A total of 1476 pigeons are registered for TGPR 2016. This number includes 1,228 local entries and 248 from foreign sources which is a big drop from the previous year level. The biggest drop is participation from the Middle East countries which sent less than twenty percent of their former year level. Despite their relatively successful results in the races, their birds suffered a higher ratio of losses due to health reasons. We think we understand the cause of this problem and could help alleviating the situation going forward (if our advice is observed,of course). Europe is still going through the economic downturn period and therefore, we cannot anticipate large number of birds from the Continent. The US has been dealing with the AIV outbreak in several states the past two years and it is not possible to send life birds to Thailand. Thanks to UK and China, we still have decent number of birds from these two countries. The drop in foreign input is greatly compensated by local birds which increase by 35 percent and now account for 83 % of the total.
Although there are some late shipments from abroad, all the birds have been settled and loft- trained vigorously for several weeks now. It was a good decision to extend the time of the whole program because the birds now have longer time to exercise around the loft before the first road training which will not start until late in October. That will be the time when the raining season is fading away and there will be less risk of bad weather. Up to now we have an excellent survival rate since 1320 birds or 90% of the original entries are still in the loft (inventory checking on September 14, 2016). Owners are welcome to observe loft trainings on week ends.
