Young (Natural)

Young Bird Training

At Three Months: Young birds should by now be flying well and if possible let out twice daily. Birds should be called into the loft by rattling a tin or blowing a whistle and given some trapping mixture, this is so they associate the rattle/whistle with food and learn to trap quickly when they hear the noise. Give the birds their main feed when all trapping mixture is eaten.

At Four Months: Basket training can begin. For a couple of nights before you start training put the birds in the crates to get them used to the idea. Release them in the morning for their fly and then call them in. When they are used to leaving the crates you can basket them up at night and the next morning take them about two to five miles down the road in the direction of your line of flight. Settle birds for a few minutes and release all together. Increase the distance every training toss, five to ten miles then jump to ten to fifteen miles, You can now jump to twenty miles, stick with this distance now as often as possible teaching the birds to fly straight home. A couple of tosses from thirty to forty miles about a week before the first young bird race are all that is needed.

During Racing: Once racing starts you can return to the twenty mile distance and train as often as you can, you don't need to go further as the racing will take care of that. The main point is to get the birds to come straight home, so a liberation point of twenty miles that is familiar to the birds is what is needed, don't confuse them with different liberation points every training toss. If you get a bad training toss or birds take a long time to come home, make sure they get a couple of days rest before you start again. I would not recommend training tosses of less than twenty miles when you have reached this distance.