If any of your birds are still unhappy with the baskets or seem unhealthy then do not risk flying them. It is better to be sure that your pigeons are healthy enough to fly home than to risk flying them because you were impatient. Before training begins the racing pigeons need to be wing stamped (Association rules) and vaccinated against paramyxovirus (legal requirement). Give the birds a practice toss from the other end of your garden, in sight of their loft, just to get them used to being basketed and released. From here they can start to be trained further afield. Their first proper training release should be done at around 5km from the loft and should go as follows:
- It should take place mid morning to give them plenty of time to return home before nightfall.
- Fed half their normal rations and given no morning exercise. By limiting the amount of food they eat you will increase their desire to get home.
- Weather should be clear with a light wind and minimal cloud cover.
- At the liberation point remove the basket from your car and put it on the floor. Leave it for around fifteen minutes to let your pigeons calm down and get their bearings. This is a very important step as birds released as soon as the basket is put on the floor will be scared and excited and will fly off without a clue where they are.
- Ensure that back at the loft the racing pigeons must enter through the trap.
On their first few training flights you will notice that it will take your racing pigeons longer than expected to return home. If you have followed my instructions then you need not worry, they will return faster each time and the amount of racing pigeons going missing will be minimal (you will have to accept, however, that sometimes racing pigeons can get lost and not return, unfortunately). Keep tossing your racing pigeons from this same point until they start arriving back at the loft in good time; at this point increase the liberation distance by 10km. When they are returning in good time from this new distance then add another 10km and so on and so forth. When the racing pigeons are being trained from 20km I start to introduce them to bad weather by taking them out regardless of the elements (aside from hurricane force winds, obviously!) because I think that it is a mistake to only train racing pigeons to fly in the sun. If they are going to meet all sorts of weather in a race situation then I feel they should have at least seen something similar to it before when training!