Cattrysse brothers and their widowhood feed

We remember as though it were just yesterday the day that the Catrysse Brothers won the Libourne National and the day, in the same year, they won the Carcassonne National.

Historical picture : (Vic Vansalen) - From the left to the right :
Oscar Cattrysse, Bossuyt, Charles Vander Espt,Wilfried Staes, Andre Vanbruaene and Emiel Denys

At that time Moere was already a Mecca for pigeon fanciers. Everyone would like to see these crack-flyers as they were in 1949 when "45" and "Angoulêmke" won the Angoulême race to Hamme with a 19 minute advance picking up 73.680 francs !
A lot of fanciers wanted to learn the finer details of the Cattrysse Brothers' widowhood care. They were always astonished to see that all the good feed left in the pigeon feeders was thrown out. It was good looking food.

The birds always had their feeders full of tehe following mixture :
60 % cinqantino corn,
15 % beans,
10 % green peas,
12.5 % wheat,
2.5 % linseed.

The Cattrysse Brothers never changed their feeding system except during the winter months. Once the last flight was fully grown the mixture was changed to include 50 % barley.
All this was as simple and straightforward as "How do you do ?" but the Cattrysse birds were terrific.

Were the Barcelona birds Faster in the 1920's
or were they slower than 20 years later ?

Since the 1981 and 1982 Barcelona races had very fast endings, and this was the case in previous races, certain know-it-all fanciers contend that the modern racing pigeon does not need as long to fly the 1.075 km (673 miles) as the 1920 birds.
We have noted that it used to take 3 to 7 days for all the prizes to be won. It is not always the quality of the birds that deremines how fast the race will be over, it is rather dependant upon the weather conditions these air marathoners encounter.
It is easy to make a comparison by checking the data available.

Here is how the races went in the 20's.