The Mountain Lofts story of Ferdie, Pieter and JP Lubbe Jnr.
We start racing actively in 1983 as Ferdie Lubbe & son after obtaining our first pigeons from the late Frans Fouche, Hennie Faber as well as Sias Greyling all Ex Union and Federation champions. Starting with two strains namely Desmet Mathys and Lambrecht. In 1986 add Romein Janssens from Freek Romein out of his top Red Jansens. These three strains are the foundation of our loft. With these crossing we had endless success, and still continuing even today as they have the ability to pass the winning genes from one generation to another. We were always competitive ending within the top 5% of all fanciers in our organisation. These birds excel on the middle and long distances not only in our loft but in several other top lofts such as:- Whitey Hattingh ex THU Champion, Johan Hamilton, the late Pieter Schoeman jnr, Schimdt & Bouwer and Die Huysers one of Pretoria’s leading lofts currently just to name a few prominent fanciers who had success with pigeons out of our loft. We can fill a page full with all our satisfied fanciers who had success after they introduced some of our pigeons to their lofts. We start off racing in Pretoria Racing Pigeon Federation where we were 5 x Federation Champions apart from all the other top 5 final positions and until 2013.
At the end of 2013 season we relocate ,now flying with the Pretoria Racing Pigeon Union. During our racing career we managed to won more than 400 races on Club, Federation, Union, Combine and even Gauteng Combine level. Apart from all our top achievements some will always be remembered individually, such as having the only bird back on the day in Pretoria 3x times already. We also managed to bred two 6x winners for our friends, one for Dean Jooste and the other one for Die Huysers and that is what the sport is all about not just taking but also giving back.
After we relocate we decide to invest to improve our performances specifically on the short distances in buying top class genetic’s from Europe. Hooymans, Koopmans, Drapa and at the same time we start to collect SANPO Gold Medal Genes. Specifically those that perform on the short distances as well as overall and Long distances. Although this was a huge investment it help us to create the single biggest pool of SANPO Gold Medal Genes in the Country.
The return on our investment start paying dividends in that we immediately show top results on the short distances at all levels. Our birds start to excel and winning short distance races on Club, Federation, Union and Pretoria Combine level with frequent top 10 positions also in Gauteng Combine.
Just a brief overview of our achievement 2018. We race in both the Fed & Union from two different locations. In the Fed with Partner Len Pieterse where we achieved 1st overall short distance. 2nd overall Single Bird average and 1st overall All Bird averages. On the Union side we participate as Ferdie & Pieter Lubbe ending 3rd Young bird average, 4th Single Bird average, 5th All Bird averages, 2nd Sprint average, 2nd Ace Yearlings, 1 & 2nd Ace Birds Short Distances. In the Pretoria Combine we achieved the following results with our two teams, 2nd & 9th Yearling Average, 2nd & 15th Short Distance Average, 11th & 22nd Middle Distance Average, 3rd & 11th Long Distance Average, 5th & 6th Overall Single Bird Averages, 5th & 8th overall on All Bird averages. 1st & 2nd Ace Birds base on coefficient Short Distance, 2nd Overall Sprint Series only one team compete in this series
On the admin side I have being Vice President SANPO, Chairman Pretoria Combine and Founder Member of Pretoria Combine in 2006, Chairman, Race Secretary, Secretary and Treasure of the Pretoria Federation.
We race pigeons as a family as it keep the family close where everyone has a task to perform. We are very proud to say that we are the first family who achieve National Colours over 3 generations, where myself Ferdie achieve SANPO Colours for Admin and Racing, while Pieter achieve his National colours for Racing and my grandson JP achieve his National Colours as Junior and also SANPO Junior of the year in 2017. The key to our successes is that we have the full support from our wife’s witch make it must easier with a piece of mind that they support what we do regardless of cost. We also have a brilliant loft assistant by the name of Danley Gomo a real star for the last 6 years.
In 2019 we will race as Mountain Lofts to include all team members. We also add a good old friend Thys van Deventer of Despatch as a partner to the Mountain Loft team. Thys will run a small breeding loft with the same quality stock in the Eastern Cape as extension of Mountain Loft Breeding Station.
