Show Season is Winding Down

There are only a couple of poultry shows left in this season, one in Red Bluff and one near San Diego. Red Bluff is just a couple hours' drive up the valley. San Diego is quite a drive, but I'm going to try it. The length of the drive doesn't bother me, it's having to go through Los Angeles. I may be timing the drive so I do that at 3 a.m. just to avoid the traffic.

Here are some of my traveling buddies.

#33

This is the first bird that won Best of Show for me, my hen #33. She has been to 20 shows. In addition to BOS once, she has 17 blue ribbons, has been been Best of Breed 10 times, Best RCCL and Best Bantam twice, and Reserve RCCL 3 times. I mostly take her to shows because she keeps herself in wonderful condition and she likes to show. Laying eggs is not her thing, she only lays by appointment. She has produced maybe 6 chicks over the years.

Want to take her picture? No problem, just bring out the camera and #33 runs through her Top Model poses for you.

#28

This is #28, a pullet that did really well this year. She isn't as sprightly as #33, but she has excellent color. Barred and cuckoo females are often very dark, the color on their wings and back is muddied with gray. This girl and her sisters have very sharp color with a 50/50 white and dark pattern. All the judges liked her except the very last one who judged. He didn't place her at all and marked "too light" on her card. He needs to study the Standard of Perfection. He also judged the large fowl at the same show and placed my best LF pullet last because of her (excellent) color. This happens sometimes. I'm hoping the other judges will be able to pull this judge aside sometime soon and bring him up to speed.

The two girls above are bantam Dominiques. This is a large fowl Dominique that I've been showing.

#25

He's not an outstanding bird, but he's adequate to show. His tail could be better if he had wider tail feathers so there was no gap between them, and longer sickle feathers. The sickle feathers are the main tail feathers. Below is a picture of an ideal Dominique male.

This is from an old picture of an actual bird that was retouched by Schilling (a renowned poultry artist) to show the ideal. #25, the bird I'm showing, could be "gamier," which means more upright and have less body mass. #25 also could benefit from a neater comb and smaller wattles, and a fuller tail. Until I find a large fowl that meets these criteria, I'll just keep showing the one I have.

I do raise a few large fowl chicks a year, maybe a dozen. I would prefer to find an ideal bird and buy it to show, I don't ever intend to raise a lot of LF just to get a good one. Large fowl eat too much and take up too much space, compared to bantams. They are also harder for me to handle. When I first got #25 he'd been free ranging up in Oregon and he was one tough fellow. I could barely hang onto him. It took a lot of work to tame him for showing.

So this time of year I have fewer birds than at any other time. I raised 200 bantam chicks last year and have about 50 bantams left. Next week I'll be mailing off 6 more to people in other parts of the country. There are about 25 birds in breeding pens, I'm collecting their eggs and hatching them. The others are spares I'm keeping. I have 10 old hens in a spacious outdoor pen in case I need to do some linebreeding. I have probably 6 extra males in case something happens to their brothers that I'm using for breeding. I hardly ever lose a chicken. The pens are predator proof (at least they have been, knock on wood), the birds are healthy. But sometimes a male will prove to be infertile or a female will not be a good layer, so it's wise to keep spares.

I have hatched 18 bantams and 5 large fowl chicks so far this year. This is my least favorite part of showing chickens. I hatch and brood the chicks in the house. That's noisy and dusty and I hate it. But if I want to raise birds that will be big enough when the late summer shows start, I have to start in winter, and the incubators and brooders are not reliable when they have to function in a building that isn't heated and insulated. So, it's inside the house...

...the house with boxes stacked everywhere, the house that's already the scene of so much chaos right now. I need to get things back in order. Or maybe I need it to stop raining so I can get outside and enjoy the tulips, the camellias, and the lilacs that are blooming.