Our Barker colony are of the “Croston” Barker origins which hail from the Lancashire are of the UK, having originally come down through the Edmonson Barkers that arrived in the UK around 1900, with the principle birds coming down the line of “Strinsdale Queen”.

Tuplin, Orrett, Hogg, Roanes, Eastham, Baldwin, Blackstone and Bullen were all flyers of derivatives descended of this family and they excelled from 70 to 700 miles on the UK racing circuit. Our specific family of Barkers are descended from the Kenny Hogg lofts – he competed with that list of fanciers above and was the most winning of them all, particularly at the distance from France.

This is a superb example of the best of the Croston Barkers when paired to the very best of the Hector Cordner colony of specialist long distance pigeons. Hector has the distinction of winning 2 national races with the only bird on the day on both occasions, in what were “stinkers” of races. The Barkers are relatively “pure”, as they haven’t had a cross since sometime in the ’60’s, whereas the Cordner pigeons are a combination of Busschaert and Theelan pigeons – all long distance racing strains known to persevere on the toughest of days and races.