At 57 years of age, I have been very fortunate in my life to be successfully involved in various competitive sports – HUMAN AND ANIMAL. Only in the pigeon sport have I ever heard of evaluating athletes by “EYE SIGN”. I have never witnessed nor heard of coaches, owners, general mangers or parents looking into the eyes of their players, young children or livestock with a “jeweler’s loupe” to see if they were going to be a good performer, top breeder, sprinter, long distance athlete, etc.
I have owned, raced and bred horses. I have gone to several top sales and auctions, and I have never heard or witnessed an eye sign theory to select racing or breeding stock in horses.
The same applies in dog racing, fighting chickens, dog fighting or other types of animal competition that is legal or illegal. Nobody has any theories or evaluation procedures with eye sign. WHY? Because they would be laughed out of the sport for such a theory. It is ridiculous for those sports or competitions, and it is just as silly to believe they can be used in the pigeon sport to help with success.
I read advertisements about eye sign specialists, racing eyes, sprinting eyes, distance eyes, eye sign pairing and mating, graders, teachers and scientific research about eye sign. Only in the pigeon sport do some fanciers believe and practice these methods. Of course, there are other methods we also use in the pigeon sport for evaluation and culling that many have faith in, such as wing formation, strong or weak back, soft or hard muscle, throat configuration, color of toe nails, short or long keel, and maybe 20 more physical characteristics that are used as methods of selecting breeding or flying stock.
In all of these theories never do I hear mention the one major requirement necessary for the racing pigeon to be successful: The ability to find his way home, “HOMING ABILITY”. The intelligence and navigation skills to be 100-600 miles from home and race and navigate to return home to his loft the same day. Without this ability to home and navigate, all the other qualities mean nothing. Yet the graders, teachers, master breeders, specialists, etc. never seem to be concerned about this one aspect of our sport.
Can they grade intelligence, heart, determination, motivation or desire just by handling a bird, opening his wing, looking at the throat or looking into the eyes? PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK! YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS AND REALLY BELIEVE THIS IS POSSIBLE! To spend your money and time applying these methods to achieve success is foolish.
Like I said before, only in the pigeon sport do these experts exist (self proclaimed experts). WHY? Because we in the sport look for any short cut to success. There is none. The only way to be successful in this sport is the old fashioned way, to work for it, and earn it.
The sad thing about these so called experts graders and eye sign experts is that I truly believe they think they have the ability to select birds by their methods.
Only in the pigeon sport can they find individuals gullible and naive enough to listen and sometimes practice their methods. No other sport or competition would consider such theories with a straight face.
We talk about our sport being on the decline, and there are many reasons for it. What a shame if a new flyer gets involved with one of our eye sign experts, and spends his time and money on their methods. After a few years, if he stays that long, with little or no positive results, we lose another potential fancier and maybe a few of his friends.
Yes, I am being hard on these individuals because I TRULY BELIEVE THEY ARE HURTING OUR SPORT for some small financial gain or a personal ego trip, or both.
As I have said in many other articles, you have the best graders in the world, the training basket and race day. By training and racing your birds you will be evaluating yourself as well as evaluating and culling your birds.
You as a trainer may need some improvement in different aspects of the sport: feeding, training, medication, trapping and loft management. It is hard for us to accept the blame for poor results or heavy loses. We much rather blame the birds, the weather, the transport company, or some other area, but not our own abilities or methods.
To select breeders and flyers is a very simple procedure. PERFORMANCE should be your only criteria. Does the bird come from a winning family, generation after generation of excellent race results? If the answer is yes, then the bird is worth taking a chance on in the breeding or flying loft.
Performance means the type of results necessary to compete in your area: speeds, distances, weather and land conditions. If the bird’s family has shown that it can be competitive, that is all you need to know. Forget about his eyes, wings, back, muscles, throat or keel.
Occasionally I will go to a auction, especially if it is sponsored by an excellent flyer and offers birds with race records. I see these domestic birds, some with multiple diplomas, sell for much less then birds with foreign bands and no race results. The excuses are that he is to long, has no chest, has a weak back, has no breeding eye, etc. FORGET THOSE THEORIES! The bird has already proven itself in race competition with multiple diplomas. He has the ability, and he has already proven it. You would have no problem taking a chance on breeding this bird with another performance bird with the same ability.
“SAME ABILITY” means proper breeding: speed to speed and distance to distance. If the bird has multiple diplomas at various speeds and distances that is even better. You really should not care about eye sign, or how the bird handles.
The sport is changing everyday. New ideas and theories are advertised, sold and practiced. However, the basic principle still applies: no homing ability and navigating skills, no positive results. You cannot find these abilities by looking into the eyes. Regular training and racing and selecting breeding and flying stock for performance results and bloodlines is the only path to success.
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Article Written by: Bob Prisco
Good eavening, my name is John i would like ti say that i did enjoy the artickle it is verry direct and neet, but maybe with a little anger. You see most of the tima toeries are just what they are – teories!! Most of the time, just like the artickle mentions people have the need to believe in something superior that will make them choose better birds and they take a chance some with eye sign, others with other teories, and a few of them succeed, and those that succeed would succeed with any other teorie or even without a teorie beacouse they are good with what they do. Now i am going to tell my little story, one time i purchased a female bird that was outstanding in log distance, in 5 races she scoord 1st, 2nd, 1st, 3rd,and another 1st, wec usually fly 6 longdistance races but on one of them she could not go beacouse she was laying eggs. This bird was so important to me beacouse it was from my line of pigeons (good middle distance) and a crossover with long distance birds and i purchased such bird, it was expensive but worth it(those wer my thot’s, the day i went to pay for it and bring it home, in hands it was a masterpiece and so beutifull and good, mwen i looked at the eye i said to my self you are a racer, a top racer but will never be a breeder, and unfortunately for me i was so so right. This precius bird had like 10 or 12 cocks, the best ones, from my line , from other lines, her childrem bred half brothers and sisters, sos back to her, grand sons back to her, and never gave one good one, this was the worst deal i ever made. Conclusion – i am not saying that eyesign will make you a champion from night to day, i am not saying that a pigeon is good beacouse it has a splended eye, but i will assure you that “all good pigeons have great eyes”, i havent seen one that does’nt have one, some good racing eyes, and a few good breeding eyes, now one thing else ” you have to no how to recognize it”, the same way you no wen your pigeons are in shape or not. I will say just this more, 95% of pigeon fanciers wen they handle a pigeon look to 3 things, wing, trouth and eye, i think that says it all. John Fontes.
Gee I am sure sorry you feel it came across with anger; it was much more, sadness. Sadness that making a dollar is more important for many than making it easier for the new fancier and or junior fliers to participate in this great hobby.
Thank you for your comment as it did speak directly to the point I was attempting to make.
For me
for me It has to have balance of all the quality plus the performance
To anyone who has asked about eyesign, and not gotten a good answer… Probably the reason you have not received an answer is because there is much that is not known. You can get a variety of answers to similar questions like, ‘How do they know how to find their way home?’ I would venture to say most if not all the answers to that question would leave you asking more questions and not be satisfied with the first or any of the answers.
I would like to believe there is a connection between the two… that is to say the make up of the eye has a direct correlation on the speed and accuracy of the homing ability.
There are a few “givens”, one must subscribe to when going down this path. Namely horses and dogs are not pigeons and though they all race the similarity stops there.
The argument has been used, “what about the eye of a dog or a horse there is no credecnce given to their eyes make up when selecting racing or breeding stock.” That is true and comparing dogs and horses to racing pigeons in that vein is like comparing apples and oranges.
Yes they are all three used for racing…but the dogs must have something to chase, and the horse must have a jockey kicking and whipping him to race.
Our pigeons require neither. Horses and dogs run around a “track” they do not “HOME”. So if we can agree we really cannot compare the homing abilities of dogs and horses to Racing Homing Pigeons, then we can advance in our understanding of why the eye is an important tool when selecting brreding stock for next years hopefuls.
To further this point and drive it home let me expound.
The next part of the puzzle is the eye itself. If you look at a dog or a horse, 99.9% of them have plain dark eyes. Much like the bull eyes seen on many splashes in our birds. In other words there is not any variation from one eye to the next which is plainly visible.
Our birds like people, have incredibly diverse eyes, from nearly white to dark red, green, yellow, orange, and many variations and combinations of these colors. The color is not important.
Let me repeat that, THE COLOR IS NOT IMPORTANT. What is important is all the things you see in an eye, the variations in color and structure from the pupil out to the health ring.
The more DIFFERENT things which look like mountain peaks and valleys, cracks, crevises, black spots, color variations etc. the better.
It is important to keep in mind there is no 100% sure fire way to success in any venture. Instead we must look for ways to increase our odds on race day. Increase the percentage of offspring capable of racing, and homing in as direct a path as possible in race time.
So what does “eye sign” tell you (me)?
First let me qualify a few things. Any pigeon with the physical make up and adequate muscle which is healthy and well trained can win a race on the right day. We want to find a way to increase our percentages of winning on race day.
Here is a quick “tortiose and hare” story.
I was present at a one loft racing event a number of years ago. The loft location was steller. Up on a knoll with 360 degree views, you could see the birds a long way off.
As all the participants watched with much anticipation for the first glimpse of the winning bird, someone yelled, “here they come, look over there!” Sure enough a flock of about 30 – 40 birds (out of over 300 sent) was seen flying at an incredible speed off to the northeast heading straight south.
The crowd watched in disbelief as the birds never broke toward the loft. They continued on a line a half mile or so east of the loft, straight south until they disappeared on the horizon. Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. Finally a lone bird appeared from the north and homed true to the loft, hit the landing board and clocked. Then someone yelled, “here comes one from the south!” Then another appeared from the south, then another and within 10 minutes after the first bird clocked there were a dozen more in the trap. Then birds seemed to be raining in from every direction.
Now if fifty on lookers had not seen the first group overfly the loft, it would have been assumed the first bird in the trap would have been the fastest one in the race that day…she wasn’t. True she was the first one in the clock but not the fastest bird.
BUT also SHE was the one which homed true, straight to the loft.
This is an indication that speed is not everything and the birds are like a bunch of teenagers when in a flock, meaning you cannot be sure what they will do.
So back to what eyesign can offer you. When you understand different characteristics in the eye seem to appear over and over with the first birds back to your loft, with everything else being equal (training health, loft, bloodline) a prudent fancier would investigate these similarities and use them to his advantage.
For most this sounds like work and most people really do not want to learn, it is easier to make excuses and complain.
Here is the hard and fast rule which is seldom if ever talked about. Pigons home in a zig zag pattern. As they get closer to home the zigs and zags happen more frequently causing the effect of a straighter trajectory the closer they get to home. They are “feeling” their way home through maybe the magnetic fields in the atmosphere, we really cannot be 100% sure. So the birds which “straighten out” the quickest are the first ones in the clock. We need to be breeding birds based on the [u]consistancy [/u]of this and this alone, NOT PEDIGREES!
Why not pedigrees? As with the eye, the pedigree is only a tool as much as the eye. The man who flew the birds in the pedigree you are looking at is not there to mate your birds for you, train or care for them, or pick the right ones to send on race day!
The pedigrees are simply an indicator of what may be possible if you do your part. Oh and if you are looking at a pedigree which has NO VERIFIABLE RECORD OF WINNING on it, that is what you can expect as well!
I believe the eye can provide the discerning fancier an invaluable tool if he is willing to learn how to use it. I believe it is more valuable than a pedigree, mostly because a pedigree is only as good as the person who wrote it, and in an open loft breeding situation can you really be sure?
I would also like to mention here that most if not all of the TOP feather merchants today, before they were well known, (yes I was around when they started selling birds)were eye guys. That was the one thing they had in common, the one thing that helped seperate them from the pack. The one thing they themselves could point to which gave them the “winning edge” and allowed them to make a big enough name for themselver to be able to sell birds.
Well NONE of them now will publicly admit the eye is of any more value than they need two. Why? Because they sell every healthy bird they can!
No I am not jealous, I am sad, sad for the sport because so many people look for the quick fix to be first on race day. To much of the sport has become about making money (which there is nothing wrong with if you do it with integrity). They are not students of the sport, they cannot develop their own family of birds. Even if they happen upon a hit pair in 2 or 3 years they must buy new birds because they cannot duplicate past the current generation.
The feather merchants are the best and worst things that has happened to this sport, and are in my opinion one of the main reasons for its downfall. The best part because they have imported some incredible birds and families over the years. And the worst because they have also imported pure junk knowing that with that European band they can get top dollar regardless of the true quality.
Yes I am sad as I watch something I love die a grueling death all in the name of making money, not nurturing the next generation of fanciers.
Their is an old book that was written in France called “Guenen on milk cows” in this book the author explains how a farmer can pick the best milk cow out of the herd by examining
the hair on the rear end of the cow where it changes direction. I looked at a few of my cows and thought their might be something to it. By the way he called it the feather of the cow.
It has been my experience that we as people do not know what we do not know!
Eye Sign, where to begin. Most people who do not give “eye sign” much merit simply have not taken the time, or simply do not understand what they are seeing, or what they are looking for in their birds eyes.
I can assure you once you understand it, and apply this knowledge your loft and flying career will never again be the same.
For the last 30 years I have been a student of the eye sign theory, and have proven to myself and many others it is way beyond theory.
The proof is in the pudding, and is not something that every one has the capacity to learn. I have tried to teach my best friend for the last 15 years and he just does not get it. He understands the basics, but he cannot apply it.
For the last twenty years I have taken every challenge by all comers and have proven to 100% of them that I can pick their best breeders (of winners) using my eyesign understanding. Without any prior knowledge of them or their birds, of their flying record.
Not all great racers have great breeding potential to pass this racing quality on to their offspring. And by the same token, the best breeder in your loft may only be an average racer.
Once you understand how to utilize the signs in the eye for all to see, you will enjoy much more success on race day. The key to the entire puzzle is learning how to mate the birds.
After 45 years of trial and error messing with the birds there are several thing which are paramomount to fully understanding the big picture when it comes to racing.
1) What is “SPEED” really when it comes to our feathered atheletes?
Is it really that one bird can fly faster than ALL the others, or faster for a given length of time thn all the others?
2) The right “TYPE” as in body structure?
I have seen every “type” win races! Big, small, skinny, heavy, corky, wide tail, narrow tail, long “short arm”, short “short arm” wide vents, tight vents, and the list goes on. These are all preferences we place based on our own likes and dislikes. Nothing more than a beauty contest, however, there are tendencies towards breeding a higher percentage of breeders of top racers. This is what I would hope each of you would strive for.
Remember this one thing, “The future success of any racing loft lies with the quality of the hens in the breeding loft.” You can NEVER have to many really good hens.
If anyone wishes to explore any of this information, just let me know.
The extreame challenge is to develop a family
in this day and age with respect to knowledge gained by fanciers all over the world … any one who proclaims eye sign is rubbish is a result of their ignorance on the subject and, in most part such fanciers are not a diamond in the sport as they assume they are. fanciers trully knowledgeable about eye sign are not few, and many like me gave up at teaching those who have no chance to better their results and enjoyment of the sport because of their attitude. i can safely state the principles of eye sign sit on one page; not in a book
i agree eyes and other theories are a waste of time proven birds are the best way to go.You can not tell what is in their heart and brains by any theories. I have had winners that others said would be lost. I only want birds with a proven race record in my breeding loft. I have tried others but my sucess with them has been very low compared to those with racing records.
The quickest way to get proven birds is to breed from stock or buy stock with great eyesign. Big pigeon breeders try to rubbish eyesign because they want to sell all of the birds they breed, not only the ones with great eyesign.
one word BRILLIANT
A bird that wins a race or multiple races in a season is still going to have two eyes, regardless of colour or ‘sign’. Many years ago, I participated in the on-line Oscar Devries eye sign game. To my surprise, I won, having selected the eyes to the race birds that I thought would be the better birds in the Devries race team. I live in Brisbane, Australia & I never held the birds, new their history, or anything else related to the Devries race loft in Canada. It was just fun, something to do, & the following year ‘bombed out’ in the correct selections….but then again, I could ‘blame’ the quality of the photo’s….LOL
I do agree with this article coz in india even now u can find the people judging a pigeon only by its eyes and it does work. as per my knowledge every one has their own style of selecting a pigeon and they are good at their style y not let them do it their own way anyways good luck to everyone.