I guess I must have been around ten years of age (Circa 1963) one bright and sunny Sunday morning, in my usual position atop a hession sack filled with the sweetest smelling pine sawdust and in the Jacobin pen room of my Grandfather's loft, the centre of my universe and the source of my greatest pleasures. I watched on as Grandad toiled with the weekly ritual of sifting and renewing the bedding from each conditioning pen.
My job was to remove the individuals from their home and place them gently in the walking pen while their box was cleaned, and then proudly replace them on completion. While all this went on, Grandad would have to suffer a barrage of questions and constant chatter, for very little else but pigeon, and in particular Jacobin pigeons, went through my head.
Each week he would patiently relate stories from his 50 years' experience with the Jacs. I can remember quite clearly his reaction that morning to one of those queries, 'What was the best Jacobin you ever saw Grandad?' He did not hesitate, 'PLADDA PERFECTION' was his quick and positive reply, I made up my mind to find out more about that bird and its qualities. It was not until many years later I was to fully realise the effect the 'PLADDA' had upon a generation of Jacobin fanciers, now sadly all gone, but not forgotten.
NPA -1934-6542. Hatched Spring of 1934 in the plain and simple Jacobin lofts standing in the garden of 'Pladda Cottage' on the outskirts of the Scottish town of Girvan, among the rolling green hills of that most prolific of Scottish Jacobin counties, Ayreshire, where the Caledonian legends, John Reid and James Purdon had ruled the roost for decades. But it was not one of these long-established inbred families that was to produce the 'Pladda', that honour fell to a fancier of only a couple of years' standing, just starting to feel his way in the well-supported and competitive Novice classes of that time.
His name was Mr M McGill, a name new to many of his peers, but one that remains to this day engraved on the most important silverware of both the English and Scottish Jacobin societies, honours denied to many after a lifetime of competition.
The parents of the 'Pladda' were said to be nothing special, but they almost certainly contained the bloodlines of the sensational blacks bred by Mr Willie Russell of Douglas, Lanarkshire, famed for such great champions as 'Black Queen' and 'Wonder' who were, in the words of Mr Herbert Smith (of Trumpeter fame) and I quote 'Two great ones, both very compact and finished with a sheen like a solid mass of black marble. Both great winners and the latter the sire of the famous 'DREADNOUGHT'.
A trace of that Russell blood could be found in the majority of the UK studs of that time, traced back in all colours, especially the reds of the late H A Cobbe of Ipswich. Russell also exported hundreds of pounds worth of stock, a fortune in those days, among others the late great Frank Gorse, of Needham Heights, Boston, Mass. was to take many across to North America to help in the production of his 'modern type'.
