It was a dream ... the desire to have pigeons in the breeding loft from Verkerk Bas & Gerard.
First time I heard about this fanciers was in 2010. They immediately impressed me for two reasons: having so many Olympic pigeons and the fact that none of them was being sold. That year I got in touch with Bas and this contact is lasting so far. After I made contact, I started to collaborate with my friend Wieslaw Mlot. In my opinion one of the best fanciers in Poland in terms of results. The quality of his pigeons and breeding skills are high. For 10 years he was the only one in the top of ten of the General Polish Championships flight 300-700km. Once, when I was collecting pigeons from him, I told about the Verkerk family and their results. I also mentioned that there was currently an auction of their pigeons on the PIPA auction portal. Several purchases were missed. Nevertheless, I tried to persuade him it was worth trusting by mentioning a few of his purchases. Finally, he agreed to buy a pigeon together from Verkerk, pointing out that he was only interested in the best. He chose a son of Olympic Fire Eyes, who is himself son of the Eye Catcher of Olympic Solange's sister. These two hens don’t need any introduction to anyone who knows the pigeons of the Verkerk family. We set a budget, but when emotions won out at the auction, we needed more. Fortunately we were able to buy ‘Expected’, Olympic Fire Eyes' son.
At this point I have to mention the pressure I felt, because I knew that Wieslaw would trust these pigeons, they must be better than his own. I repeatedly told him that the Verkerk pigeons their favorite distance is 300-700 km with an indication of 500 km, although they managed to win even in 800 km flights. So I was really looking forward to the 500 km flights.
The yearling hen PL-0418-21-9358, daughter of "Expected" became the 1 Yearling ACE pigeon after 4 x 500 km & 2 x 700 km flights. She was also 35th against all yearlings and old birds together, in a region with almost 300 fanciers and 10.000 pigeons.
Once again I understood how important it is to try to be the best at what we do. Hours and days spent on analysis and research turned out to make sense.
Because, I love to analyze the pedigrees, and I think I know a lot about Verkerk breeding, in the meantime we also bought a daughter of Bonita on PIPA, who gave the super breeding pigeon "Tanguy" at the Eijerkamp loft.
What I understand is that if you want to win against the best, you have to bring the best into your loft and then select it.
At this point, I would like to thank Wiesław Młot for the trust he has placed in me, the Verkerk family for great material for breeding work, especially Bas for all the answers and the complete PIPA team, which cares about customer satisfaction.