Midnight Forest Lofts
Home to Trumpeters, Form pigeons, Classic Old Frills, and rare colored Racing Homers
Flying Racing Homers
When I first found out about pigeons it was the racing homers that I fell in love with. Cory Floden, then of Perham, Minnesota showed me his small loft and I was hooked. After I was found out by many old time fanciers, they helped a junior member out with birds and soon my small flock of 12 birds exploded to over 100 birds. Many thanks to Jack Hoffman, Keary Duval, Bob Brekken, Fred Haring, Dennis Imdieke and others who helped get me started in the right direction. Since my beginning I focused on mostly Janssen, HVR, Buitta, Coudou Fabry families and concentrated these birds to be bred back to the Janssen lines as I preferred a special look. I closed my flock and worked with what I had and then found Tom Barnhart and he was producing barless birds. I purchased a few barless birds, birds that carried barless and a cream bar to get me in to the more rare patterns and colors. Tom has been my go to guy for racing homers with performance pedigrees ever since, getting a few birds from him in 2015, 2018 and 2020 as well.
When we picked our homers back up from Darin we had about 12 birds left, down from all the birds we had back in the 90s and 00's. From this small group we doubled down and started getting a bit more serious again about breeding nice typey birds with good feather and muscle, pleasant to look at and with performance backgrounds.
We also sent a blue barless hen and an indigo barless hen to Denny Kuhn to help create his barless foundation team that he was very successful with, as well as Tim Kvidera both of Minnesota.
We are now raising mostly barless pattern birds in Ash Red/Ash Yellow, Blue/Silver, Indigo, Opal, Brown/Khaki as well as a few bars/checks in these colors that carry barless.
in 2021 we added reduced, rubella, recessive opal, frosty, and recessive red/yellow to the mix, as well as spread black. All of these birds are from flocks that race in local/combine clubs and/or One Loft Races, and I have always stressed the importance of pretty but purposeful.
we are hoping to fly our young birds in 2022 with a local club and send a few out to OLRs.
Past Homers
This blue check hen was one of my all time favorite birds. "Mona" as she was called was as beautiful Janssen based hen who I trained out to 150 miles. She won many show classes, reserve of show, and produced many wonderful young. Most of our birds now are descended down from her, 24 years after she was born.
One of our first barless homers we raised. Also a hen.
Below, several of our barless birds in winter (blue, indigo, ash red, indigo) with the old cream bar from Tom in there too.
The indigo bar was a daughter or grand daughter of "Mona" above. Same look I love in my hens with good feathering and body on a bird I trained out to 125 miles.
