Pigeon racing course at taiwan universities!

Tsai Shin-shiung of National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, a professor with 36 years of experience under his belt, is teaching the course there and at National Chiayi University. The first class session this week met with an enthusiastic reception from students.

Southern Taiwan is now in the grip of the spring pigeon racing season, with tens of thousands of birds to be tested for a month or more. The class was attended not only by graduate students; many new pigeon handlers seized the opportunity to attend Tsai's class as auditors. They took notes furiously and interrupted frequently with questions, hoping to turn Tsai's broad knowledge into practical success and races won.

Tsai, 62, said there is no textbook to follow for his class. He simply presents the accumulated experience of many years, distilling it in his lecture notes. He touches upon biology, disease prevention, management, feed and medication selection, as well as other topics. The students seemed to be most interested in actual racing, which is not included in the curriculum, but they are welcome to hang around after class for some informal talk.

Taiwan has more racing pigeon events than any other country in the world, Tsai said, and can point to between two and three million birds. Nearly 500,000 people race pigeons on the island. Each year, prize money for races reaches the billions of NT dollars, and aficionados will do anything possible to attain victory.

However, the majorities of owners do not know much about the sport, and often select the wrong tonics or dose their birds in the wrong way, hurting rather than helping the birds' chances. This also leads to widespread abuse of medications in the pigeon-racing world, and the government has passed laws to try to get things back on track.

One pigeon lover, surnamed Lin, said Tsai has done a great job in organizing the salient points regarding pigeon management. He begins from the basic concepts, and then works his way deeper into the subject. Lin feels that students gain a lot from just one two-hour class, and he hopes to be able to audit more sessions.

Veterinary science grad student Chen Wei-yu had previously raised racing pigeons on an amateur basis with a friend. After listening to Tsai's lecture, which so deftly made a complex subject easy, he said he has a much better basic understanding about the birds.

Source : Taiwan Today
Thanks to Silvio Mattachione