First of all a recap of the world championship in Zwolle.

This was the crowning achievement of my work with birds worldwide. I won 6 gold, 5 silver and 2 bronze medals, I don’t believe that’s ever been done before.

Next up is the breeding itself.

I’d rather forget it as soon as possible. This is the worst season I’ve had in the 35 years that I do this. I brought home lice from the world championship in Zwolle. There were a lot of foreign birds there that had a lot of lice on them, I had about 44 birds that got them. In January it wasn’t that bad but when it started to get warm a lot of them showed up. I tried a lot, mainly to get rid of the black lice, but nothing worked. About 30 old birds died, mostly from Zwolle, and about 50 young ones died. Fortunately I got about 270 instead of the usual 300. To get rid of the lice I sprayed the cages with Intermitox and used Milban on the birds with a drop of U22 in the neck, some tabacco stems in the nest, Ardap Aktiv-Puder powder and Exzolt from Coutteel. Unfortunately there were just too many. Hopefully next year will be better.