January 2012

Monday 30

A difficult month for reasons none bird related, hopefully in time things will get a little easier.

My "bird month" started with the honour of judging the first Mid Ulster Fife Fancy canary club show, I gave the top award to Sam Berkley with a lovely little clear yellow hen, Richard Wilson took the best novice award with a tidy clear too. It was an enjoyable day where I met fanciers from both North and South of the border, very impressed with the quality of Fifes on show (picture of the some of the winners below)

January is always a slow month in the birdroom, the good weather has bought the birds forward a great deal, but as we're due a cold snap I've resisted the temptaion to single them off just yet. Sadly I lost two of my "stud" buff cocks in the space of 24 hours, a four year old three parts dark had fathered my best green at North of England and my 2nd Best Green 7th best champion at North West. They were the principal birds in each of my two family lines and to lose them both in such a short space of time was a real disapointment.

I've tweaked my breeding plans slightly to reflect the loss, both birds had a place in this years breeding plans but given their age and the availability of quality offspring across a number of generations bred down from them they weren't the "key breeding cocks" for the year. All being well I'll have a total of 16 cocks for this years breeding season to run across 23 hens. Following my success last year i'll once again adopt the priority pairing approach to this years breeding and ensure i get the numbers of the pairs that I want them from. I'm really pleased with the quailty of the hens I've got this year a definite step up from last year, indeed my three colour special winners last year were all hens!. Hopefully combining them with the quality flighted cocks I've retained and the unflighted ones I bred last year this year should be another successful one in the shed and later on the bench - fingers crossed anyway!