Niculescu-Burtin

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History

My passion for pigeons dates back since childhood, when my father used to keep pigeons for fun. Since 1968 I started to get involved with pigeon sport as a member of Bucharest “Columba” Club and my greatest satisfaction as a fresher came in 1971, when I raced for the first time a long-distance flight. I remember shipping 4 birds and two of them returned home. My first arrived pigeon was a blue cock, ring number RO – 16464 – 70.

Between 1988 and 1989 my pigeons got seriously ill and I wasn’t able to find a vet who could help me. For this reason, between 1990 and 1999 I went each and every year several times to Barcelona, visiting Mr. Carlos Márquez Prats. He and a good friend of mine living there, Marius Popa, together with Dr. Jose Merchan, a doctor with wide experience in treating animals of any kind and pigeons in particular, helped me to study the necessary medicine for treating pigeons. That was a time when I also learned a lot of things about keeping and taking care of pigeons from Mr. Carlos Márquez Prats, who put all of his trust in me. He also gave me a few top quality pigeons with whom I achieved fine results.

In 1999 I met Mr. Florin Moldovan, the greatest Romanian fancier, with the best national and international results. And the most important thing is that pigeons coming from this loft performed very well everywhere they have been sold, from 100 till 1.000 km, worldwide. Aside from the many local fanciers who achieved great results with his pigeons, there are also foreign lofts that did very well with Mr. Moldovan’s birds: Bardos Istvan, Nitroi Ferentz, Horvart Janos – Totobanyo from Hungary, Erik Limbourg – from Belgium, Eros Carboni from Italy, John Sulea – from USA, as well as many fanciers from China, Thailand, Germany, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Portugal, South Africa and so on and so forth.

Due to my friendship with this magnificent fancier I had the opportunity to learn a lot of interesting things about pigeons. Mr. Moldovan also offered me top quality birds from his best breeders and the most important thing is that I had the chance to meet a lot of local and foreign fanciers, men of real ability and character, with whom I had some interesting and useful conversation.

Niculescu - Burtin.

I was on a trip in the North part of my country, a region with lots of mountains and birds of pray. In 2005, during this trip I came across a wonderful blue cock with a Belgian ring. This pigeon was flying a race, but he was in poor condition due to hawk attack. He was pretty scared and to tired to come back home, a place more than 1.000 km away.

In early 2007, a friend of mine told me that this pigeon was from the Belgian fancier’s loft, Mr. Frans Burtin. Consequently I sent him an e-mail, I told him the story of the blue cock and that I intended to give back his bird for free back then. I was a pilot in command at Tarom Airline Company and my intention was to fly to Belgium with that pigeon. Mister Burtin felt that I’m an honest man, he put all of his trust me and sent me the pedigree of B – 6495178. So he offered me that bird as a gift..

Late in 2007, a hen from this cock won the 2nd prize over 3 races (above 700 km each) and she clocked in prizes more than 2.400 km against more than 8.000 pigeons at the beginning of the season.

We became close friends from that moment and since 2009 we are racing pigeons together in Romania within the Niculescu – Burtin team.