Matt Rakes Pigeons

Latest news

Congratulations to Kev Whitham!! 2nd Open Scottish YB National with a descendant of my superstar "Indy". Kev has other birds in the top 20 too. Great flying Kev, hopefully 1 better next year!

Latest Results

Classic YB Guernsey - I chose 13 birds that had enough feathers in them (I do not darken my yb's) for my end of season event. I had 2 birds arrive together that look like being 7th & 8th Open Classic with more birds right behind them that will claim good prizes. I had 11/13 in just over an hour and all 13 birds back. After 5 yb races I still have 56 of my 70 yb's left to chose from for next year.

With Old Birds another difficult year awaited us. For me it was clear the birds were in good shape with the 1st Messac, 9th Combine from 3,000 birds. This year I tried to focus on 3 marathon races. First of all came Pau international with a 45th National (same hen 33rd National last year) then onto Pau Classic with a 13th section and then St Vincent International with a 58th National prize (provisional) with a hen bred from my best breeding half brother to Indy

New Introductions

This year I have been fortunate to get a few real gems! The stunning blue wf hen that won 1st Classic Tarbes and then 11th Classic Bergerac 3 weeks later! I was also able to buy the parents of this amazing bird. A photo of this hen is on here in the 'pigeons' section, 'top racing birds'

My loft remains based around the wonderful family of pigeons created by the distance matador Ton Bollebakker, a friend and long distance master. Coupled with these are the Lazeroms Aardens of Cees Luykx. This Netherlands Barcelona National winning legend had the finest team of birds I have ever seen. After his untimely death all his birds were sold on PIPA but thankfully I had bought from the best he had before this time.

Supplementing this are the finest long distance birds of Anne Bruinsma and the  have been introduced. These are the finest Van Geels, capable of performing over 830 miles from Barcelona, Europes most prestigious race.

Also last winter I was fortunate to buy a stunning pair of Van Geels that are the parents of 1st NPO Teletext Bergerac, who in turn is the g/sire of 9th Prov and 1st teletext Bordeaux!! Very tough pigeons for long hot races, you dont find thse pairs very often. Pictures of them are in the 'pigeons' menu and then 'top breeders'