Asean Hive Week #44 Challenge Side Hustles / My Entry

I love this week's theme challenge. Thank you @justinparke for having this exciting theme about side hustles.
Having a side hustle nowadays is truly beneficial since the prices of all the commodities are rising having added income coming in for the family is truly a great help.
When I read the post about this week's challenge I thought of what is our side hustle?, I call it "ours" because I am not the only one doing it but it's our whole family who are helping in, my son, my husband and myself.
Actually our side hustle started as my hubby's hobby which then turned out to be quite a side hustle.

Have you heard of pigeon racing?
It's when you raise pigeons then you race them... Haha

We have lots of homophones here😄 Hubby-hobby, raising -racing...

Segway, English 101😍
Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but have different meanings.

Okay so back to my story.... Haha
Since my husband was young he really loves taking care of pigeons. It started when he was still in elementary then stopped when he was in College and it was just when we got married that he started pigeon raising again.

Well over the course of our married life, 27 now. We have had several side hustles as well.
First was, we raised love birds back in 2000. It started as hubby's gift for me, he gave me a pair but then out of our love for them we bought another two sets of pair with different colors until we had so many love birds we have to sell them. Good thing we have a friend who owned a pet shop so he was the one who buys the birds from us. Back then there were only few love birds in the market unlike now everywhere you go you can see them. It was a pretty good side hustle since me and hubby were both working so added money coming in was such a joy.

Then our next side hustle was breeding pitbulls. That was 2004 and during that time people were fascinated with having pitbulls as pets. There are two types of pitbulls, the show type and the fighting line. We bred the two lines.
Show type meaning, these are the breeds that are very friendly, obedient and good to have around even Inside the house. Our male pitbull named Spiky had won several obedience training contest for he was such an adorable and very obedient dog. Thanks to his handler/trainer of course who else, my husband Joseph. Because of his achievements many wanted to have his line because he was a purebred pitbull. So sad I don't have a photo of him but he had a dark chocolate brown fur. Oh how I missed Spiky!😢
Our fighting line pitbull named Good Dog also had his fame of wins as well as a fighter.
Then, we added the boxer breed which was also in fad during the early two thousands up until 2008. I must say, they too were a good side hustle for each puppy comes with a good price since both our pitbulls and boxers were pure bred and with a pedigree line.

Then 2009 came hubby's passion turned back to raising pigeons because it was also during those times a pigeon club was formed in our city. Mid of 2008 he started breeding pigeons already.

That year 2009 the first pigeon racing was held in our city my husband's pigeon loft came in the first Overall Champion out of 1000 registered bird contenders. The birds were tossed 450km air distance away from our city after a series of many tosses.

Of course being a champion comes with a big prize. Our loft, the Angel's Loft won Fifty-Nine Thousand pesos or around $1,100 on that race.
Hubby was pronounced as the King of the North because of the that race.
My apologies, I put away a lot of our trophies and could not find in which container boxes where the trophies are so I can show it to you. Anyhow the following year 2010, hubby won again as the third overall champion on the King of the South race. This started our journey on pigeon racing.

-PIGEON RACING, HOW IT IS DONE-
Let me give you a background on how a pigeon race is done.
Usually the pigeon clubs will announce the race for that particular year or season. There are many different races. There is the north race, South race and the winter race there is also the summer extreme race.

The fanciers or the pigeon fanciers then prepares their breeders so the birds that they will hatch will be their entry or entries on that particular race. So on each race they will have different sets of birds. A fancier can join many birds as he can as long as he can buy the rings for that particular race. These rings will be then placed on the chicks foot from five days old to seven days old, more than that the rings will not fit anymore.

So it is important to sell all the rings because the sales of the rings will be where the source of the prizes during every race. Usually the clubs will sell out minimum of 1,000 rings and each ring costs two hundred pesos P200 or $4. But if they have bigger prizes then the rings will cost more than $4 a piece.

-BASKETING-
When the birds have reached seven months they will then be basketed to the clubs.

Basketing is the term used when the fanciers will bring their birds to the clubs for registration and during every toss for each particular race.

Usually there are ten series of tosses on different areas on an increasing distance from the latter. It starts from twenty kilometers air distance then up to two hundred kilometers air distance after these training tosses the Main race or derby begins at 250km with a series of five to seven laps. Each lap is done weekly starting from the training down to the last main toss.
This really is a race of homing speed, endurance and great stamina for the birds.

-RACE TOSS-

During the main race the club will install race chips attached to the rings for automatic electronic clocking once they arrived at their lofts which is automatically sent to the clubs system because each loft installs sensors on their designated trap doors. Then each fancier will know right away their speed and their race standing.

-PAJERO LOFT-
We changed it from Angel's loft (from our so's name Angelo) to Pajero. Why Pajero loft? Because the first four letters is our family name. This is the home of our prized pigeons. Hubby designed this himself and had it constructed 2015. Last 2021 after the lockdown hubby had the roofing redesigned just so our team have work to do since we don't have much work on our building maintenance company because of the pandemic. Hubby just wants to give back to our pigeons by giving them a good home.

I am proud to say our loft has held the seventh time first overall champion here in our city for long distance race. Last 2018 we won all three season as the first overall champion for the old bird and the young bird category out of 100 birds who reached the last lap.

Come 2019 we also won the solo lap winner meaning our bird was the only one who made it home within the time limit set by the club.

Then won again as the first overall champion summer race of 2019.

The following are our winners who brought pride on our loft.
We have Precious, Princess, Beaky and Lola's Pride.
They all have taken home a good sum of cash as well.

Because hubby is a well known fancier we created a side hustle by selling our pigeons to those who wanted to have good breeds, hubby also sells customized cages to his fellow fancier. Plus he is well respected when it comes to pigeon raising and racing.
We love our pigeons so maybe that's why in return they also give back the love we give them.

My part?? Of course I am the loft woman, I am the one who gave the names to all of our pigeons for I am their Mum.... Haha.

Here is a video of hubby doing a training on his flyers. meaning our baby pigeons who have just learned to fly their first flights.

I know my post is a bit long, I cannot make a short cut😁😁
I hope you enjoyed reading my post.

Thank you again for your support and love. Hope to see you on the next one.

Love always,
@aideleijoie