JOHN LUDLAM AND HIS "BARCELONA HEN".
John Ludlam has had a long career in pigeon racing and during those years has been skilful and fortunate enough to have raced many good pigeons but none more so than a brave five year old blue hen that has competed with great success in a number of long distance races from southern France and accross the border into Spain.
I give you here the blue hen's race record at the distance:-
2010 Bergerac 500 mls 7th Sec WSRNFC
2010 Bergerac 500 mls 18th Open WSRNFC
2011 Tarbes 602 mls 2nd Sec WSRNFC
2011 Tarbes 602 mls 6th Open WSRNFC
2012 Tarbes 602 mls 3rd Sec WSRNFC
2012 Tarbes 602 mls 19th Open WSRNFC
2013 Barcelona 754 mls 5th Sec BICC
2013 Barcelona 754 mls 21st Open BICC.
In the two Tarbes races she was liberated with the NFC and would have appeared well up on the NFC result on both occasions.
Her breeding shows a strong influence of the long distance Van Wanroy bloodlines of Paul Woolliss of Grimsby and I have added here some brief details of her breeding:-
Sire is GB07E11357 bred by Paul Woolliss out of Palona also Lona.
Dam is GB07E11381 bred by Paul Woolliss out of Ambition Van-Wanroy.
"Palona" won 1st sec 7th open Palamos 815mls whilst "Lona" had among her many long distance wins 1st sec 46th Open Palamos 815mls and 2nd sec 68th Open Palamos plus 9th section at 698 miles and during her career flew 8 times over 600 miles including 4 times over 700 miles and three times over 800 miles!!!
"Ambition" won 1st section 37th Open NFC Pau at 703 miles and flew over 600 miles on four occasions.
The pair 11357 and 11381 are also in the pedigree of John's 1st National Tours and 1st National Tarbes 602mls. So a very good investment I'm sure you will agree.
John travelled up to Grimsby to collect the birds and on arrival found that Paul had left three birds in his garage for John to select his choice. These were 2 cocks and 1 hen and to say John was impressed would be an understatement!! They looked so good I that John took the 3 home. Paul later sent John another hen and the rest is history.
The following is brief report that I wrote on the Ludlam set up following his win in the 2011 Tarbes race with the Welsh SRNFC.
The loft set up comprises four lofts :- a 10ft x 8 ft stock loft with aviary; a 18 ft x 8ft young bird loft; a 10 ft x 8ft natural loft which houses 6 pairs and a 24ft x 6ft widowhood loft. All lofts are fitted with floor grills to reduce the need for daily cleaning. The young bird loft has three sections. One is fitted with nest boxes while the other two sections are fitted out with pipo boxes.
The natural loft, to which the Tarbes National winner raced, could also be used as a round about loft as one section has 12 nest boxes whilst the other section is fitted out with lift off perches. Bricon ETS is used in all lofts.
John races a team of 30 widowhood cocks along with 30 widowhood hens on total widowhood. In addition to this team he has 6 pairs of natural racers which are aimed at the long distance classic races. The stock team amounts to 15 pairs of birds of mainly long distance origin from Steve Wright at the House of Aarden, Patrick Brothers and Mr & Mrs Woolliss.
The race results of the offspring from all three sources have proved exceptional and I know that John would want me to thank Steve and Lesley Wright of the House of Aarden; Steve and Philip Patrick and Paul and Wendy Woolliss for providing him with some terrific base pigeons on which he has built his successful team of middle and long distance racers.
A team of between 70 -100 young birds is bred from these and a large proportion of these are raced on the darkness with a later round of around 20 babies raced naturally. If fit and in good health the darkness young birds are raced weekly throughout the program. On the other hand the natural youngsters are brought on more steadily depending on the state of the moult.
The stock birds are usually mated in late November/early December followed by the widowhood team in January and the natural pigeons on or around 14th February.
Once their domestic duties are over the widowhood team are exercised at home for 1 hour at dawn and then again at around 3 pm. They get three training spins from the Severn Bridge approximately 25 miles and are then kept at it with weekly racing at Fed level. The natural team enjoy an open loft in between the times that the widowhood team are at exercise and also get a number of 50 mile training tosses to bring them into condition for the channel races. The Tarbes birds and other birds destined for the long distance classics usually get three short channel races in preparation topped up with three 50 mile trainers in the build up to their target race. All birds are fed by hand with the addition of extra food fed in the nest boxes for those birds going to the longer channel races.
John uses the Gem mixtures developed by Brian Wall as well as Mariman and Beyers mixes as and when he feels the need. He swears by Norban products especially the BIOMATE probiotic powder which he uses with the young birds on a regular basis with the aim of warding off the dreaded YBS.
So we come to the main reason for my visit – the 2011 Tarbes National winner. She proved to be a lovely compact and well balanced medium sized dark chequer hen. She is a mixture of bloodlines via House of Aarden and Patrick Brothers on the sire’s side and Patrick Brothers and Paul Woolliss on the dam’s side and therefore contains Jan Aarden, Van Wanroy and Van de Wegen genes through De Barcelona, Lady Wegen and Invincible Spirit. The second bird in the clock from the 2011 Tarbes race, winning 2nd sect 6th Open [The Barcelona Hen mentioned above] was another hen raced on the natural system and is pure Woolliss. This hen was slightly bigger than the National winner with a bit more depth to the keel and a lovely bold head with outstanding eye sign.
We couldn’t have left without handling the winner of 1st National Tours for John in 2010. This lovely dark chequer pied hen is once again a combination of Patrick Brothers and Woolliss bloodlines and came into the hand like a dream.
Before leaving we handled a number of the stock birds which had been separated for the winter. These were an impressive bunch especially the Woolliss pigeons which were tough looking street fighters – and that was just the hens!
That then is a brief report on John Ludlam's Barcelona Hen, which if all goes well, will be competing with the BICC from the Catalan capital once again in 2014.
Gareth Watkins
John Ludlam has had a long career in pigeon racing and during those years has been skilful and fortunate enough to have raced many good pigeons but none more so than a brave five year old blue hen that has competed with great success in a number of long distance races from southern France and accross the border into Spain.
I give you here the blue hen's race record at the distance:-
2010 Bergerac 500 mls 7th Sec WSRNFC
2010 Bergerac 500 mls 18th Open WSRNFC
2011 Tarbes 602 mls 2nd Sec WSRNFC
2011 Tarbes 602 mls 6th Open WSRNFC
2012 Tarbes 602 mls 3rd Sec WSRNFC
2012 Tarbes 602 mls 19th Open WSRNFC
2013 Barcelona 754 mls 5th Sec BICC
2013 Barcelona 754 mls 21st Open BICC.
In the two Tarbes races she was liberated with the NFC and would have appeared well up on the NFC result on both occasions.
Her breeding shows a strong influence of the long distance Van Wanroy bloodlines of Paul Woolliss of Grimsby and I have added here some brief details of her breeding:-
Sire is GB07E11357 bred by Paul Woolliss out of Palona also Lona.
Dam is GB07E11381 bred by Paul Woolliss out of Ambition Van-Wanroy.
"Palona" won 1st sec 7th open Palamos 815mls whilst "Lona" had among her many long distance wins 1st sec 46th Open Palamos 815mls and 2nd sec 68th Open Palamos plus 9th section at 698 miles and during her career flew 8 times over 600 miles including 4 times over 700 miles and three times over 800 miles!!!
"Ambition" won 1st section 37th Open NFC Pau at 703 miles and flew over 600 miles on four occasions.
The pair 11357 and 11381 are also in the pedigree of John's 1st National Tours and 1st National Tarbes 602mls. So a very good investment I'm sure you will agree.
John travelled up to Grimsby to collect the birds and on arrival found that Paul had left three birds in his garage for John to select his choice. These were 2 cocks and 1 hen and to say John was impressed would be an understatement!! They looked so good I that John took the 3 home. Paul later sent John another hen and the rest is history.
The following is brief report that I wrote on the Ludlam set up following his win in the 2011 Tarbes race with the Welsh SRNFC.
The loft set up comprises four lofts :- a 10ft x 8 ft stock loft with aviary; a 18 ft x 8ft young bird loft; a 10 ft x 8ft natural loft which houses 6 pairs and a 24ft x 6ft widowhood loft. All lofts are fitted with floor grills to reduce the need for daily cleaning. The young bird loft has three sections. One is fitted with nest boxes while the other two sections are fitted out with pipo boxes.
The natural loft, to which the Tarbes National winner raced, could also be used as a round about loft as one section has 12 nest boxes whilst the other section is fitted out with lift off perches. Bricon ETS is used in all lofts.
John races a team of 30 widowhood cocks along with 30 widowhood hens on total widowhood. In addition to this team he has 6 pairs of natural racers which are aimed at the long distance classic races. The stock team amounts to 15 pairs of birds of mainly long distance origin from Steve Wright at the House of Aarden, Patrick Brothers and Mr & Mrs Woolliss.
The race results of the offspring from all three sources have proved exceptional and I know that John would want me to thank Steve and Lesley Wright of the House of Aarden; Steve and Philip Patrick and Paul and Wendy Woolliss for providing him with some terrific base pigeons on which he has built his successful team of middle and long distance racers.
A team of between 70 -100 young birds is bred from these and a large proportion of these are raced on the darkness with a later round of around 20 babies raced naturally. If fit and in good health the darkness young birds are raced weekly throughout the program. On the other hand the natural youngsters are brought on more steadily depending on the state of the moult.
The stock birds are usually mated in late November/early December followed by the widowhood team in January and the natural pigeons on or around 14th February.
Once their domestic duties are over the widowhood team are exercised at home for 1 hour at dawn and then again at around 3 pm. They get three training spins from the Severn Bridge approximately 25 miles and are then kept at it with weekly racing at Fed level. The natural team enjoy an open loft in between the times that the widowhood team are at exercise and also get a number of 50 mile training tosses to bring them into condition for the channel races. The Tarbes birds and other birds destined for the long distance classics usually get three short channel races in preparation topped up with three 50 mile trainers in the build up to their target race. All birds are fed by hand with the addition of extra food fed in the nest boxes for those birds going to the longer channel races.
John uses the Gem mixtures developed by Brian Wall as well as Mariman and Beyers mixes as and when he feels the need. He swears by Norban products especially the BIOMATE probiotic powder which he uses with the young birds on a regular basis with the aim of warding off the dreaded YBS.
So we come to the main reason for my visit – the 2011 Tarbes National winner. She proved to be a lovely compact and well balanced medium sized dark chequer hen. She is a mixture of bloodlines via House of Aarden and Patrick Brothers on the sire’s side and Patrick Brothers and Paul Woolliss on the dam’s side and therefore contains Jan Aarden, Van Wanroy and Van de Wegen genes through De Barcelona, Lady Wegen and Invincible Spirit. The second bird in the clock from the 2011 Tarbes race, winning 2nd sect 6th Open [The Barcelona Hen mentioned above] was another hen raced on the natural system and is pure Woolliss. This hen was slightly bigger than the National winner with a bit more depth to the keel and a lovely bold head with outstanding eye sign.
We couldn’t have left without handling the winner of 1st National Tours for John in 2010. This lovely dark chequer pied hen is once again a combination of Patrick Brothers and Woolliss bloodlines and came into the hand like a dream.
Before leaving we handled a number of the stock birds which had been separated for the winter. These were an impressive bunch especially the Woolliss pigeons which were tough looking street fighters – and that was just the hens!
That then is a brief report on John Ludlam's Barcelona Hen, which if all goes well, will be competing with the BICC from the Catalan capital once again in 2014.
Gareth Watkins