2012 4-H Fair Update

It dawns on me that while I seem to have taken a vacation from my blog, I never updated everyone on the outcome of our 4-H year.

It was the first year to compete in Poultry and boy did we have a lot to learn!  We purchased eight pullets last winter with the hopes that one would be special enough to compete with.  What we learned is that although they were great egg layers, they were not a breed that was recognized for showing.  Think of them like a mutt being shown at Westminster.  I think one of the breeds we could have used for the Commercial class but our kids wanted to show in the Exhibition class so we had to start all over.  Thankfully some friends of ours had purchased Plymouth Rock chicks about the same time we had for 4-H also.  Their kids picked out their bird for the fair and offered two of the remaining ones to us.  Originally we were told one was a rooster and one was a hen, they were very different in size, but after looking at pictures online I was skeptical.  

Saying we have a lot to learn is an understatement.  For example, did you know that you have to bathe a chicken before the fair?  Yeah, wrap your head around that for a minute.  It is actually a multi-step process consisting of a soap bath, rinse, chemical dip (mites), and another rinse (water/vinegar).  Our friends with the Plymouth Rocks joined us for this process and by the end of the last rinse with their own chickens they had mites running up and down their arms.  Yeah, gross.  We never saw them on our own birds but we did repeat the process a few days later just to make sure.  Chickens with bugs do not get to go to the fair.  After that experience we did a really thorough cleaning of the coop and sprayed down the entire place with Malathion to make sure nothing was lurking in the corners.

Thinking we could show both birds (I still think that the 4-H handbook says you can) we arrived at check-in with both birds.  After some discussion with the Poultry Club leaders, one of them insisted that we had a rooster/hen pair - which is hysterical really because later that same day both chickens laid an egg for the first time in their lives.  I was still skeptical that I had two different sexes so we decided to just enter one to be safe (how embarrassing to be wrong about that!).  We grabbed their copy of the Poultry Standards book and quickly decided that the smaller bird looked to be more like the standard described.  Her name is Annie.  We settled her into her cage and took the other chicken back home.

The day of the show we really had no idea what to expect.  Apparently it is as simple as:  1. take your chicken up to the table, 2. wait while the judge looks at other chickens, 3. let the judge look over your chicken, 4. wait some more while the judge looks at the rest of the competition....all while keeping your own chicken on the table looking calm, cool, and collected.  A friend of mine kept insisting she could read the judge and knew he liked our chicken but I saw nothing to believe that.  There were two huge groups of birds in our division so judging took quite a while.  At the end of it all, Annie took home a win for best in class (American Standard).  Talk about shock followed by huge helping of guilt for having used a bird that another person gave us.  Annie took home a Reserve Grand Champion overall in the Exhibition class, losing out to a Black Sumatran that was shown by the brother of a friend of ours.  The judge then spent a while educating the audience on why he liked these two birds so very much.  Sure wish we had entered Annie at the State level as I would have loved to see how well she placed.

This year, Annie will be back in the show ring.  I am hoping she still has a chance and doesn't disappoint my daughter who thinks she has a sure thing going with her.  Our son will be entering his own bird this year but we have figure out what we are going to buy first.  I would love to have a cool crested variety in the coop but Tractor Supply and Rural King only offer boring meat or egg producing chicks and ordering the minimum quantity from a catalog means too many chickens to deal with.  I might consider ordering eggs though as the minimum on those is only 6.  We will let you know what direction we decide to go.