-paired after racing. They all rear a round of late-breds, then when these youngsters are away in the first week in October the nest boxes are closed and I place a grill in the side where they perch to discourage the hens from laying again. The cock and hen stay together until they have moulted through and as a

9 rule I split them for a fortnight before re-pairing in December. After the last young bird race I put the spare old hens in with the young cocks and when the cocks have picked a hen I bring them down into the widowhood loft. The hens know the drill so I open each of the spare boxes and the cocks follow them in, which settles the cocks to the boxes very quickly. I have 30 boxes so for next season I have introduced 10 young cocks; the other young cocks will be sold. From the moment they are locked up after racing, they are fed a moulting mix, which this year is Versele Laga Mutine, and by the end of November they will be through the moult including the wing. If one isn t I d be thinking something was wrong with it. Even the darkness youngsters will complete the moult by the end of November, and yet by the middle of September they will only be on their third primary. I give them plenty of baths but I think the feed is the most important thing in getting them through the moult so early. I pair in December as I like to get the breeding out of the way so that I can concentrate on racing. I do not use lights to extend the daylight hours when rearing. I wean the youngsters off on their own and take the hens away 6 days after the laying of the first egg in the second round so in effect they have been sat 4 days. It is important to get this right or your cocks will start shedding their first flight. I re-pair them in the spring to suit the date of the first Channel race with the BBC, which is mid-may, and I make sure the cocks have been sat for 6 days when I come to part them on the Sunday before basketing. The aim is to have them in peak form at the time of the Dax race but with all the uncertainty in 2006 Dax wasn t on so they were aimed at Saintes a fortnight later. This meant they had been on widowhood for 14 weeks when Saintes was flown and that s a lot to a widowhood cock. I won the section but I was pushing it a bit to be honest. Because they had been on widowhood for so long, I left the doors open for the few days before Saintes as I was wary they might field if flagged. By the way I used to pair on February 14th but my results were not as good as they are now. I know Geoff Cooper, a top man who is hard to beat, always used to pair on February 14th but now he pairs in December like I do so ask yourself why. I would not go back to pairing later.

10 Brian holding his NFC Certificate of Merit winner Jingles who notched up 7th, 34th & 35th Open NFC Pau. What does Brian expect in terms of how his widowers act around home? They really exercise with vigour. At the start of the week I m not worried if they fly in a group but from Wednesday afternoon they will split up and be gone for 20 or 30 minutes. They ll come back perhaps singly or doubly then branch off again. They exercise for an hour

11 morning and night and if they don t want to do the hour I flag them. When I start to bring them up on a Wednesday and Thursday you can tell the vigour is there by how they fly, and when I open the doors they are in in a flash. During exercise, the loft doors are closed. I keep them in sometimes if it s clammy as I think you can do more harm than good. Rest is very important so when they are in the loft I keep away. Otherwise they would hear me and start calling, and if they are hollering they are not resting. I m hoping they are in their box, laid down on their side. You want them relaxed, not on edge. Ultimately racing is down to the happiness of the pigeon. Keeping your widowhood cocks motivated is the hardest part of all. On the easier races sometimes I don t show the hens, I just turn the bowl, and sometimes if a cock is not quite on the pace he doesn t see his hen when he comes home either. If it s a very fast, easy race they only get the hen for 5 minutes because if you leave them too long they might not have the same interest the next time. One thing I have learnt is not to take a cock off widowhood and re-pair him as he will go flat. Reggie, winner of 1st NW Section, 6th Open CSCFC Pau.

12 Once they start I give them as many races I can get into them. In 2006 before the restrictions on south road racing were lifted, they had had every race on the north, which was Stoneleigh, Stoneleigh, Stafford, Wakefield, Ripon, Berwick and Fraserburgh that s every pigeon every week. Then they went to the Isle of Wight, which I won by 10 minutes, and the following Saturday St Malo with the NFC, winning 120th Open. Then it was a two-week break and into Saintes. As I say, I emptied the loft every week. I have a friend who comes around and when he looks in the loft on a Saturday morning he says, You ain t got nothing left Brian, but I always look at it this way: my widowers race to one compartment. I prepare them all the same and they are exercised and fed all the same. If I split my team in half I would not only have to treat pigeons differently, I would also be halving my chances of winning! I must emphasise, however, that if they are not right they don t go. I ve lost some good pigeons in my time by sending them when not quite right as I was chasing averages. Nowadays if I lose a pigeon I always think it s because something has happened to it not because it was sent in poor condition. Before the first race they have three tosses from the coast, 50 miles, these being the only tosses they have all season. From being parted in January they are fed Gerry Plus. I don t try and bring them up for the first main race, BBC Nantes, as they get a widowhood mix in the basket. If you bring them up beforehand on a widowhood mix then they have two more days on it they go over the top. They have a desert spoon of Gerry Plus am and pm, which adds up to a little more than an ounce and they eat every bit. You MUST keep their appetite up. You don t want them hungry but when you put their food in their bowls you want them flapping at your hand to get it and this gives you a bond. In the week before the Nantes National, 295 miles, they have Gerry Plus on Monday, then on Tuesday morning they have a desert spoon of Gerry Plus and Super Widowhood mixed together. On Tuesday evening they have full Super Widowhood, again measured. On Wednesday morning they have 5gms of Energy Corn, which is given before the widowhood mix or else they flick it out and don t eat it. It s brilliant because it s very easy for them to turn into energy, which means they will not overwork the liver, which in turn means you don t get blue flesh but a nice rosy colour. On Wednesday pm they get as much of the full Super Widowhood mix as they can eat, then a teaspoon of Sneaky mix, which is the only time they get seed when racing. Basketing on a Thursday is at 10 so I can t feed them or they will be sick. From the Monday to the Thursday they become more corky and blown up, handling bigger but lighter which tells you that everything they require is there. You can always tell the form of the bird by the moult and they need to be on their second or third flight to reach top form. I find that the pigeon that is moulting the best is the one on form. The following week a loftmate might have overtaken it and that one will then be the one that is on best form. Out of the whole team you ll never get all of them in the same form at the same time.

13 Youngsters just weaned to their loft in the roof of Brian s garage. They come back to a full widowhood mix, especially if it s been a hard race and need a boost. They generally have a canker treatment on Sunday and Monday, always mixed with glucose and vitamins. On Sunday they have Gerry Plus. On Wednesday they have Biacol B12 liver protection and you always notice the difference (it s also good for the moult). Then after Wednesday through to the following Thursday week they always have clean water. If you keep pushing tonics, God knows what s going to happen to them. I ve tried every system that has come out and this one is the best of the lot. I ve been on it for 5 or 6 years. Before this I was very successful for a few years on the Versele Laga 1 & 2 system where you feed heavy in the morning and light at night. Many years ago I used a breakdown mix and still won through to Thurso on the day but it was not as good as this system. Just recently I ve been used the Versele Laga Mutine system for moulting and breeding and it is excellent: my stock birds reared four rounds on it and you wouldn t have known it. I feed 100% per cent Versele Laga. The only reason I started on it is because I have a good supplier and it was easy to get, and because I have been so successful with it I see no need to change. If it sounds like I m plugging Versele Laga I m not, I m just telling you as it is.

14 Grizzle cock, 1st Section NFC Lamballe and blue hen, 1st Section, 3rd Open BBC Lamballe. I also use hemp oil and garlic oil, and three years ago after a trip to South Africa where they all use it, I began giving olive oil, which is as good as anything. The hemp oil makes the cocks more ardent but I don t give it every week. I alternate the three oils, feeding only one a week, on either a Wednesday or Thursday, so therefore they have each oil once every three weeks. I m always trying to get a better performance and I think by feeding oils your pigeons have more vigour and will fly the skies because their energy level is excellent. I add 10 ml to a kilo of corn and let it stand overnight. I ve used oil for a lot of years. I ve only once used peanuts, however. What put me off was that I had a dark cock that would go from box to box to get them and he upset the other pigeons. That s no good. You don t want pigeons fighting, you want them happy. From previous conversations I knew Brian was not a bean feeder but still I couldn t resist getting him going again. Beans? Oh dear, dear, dear. I know some people are successful on beans but I m absolutely sure that given the same loft, same system and same motivation I wouldn t have timed my Dax International winner ON THE DAY if I was feeding beans. These days, they way I feed means that the weight on them when they come back from 500 miles is very little different to when they were sent whereas, going on my experience of feeding beans many years ago, they would have lost weight and they d also have moped about for a bit once home. Nowadays when my cocks touch the board after 500 miles they are bouncing.

15 Brian in his younger days when he was a north road flyer. Brian can always be found on the marking table at Salisbury for the BBC races, and elsewhere of course, so has put through tens of thousands of birds in his time. He must have learnt something about racing condition. What proportion of fanciers can get a bird in the same kind of nick as him? Only the top men, fanciers such as George Burgess, Ken Hine, the Nicholsons, Jimmy Roy, Cyril Medway, Mick Parish and Paul Kendal. I handled Paul s Morning Glory at the marking before he won 2nd Open NFC Pau for the second time and I said to him that he wouldn t be far away. These fanciers all race a similar type, definitely, definitely, and they are generally corky and bouncy. No word of a lie though, I can put through 20 from some other lofts and if they were mine I d only send two or three of them because they are not in what I think is good condition, but then if it turns out to be a hard day these fanciers get one which makes me wonder! Perhaps it s because the body weight of a bean-prepared pigeon is probably that little bit higher than a well-prepared pigeon but the preparation many of the Palamos fliers use wouldn t be any good to me because I want my pigeons for more than one race. When you handle a pigeon that is fit it doesn t feel woolly and that s because it has dropped its down feathers. Nor will it have blue flesh. Brian s remedy for blue flesh is a

16 good dose of Glaubers Salts for a couple of days a dessertspoon to 2 litres - and a feed of light grains such as barley, wheat and dari. Mentioning Paul Kendal, I was speaking to him at the Garden Party which Geoff and Catherine Cooper put on to celebrate Brian s International win and we were stood facing the Cooper loft. From the front you can t see how any air enters it but on going closer you can see that it enters through a narrow strip running the length of the front just below the roof. I said to Paul that it didn t seem much and asked him how much air enters his loft, to which he replied None. So you live and learn.

17 Brian inside the widowhood loft. Note the narrowness of the section and the grilled floor. The Sheppard loft mirrors the Cooper one. Brian describes it: My loft is 25ft long, 6ft deep and 7ft high. It has an apex roof and a false ceiling and there are three air vents in the roof. There are sliding panels in the false roof which I gradually widen as the weather warms up. The apex overlaps the front and there is a 6-inch gap running all the way along the front under the apex. The only other air coming in is via the vents built

18 into the concrete wall on which the loft sits. The walls are insulated with polyurethane plasterboard so it becomes really warm in summer. This is how I look at it: years ago I kept canaries and the warmer it got, the happier they became and the more they began to sing. My racing loft has a grilled floor, which runs the full length with a 3ft drop underneath. In the winter when I m breeding I put ply boards over part of the grills to catch any food that might fall out of the nest boxes, but this ply is removed in time for racing. I find it a lot airier this way. Way back I had an open-fronted loft but the amount of bloom my birds carry now is far superior and I think bloom is important because it is a form of waterproofing. I visited Belgium quite a bit in the 1970s, not to buy but to have a look around and see their set ups. I never came across an open loft, though some of them, like Emiel Denys and Roger Vereecke, wintered their hens in aviaries. All the lofts were shut in, whereas in the UK we had open lofts. I thought there must be a reason why they do it. I came to the conclusion they were far ahead of us in their management of racing pigeons so I thought I d copy them. When I got home from one trip I pulled down my wooden lofts and replaced them with a new loft set on a concrete base. There was an immediate difference in the condition of the pigeons. I suffer from a chest but you can t smell pigeons when you go in my loft. My birds have never suffered from respiratory since closing the loft in either. I give a preventative respiratory treatment each spring but it is a blind treatment. If I had not changed my loft I do not think I would have flown so well. Cheq cock, a son of The Emperor x g.daughter of Griff, 25th Open NFC Saintes with his hen, winner of 1st Section BBC Lamballe. Of course, the loft and the food are big factors, but the most important factor of all is the quality of the pigeons. Brian relates how he is has cultivated his present team: My base birds were, firstly, the Reg Venners, which were the old Truman Dicken and Slabbinck

19 Cattrysse. Truman Dicken was a rich man; his father-in-law owned a lot of cinemas in the late 1940s. Back then the average weekly wage was 7 in the Somerset coalfields, where a lot of the good fanciers worked. When someone won a 500-mile race Truman Dicken would offer him the sort of money they only ever dreamed about. Over the years, therefore, he developed a family that was the result of crossing good pigeons. He also had birds from Jarrett and Webley of Bristol. Anyway, Truman Dicken was very friendly with Reg Venner and they exchanged pigeons, which is how Reg formed his mile family. Then Reg went to Slabbinck in High Wycombe for some Cattrysse. Make no mistake Reg was the top man in the big WoENRC, and the best fancier in the area either north or south, twice winning 2nd Open NFC Pau. I went to see Reg in the early 1970s and asked him for six late-breds so he re-paired his best racers of that year. Shortly after, Trueman Dicken sold up so I went and bought a pair to cross back in with these Venners. I then bought an Atwell Bros pigeon, and at Bert Anglesey s clearance sale, where Taffy Bowen was the auctioneer, I bought a Hansenne. One day we were flying in an open race from Perth along with the Welsh boys and I got talking to Dai Price of Newport who, with his son John, was unbeatable. They were fantastic fliers and John helped me a lot. We were sat in the Pill Labour Club and he said, If you have any questions son, you ask me. He was a top, top man and this was in the era of the Atwells, the Channings and Ivor Marshall, all of whom were in his club. He sent me a blue hen, a cheq hen and a light cheq cock all Hansennes. I crossed these in with the Venners and Truman Dickens and they started to win from everywhere through to Thurso and Lerwick. These kept me going over the years but in 1998 I felt they were getting a bit slower and also the hens were getting smaller, so I thought I d got to bring in fresh blood. Going back a bit now, in the 1980s I visited Belgium quite a lot on trips organised by the late Roy Thompson. On one of these I went along with Joe Stubbs to Lefebre Dhanens, where we bought a dark cheq hen and a blue cock. We brought them back and they went to Joe s place. They bred a very good bird for Joe but, funnily enough, I never had anything off them, then one day, oh it must have been about 7 years down the road, Joe says to me, You d better take them before they come to the end of their tether. I bred a pencil cock and a chequer hen out of them. I put the pencil on the road and he won 1st Section, 3rd Open NFC Nantes 12,000 birds, then the following year he was 1st Section again and 12th Open NFC Nantes 13,000 pigeons. Nantes to me is 280 mile and I ain t a sprint man so I looked at the pedigrees and saw that it was Lefebre Dhanen but with an outcrosss in it, and the outcross was Jos Thone. I did a bit of research and a little while later I went to Belgium to a Golden Wing payout where Thone was the main prizewinner. I thought to myself, if I can purchase one or two of his pigeons I will as I can cross them back in.

20 Mealy cock, g.son of Red Barcelona and his mate, a daughter of 1st Section, 3rd Open BICC Pau. Anyway a few years went by and he was getting more famous and I was keeping an eye on things. Then I noticed Ian Stafford had brought in a consignment to sell on his behalf. These were to be put on sale at the Old Comrades and I thought I d go and have a look at them. When I got there they were still in their Amtrak boxes. There were about pigeons and I sorted myself three out a Sumo cock, a son of Napoleon and a half-sister to Napoleon. I went on what I liked not on pedigree. Not long afterwards I bought a Thone hen from a Mr MacPherson of Scotland. For two years, 1999 and 2000, I kept them pure but it didn t work. However, it was a different story when I crossed them with my own and the Sumo line brought speed without diminishing the stamina. I subsequently sold Sumo but I have 2 hens and a cock off him. I also have 2 off The Legend in the stock pen. The 2nd International cock was from Sumo x my old family, and I have two sons and a daughter off him. The kingpin pigeon, however, is my old Jingles who won a NFC Certificate of Merit, and Reggie s blood is also prominent. I have 4 sons and three daughters of Jingles. In terms of type, the Sumo pigeons are much smaller. Sumo was built like a middle-distance pigeon and was not at all big. The Truman Dickens on the other hand are a big breed. Jingles was only 4 generations from my originals and was exactly the same as them in terms of type. Like Reggie, he had plenty of front. I like a nice length, a nice balance and a little bit up front. I do not like them too narrow. I never take any notice of eye-sign it s a fallacy. I came to this conclusion years ago when the best racer in my loft had odd eyes and I was never quite sure which one I was meant to be looking at! I don t like too long a tail, and I like to see the flights just over the bar on the tail. I ve noticed that when they fall short that pigeon has difficulty pitching on

21 landing. Feather quality is very important too but it s partly to do with diet. Feed oil and it will be silky, barley and it will be drier. My opinion is that a pigeon in good condition and right will be silky. Talking of type and knowing Brian has race-marked for many years, I asked him what the pigeons of the legendary Fear Bros were like when they were in their pomp. They were nice big corky pigeons. The Fears had them to the coast every day and sometimes twice a day and the condition of their pigeons was out of this world. They were in a league of their own. They were given a good schooling by a fancier called Charlie Clare, one of the top 500-mile men in the West of England, who flew Fraserburgh and Thurso on the day more than anyone. The base of their pigeons was from Charlie, Vic Preddy and a farmer from Dorchester. The Fears were definitely ahead of the game when it came to feeding but what they fed I don t know because they kept it under their hats. It was Roly Fear who gave me plenty of confidence to turn south in He said, Brian, you are a good fancier and you know how to condition a pigeon, so if they are good enough they will come through. He was right. I honestly think, and this is only my opinion mind, that north road racing is harder than south road because of the predominance of south west winds, and the young birds, who are just learning, have to contend with all these south road clubs so it s a hell of a job for them to get a clear run. Son of Griff, 1st Section, 25th Open NFC Saintes with a daughter of Reggie, 1st Section, 6th Open CSCFC Pau. Does Brian rate himself as a good judge of a pigeon? I m not a bad judge at all. At the beginning of this season I went to a breeder/buyer and there were 40 pigeons in pens. I walked up and down and one took my eye so I bought it without even handling it. Its owner, Gordie Hancock, was surprised but I said to him, You take it back and race it

22 and he ll win the breeder/buyer, and he did so we were both 150 better off. You can tell a good pigeon just at a glance, you don t have to handle them. There s just something they ve got. I can guarantee if I walk round a sale and say to Kevin, These are the three, they will be the three highest priced birds in the sale. At the moment, I rate the Mick Parish s pigeons particularly highly in terms of type, and Chris Gordon s pigeons, both in terms of type and condition, are out of this world. Brian has some interesting observations on type and up to what distance his birds will still be effective: I wouldn t push my Dax pigeons out to Barcelona as I think mine are good 500-mile on the day pigeons. I ve had them out of San Sebastian and Pau on the day but I would say that s their limit. For the longer races, I have three daughters of Red Barcelona through Brian Long and I m hoping to have a crack at Barcelona with them. They are not nice to look at but they are bred for it and I m going to give them a good try. You ve got to start somewhere and they ve done all right at the yearling stage. I sent them to 440 miles north and then turned them to Saintes so I couldn t have asked for any more from them than that. I also have four Eric Fox (crossed with mine) in the race team. All have won prizes and one has won a Section. I m very pleased with them. I m confident in my management that I can get birds out of Barcelona but it s having the quality of pigeon to go with it. After all, even though I ve got my system off to a fine art for 500-mile on the day racing, they don t all do it. When Brian prepares a pigeon for 500 miles he feeds it so that it can do 15 hours on the wing, should it need to, so where does he stand on the subject of an early or late liberation of the NFC s Grand National convoy. I m not an all out early lib man. An early liberation which leaves the leading birds mid-channel at the end of the day has happened more than a few times in recent years, and the pigeons that will come a cropper will be the two-year-olds who will keep going, not the old campaigners who know the ropes. I sent a good team to the Pau race where they brought them back to Saintes and my little cock won the Section. He must have got to the French coast or he might even have been in the Channel Isles overnight. Brian said something else which I know a lot of other long-distance stalwarts believe: The trouble nowadays is that we have all this satellite weather information and we are producing sunshine pigeons. Organisations won t liberate until everything is perfect, but I ve had pigeons come when you can t see the trees so what s the problem? Brian is competitive from the first race to the last and enjoys his young bird racing too. He has been flying on darkness for the past decade and says he has found no drawbacks, after all The Legend was a darkness youngster, though his winner of 2nd International wasn t as it was a late-bred. He was only trained lightly as a young bird but even though he was a late-bred, he moulted through. He won his one and only race as a yearling, then at two he had two Picauvilles, the CSCFC and the NFC races and then Dax International. Brian adds: Being a late youngster he didn t fly out for long before being locked up for the winter, but there you are, it just goes to show. I ve had widowhood hens who were raced as young birds but the only exercise they ve had as yearlings was when let out to go to their cocks, yet I ve brought them out late in the season and they have flown Bordeaux on the day, 14 hours on the wing.

23 As far as youngsters go, Brian had this to say: I rear on Start, which is absolutely fantastic. You try it and see how they grow and feather up. They are weaned on a breeding mix and stay on this for 6 to 8 weeks. Then once they are up and flipping around for half an hour they go on Gerry Plus. I train the young birds late, about three weeks before the first race as I don t want to stop them ranging, then they go every day. I train as straight as possible and the wind will do the rest. I start with about 40 youngsters and all race through the programme, but this year the cocks had only 3 races, Portsmouth, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, whereas all the young hens went north through to Berwick, mainly because I wanted to test some new stock at 300 miles. I generally end up with three-quarters of them left. I race young hens natural and young cocks driving. Table showing the ultra-consistency of Brian Sheppard at National level. My thanks to Paul O Leary for this information. Section Section Section Open Open Open Member Name Year RacePoint Sent Pos Entries Sector % Pos EntriesSector % B S Sheppard 2006 Saintes % % B S Sheppard 2005 Dax % % B S Sheppard 2005 St Nazaire % % B S Sheppard 2004 Fougeres YB % % B S Sheppard 2004 Saintes % % B S Sheppard 2004 Dax % % B S Sheppard 2004 Nantes % % B S Sheppard 2003 Falaise YB % % B S Sheppard 2003 Saintes % % B S Sheppard 2003 Dax % % B S Sheppard 2003 Saintes % % B S Sheppard 2002 Guernsey YB % % B S Sheppard 2002 Guernsey OH % % B S Sheppard 2001 Herstal % % San B S Sheppard 2001 Sebastian % % Paul O'Leary says: Just take a look at Brian's astonishing results since where we can see that his first timed pigeon appears in the top 2% segment of Section G a staggering 15 times including NINE outright section wins. Brian has won Section G in each of the three Dax Internationals. Outside of his Section performances his first timer achieved a Top 2% Open position ELEVEN times which is pretty remarkable in itself. Of course the Dax race has become Brian's signature race point in recent years and surely Brian will be hoping, as with many others, that Dax is again on the race menu from Brian expects to have most of his young birds left at the end of the season but how many go on to be good 500-mile pigeons at 2 and 3? Not many the way I race them. If I ve got 4 or 5 good ones, I ve done well. This year, for example I have 4 yearlings left to take into next year and they flew Fraserburgh north and Saintes, 390 miles south. The young hens become the widow hens, at which point they are kept in an aviary attached to a primitive shed which is 8ft wide, 3ft deep and 4ft high. They perch on slats and keep well. This year they were fed on Gerry Plus for 8 weeks, which kept eggs at bay

24 for 5 weeks. I ve tried depurative and also Diet 2000 and the best results were 6-7 weeks on depurative but I found that then they were not so good when I brought them up on two feeds of Super Widowhood. If the little devils are trying to pair, and I see one down in a corner I take the other one away immediately and isolate it in a basket for a few days. If they lay it is a waste of time showing them to the cock but if you take the eggs away they will be interested in their cock once more within a week. Some cocks don t like hens that are too ardent but if I think a cock isn t putting it all in I will give him a more ardent hen. Each pigeon is an individual. But remember, you can over motivate for long distance it is a different ball game to 150 mile racing. What motivates Brian? It s the kick of seeing pigeons come home. I love watching all the different sorts of way they trap, which tells you how motivated they are. Mine seldom go round twice and if they do they get a severe reprimand. What does the future hold for this loft? I m keener now than ever. I want to win another one of the big ones. I could still get motivated for the Pau National but I would prefer now to go to the Pau International. I would also like to see a Bordeaux International. I can t understand why the RPRA couldn t organise it, as the Unions do on the continent. We could stage one and invite the continentals to come and fly with us for a change. Nor do I understand why the BICC and the National don t get together these are British pigeon representing Britain. These two clubs are not alone. I m on the committee of the BBC and I don t understand why they want to be separate and go to Palamos when they could go to Barcelona. Why does everybody want to be independent? I m very upset that the National Flying Club has dropped the Dax International from its programme. We have been twice 1st & 2nd Open and 5th Open in 3 goes, proving to the Europeans how good we in the UK are. I can t make it out. I m an old man now, 71, and I ve seen some good times and some bad and I know that if we don t get these things going now pigeon racing in England will go to One-Loft races - and club racing will be finished!