79-17 is an absolutely beautiful very feminine blue hen.  She is marvelous in the hand: balanced and buoyant with very soft feathering.  She is one of our favorite hens from 2017.  She has been trained last year to 100 miles and would have raced in the 2017 young bird race series except for the condition of her moult.  (Lamberton Racing Pigeons rarely, if ever, races homing pigeons that have not finished their body moult and/or do not have a full wing or minimally acceptable number of flight feathers.)  79-17’s father is “54” - the last youngster from DIAMOND JACKIE crossed on BLAZEN: our super son of Gaby Vandenabeele’s 1^st Provincial Ace BLIKSEM.  (I held several sons of BLIKSEM during one of my many trips to Belgium and BLAZEN handles exactly like the BLIKSEM son that sired a 1^st National winner.) DIAMOND JACKIE is a cross between DIAMOND RIO from Antoine Jacops Vorselaar Belgium and FLICKER, the nest sister to the ROOSTER, featured on the cover of the Racing Pigeon Digest by Mike Ganus of GFL fame.  When Mike sold us FLICKER he sent us a hand written note stating that FLICKER would probably be the best breeding hen that we would ever purchase from him in 30 years of stocking some of Mike’s best racing pigeons.  FLICKER is a daughter of  Flor Vervoort’s Hofkens pigeon that Mike Ganus imported to the United States and called PHANTOM.  DIAMOND JACKIE and her full sister DIAMOND JILL have each bred an AU Champion and each bred multiple head prize winners.79’s mother isBERNICEand was especially coupled with “54”  inorder to raise youngsters that were line-bred to the marvelous hen, the LIGHT FERNAND, from Dr. Fernand Marien. Dr. Marien is a well-respected pigeon veterinarian in Belgium that started his pigeon colony with brothers and sisters to pigeons that had distinguished themselves by earning the awardof 1^st National.The LIGHT FERNAND is such a hen bred by Dr. Mariensthat found her way to Jacops breeding loft.  The mother of our DIAMOND RIO is the LIGHT FERNAND.  We personally selected and purchased DIAMOND RIO as a young bird in Antoine’s loft.  We imported him into America and he has been a star breeder in our loft ever since.  The mother of 79-17, BERNICE, was bred from two imports that we also purchased from the breeding loft of Antoine Jacops.  Like DIAMOND RIO, each is a cross between the supers of the family of Antoine Jacops and the LIGHT FERNAND of Dr. Marien.We have been very fortunate to find the excellent pigeons of Belgian fanciers who were not the most well-known or famous but who had super pigeons, i.e., Dr. Fernand Marien and Gustaaf Cuypers to name several.  We believe that we have weaved our excellent imported breeders into a diverse family of excellent pigeons that people refer to as Lambertons.  Our pigeons are bred to race well and breed well.  Although we do not often enter our pigeons in pigeon shows, when we do, we have been very successful.  Consequently, our pigeons must race well, breed well, and look amazing.  Over the years we have a bias against pigeons that do not look or handle very well.  More specifically, we have a bias against checker and red pigeons although we like certain types of silvers.  We have a preference for pencils, schalies (slates), blues with or without white flights or pieds, dark checks with or without white, and whites or splashes.  We believe that 79-17 meets all of our production criteria and will make a great breeder.  Had we been able to race 79-17, we feel certain that her performance record would have keep her in our breeding loft regardless of her dollar value.