4-H Exploration Days

4-H Exploration Days Group
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

One of my great pleasures as a pigeon fancier is to get to share my birds with others. And the icing on the cake, so to speak, is to share them with young people. I had the privilege again this year of teaching a session at the Michigan 4-H Exploration Days in East Lansing. And I was lucky enough to get a great group of kids to work with and an excellent assistant, Janine. It's truly an extra special pleasure to be able to talk to smart kids that ask me good questions that keep me on my toes as a pigeon fancier trying to tell others about my hobby. Kudos to all the kids for making the session as much fun for me as I hope it was for all of them. I had a BLAST!

By the way, Janine took the pictures--all of which you can see here.

A Visit to the Loft of Ed Bachmann

Ed Showing Off White Jacobin
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

I have the pleasure of working with a few kids who are involved with the 4-H club at Bowers School Farm. They've been so good about helping with the pigeons I wanted to do something extra special for them as a means of thanking them. Ed Bachmann, who's a pretty nice guy and one heck of a pigeon man, was kind enough to let the kids visit his loft, see his excellent jacobins and see his amazing trophy room. Many thanks to Ed for his time and for sharing his amazing loft with these kids.

You can see the entire set of photos I took during our visit here.

National Youth Pigeon Club

It's my understanding that these folks in Florida are working to create a national junior pigeon club--sort of an NPA for juniors. It seems they've gotten a scholarship program going. Having worked with youth quite a bit over the last couple of years and knowing a few others that have done the same I've got mixed feelings about yet another attempt to get juniors going with pigeons. I applaud their efforts but at the same time I think to myself there are already excellent youth development organizations in place (4-H comes to mind). I sometimes think that pigeon fanciers are as prone to suffer from NIH syndrome as are engineers and software developers. I mean there's never a downside to enthusiasm but what's so broken about the existing youth development organizations that we need to invent yet another youth group?

The Kids Are All Right

It's my pleasure to work with some young pigeon fanciers as part of the Oakland 4-H Fliers 4-H club. A few of them entered birds at the Michigan State Fair and they did pretty well.

Danielle D. got a 1st and 2nd place Trumpeter (as well as having the best Trumpeter) , she got a 1st and 2nd on her Indian Fantails as well as best young bird, her Birmingham Roller got a 1st, her Show King placed 4th and her educational exhibit came in 3rd.

Jess M. got a 1st and 2nd place in the Lahores; 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the Old German Owls, a 3rd place in Koromoner Tumblers and a 1st on her Swing Pouter.

I'm very proud to be associated with these two fine young ladies and I'm glad that I could help them a bit.