Three Bucket Chicken Washing Method – Photo by Jen Pitino
Earlier this month, my sister and I dipped our toes into the pool of competitive chicken shows by entering several birds at our local county fair. When I first started down the backyard chicken trail, I would have never considered getting into showing chickens. So what changed?
New birds.
In fact, I have lots and lots of new chickens in my life which I have been remiss in telling you (the Urban Chicken Podcast family) all about. Late this past spring, I was generously gifted about 2 dozen rare and fancy breed day old chicks. I have been sharing those birds with my sister and niece (a few living at my house and the bulk of birds at hers). Consequently we have decided to try our hands at chicken breeding and hatching with some of the recent additions to our flock.
We are now at a point where between our established flocks and all of the newbie birds, we have more chickens than we know what to do with – and they keep growing and eating more and more. The hard truth is that we need to figure out which of our birds are of breeding quality and which are just pretty duds.
The timing of the local American Poultry Association (A.P.A.) sanctioned poultry show at our county fair was perfect! We could take a bunch of the birds that we really needed some professional feedback on and enter them into the chicken show. The birds would be inspected and judged by an A.P.A. certified poultry expert, and he would be able to give us the insight that we needed to move forward.
Now entering chickens into a show involves more than just scooping your birds out of the backyard and dropping them off at the fairgrounds. There is an important primping process involved in getting your chickens ready to strut their stuff for the judges. Today on the Urban Chicken Podcast, I walk you through how to get your birds ready to show – a process that I just experienced firsthand for the first time recently.
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