SUMMER ENDS WITH A BANG AND A POULTRY SHOW

SUMMER ENDS WITH A BANG AND A POULTRY SHOW

I was very busy outside this summer. I heard someone say that we had 100 days of no rain - which must be some kind of record. And I was very busy gardening, growing vegetables and berries, and stuff for the chickens. And that is my excuse for not entering anything in my blog. I was so tired at the end of each day.

The 2012 Northwest Winter Classic Double Poultry Show was held in Salem, Oregon, October 13 and 14th. I made it to the show and that is exactly the time mother nature decided to end summer with a ton of wind and rain. So while I was at the show, mother nature blew and soaked all my pens. I was really surprised that so much water could come into pens with roofs and whose sides were half covered.

We are back in water world again.

The show was held at the Salem Fairgrounds in the Pavilion Building. Everything was under one big cover. Unless you have a white Serama (this type has been accepted by the ABA-The American Bantam Association) Your Seramas will be judged the Table Top way - which is how they do it in Malaysia. I like this way because you get a score card that gives points for:  type, chest, tail, wings, legs, condition, feather quality, character and performance, which all together should total 100.  I entered 5 chickens: three roosters and two hens. One of my hens won reserve champion, and I got a ribbon. Nice! I am really working on my hens. I would like to put a picture in here of my hen and her ribbon but my daughter took pictures with her camera, so I don't really have much to show with my pictures.

I can show you sort of what the Serama section looks like, with the two tall, round table tops. They put your Serama on the table and the judge scores the bird as I mentioned above, but the most important thing is character and performance - total 25 points, showing how your chicken acts on the table. For roosters - crowing, wing flapping, talking, strutting, etc. For hens it is a little hard to get points - they don't do too much.

I received a really nice gift from a young woman who I had corresponded with via e-mail about Seramas. She had purchased a really nice type chocolate frizzle hen from Pixie Chickens, and a beautiful lemon-blue rooster from LA Seramas. But she had just gotten the opportunity to purchase her first home, and she couldn't take her chickens with her. So she gave them to me - What a gift!  A beautiful pair of chickens. I will try to have pictures for my next blog.

The pictures here show the Serama layout with the two tables for TT judging. And a row of Seramas, mine, from right to left count five.