Racing in Western Norway

“Norway and its arctic conditions are hardly the ideal place to keep racing pigeons”, wrote The Racing Pigeon on 13th May 1994. Indeed pigeon racing in Norway can be a challenging sport, with birds of prey, mountainous terrain and adverse weather. We will provide an English version of the below summary soon to give you some insight into what challenges our pigeons face.

Norwegian Turbo members and Norwegian pigeon racing has also been featured in international pigeon magazines. The feature in Het Spoor: Der Kampioenen, 22 December 2017, provides a great overview and has been translated to English.(click on link)

 

Pigeon sport in Norway

The Federation (NBF) in Norway has only around 200 active members who is participating in racing. There are clubs in the cities from the Swedish border and around the coast line up to Bergen.

Bergen has the most members competing and today there are around 60 fanciers who participate in the racing season.

Due to the increasing number of predator’s we have seen many fanciers who has given up keeping racing pigeons and the decreasing of members has dropped over the last 20 years . The predators has just increased but the latest years the pigeons have been stronger and keep calm when attacked on a daily basis .

In order to keep on with our sport we have made some adjustment to what direction we let the pigeons race go from .Today we have 2 places in north who function good with minimum of losses of pigeons .Reason for this is that we let them go with tail wind and therefore the predator has less chance to take the pigeons when they are flying high up in high speed. Because of the geography in Norway with high mountains and change of weather conditions we cannot go longer than 200 km in north direction so in order to fly longer races we have gone to the east 300 km and 400 km near the Swedish border. This races are hard for the pigeons and we have to make sure they have the best conditions  in weather and wind direction before we release them.

Map from were the 300 km race take place flying to Bergen :

See below the height profile for the 300 km race

The above graph explain what the pigeons have to fly over in order to get home . High mountains and glaciers so temperature can vary from +20 to 5 degrees Celsius .Not an easy task for the pigeon but they manage well when the conditions are optimal .

This show what fantastic bird the racing pigeon are and why we have the affection for  these fabulous birds. With the care of the pigeons from a youngster to an adult they do not let us down as long we make sure they get the right food ,vitamins and training to get the athletes in good condition they will return to the loft.

 

 

.