How it all began: Mark works as a professional pigeon photographer at mc-auctions. Here, Mark often comes across some special birds and, sometimes, very special birds. Mark handles around 2,000 birds a year, so for a bird to be considered special by him, it has to be truly exceptional. One of those birds was the RODE BULCK. Mark photographed him for H.P. Brockamp in an online auction in January 2018. There were around 12 birds in the auction, but one stood out to Mark as the absolute best. The 13, Mark went to buy him in the auction.

Mark had a plan to find a special hen for this new cock, and Bengt Ask in Sweden could help him. He wanted to sell Mark the 89. The couple was created to breed some new birds for the breeding loft, and in 2018, 7 youngsters were bred. Two went to Bengt Ask as a deal because of the transfer of the 89. One cock was sold, and one hen went into an online auction and was bought by fellow fancier Henning Jorgensen (the mentor of Michael Th. Larsen, who is now the co-owner of the breeding loft). Two other hens were sold to another fellow fancier, the late Carsten Petersen. Then Mark had two hens left, the 2545 and 2546, and later on, the 2546 was also sold.

In 2019, the first year of breeding for the racing loft, nothing special came out of it as young birds. But the 2545 MARBLE, bred that year,  the RODE KITTEL, who went on to become the 1 National Ace Allround in 2021. The following year, fellow fancier Bo Eriksson borrowed MARBLE, and she bred the 1150, who became the 3 Ace Yearlings Section. In 2023, MARBLE, with her partner THE UGLY ONE, became grandparents to 87, who won 3 top positions in three different ace pigeon competitions for Stabel and Son in the Netherlands.

The 2546, which was sold to Morten Jensen Kristensen, became the mother of the 1 Ace Youngster Section for Fam. Thomsen and the grandmother of the 1 Ace Long Distance Section for Henrik Madsen.

The two hens that went to Carsten Pedersen bred top birds in two generations in the Aalborg CC and Morso Cup OLR (2nd place), as well as a section winner for Carsten.

The 2575 ANGELWING MARBLE, which went to Henning Jorgensen, became the mother of top racers, and as a great-grandmother, she excelled, with 3 grandchildren winning 3×1 ace pigeon titles in the same year in the same section but in different competitions.

Also, separately, the RODE BULCK and BULCK 1 have shown their value. RODE BULCK bred the semi-provincial winner HERAH, and BULCK 1 bred the KANIBAAL POGI, who won 1st Provincial (2,305 birds) and 1st Provincial (1,808 birds) in 2023. RODE BULCK again was the grandfather of the 1 National Ace Allround in 2023, the ACE HEN, bred in the LSM Breeding loft and raced by Lasse Rasmussen. As of now, the ACE HEN is also the official Olympic bird for Denmark in Maastrict 2024 in the Yearling classification.

As you can see, this couple is special, and we are pretty sure this is one of the very best Van Den Bulck couples breeding at the moment in the world.

Many think Mark bought the Van Den Bulcks for commercial reasons, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Mark’s son, who has Autism (Aspergers), really wanted a red pigeon in the loft, but no pigeon goes into the breeding loft if it’s not a special one. So when Mark handled the RODE BULCK, it was a done deal. Never before had Mark handled a youngster with that kind of muscles, and he had to move him to the Fam. Skovbo breeding loft, even though he was pretty expensive at that time. How lucky you sometimes are when it comes to new breeders.

In this poster, you can see more about how this family has evolved, and today we try to couple the best and most interesting breeders together with children from the couple. Also, several of the birds that have bred well elsewhere have been bought back, so they are now in the LSM breeding loft.