Overview:
Silvio’s Farm – Spanjaards Racing Pigeons – From 1989 to the present time, I have spent an incredible period of time researching the origins of what are now commonly referred to world wide as Spanjaard Janssens. Mr. Spanjaards was Dutch,a small team flyer that came to National prominence in 1977 when one of his hens won First National Orleans in Section 4. He died of terminal cancer on December 6th, 1990. In 1990, the entire Spanjaards loft-old birds, race team youngsters totaling 64 birds, plus ten Klaks, were imported to Canada by a friend of mine. The Klaks and some of the Spanjaards were sold in two separate sales in New Jersey and in California along with quite a number of Smeulder’s pigeons. However, over time, the bulk of the Spanjaards pigeons were eventually retained by me.
Most people have come to believe that a Spanjaards is a Spanjaards. That they were somehow a homogenous family of pigeons. This however in not accurate. Essentially what came to be (mostly through my efforts) recognized as Spanjaards Janssens were not really a family of pigeons as such. The birds, as cultivated by Gerrit Spanjaards, were certainly of a uniform and consistent type, but they were not an inbred family cultivated over decades.