Carolina Fowl Stuff Poultry Show

I heart potatoes.

Cold, rainy Sunday. Most of the Faverolle girls are staying in today but one ventured out for water. I have 8 Faverolle girls - Champagne, Doothi, Goldi, Maybelle, Roxi, Pumpkin, JenneyBelle, and BarbraJean - they just lay eggs when it's convenient after all the preening, sunbathing, eating, dust bathing, napping, and gossiping.

Goats want to know if I brought them a goodie.

Our small Bourbon Red turkey flock. 1 tom, and 2 hens, plus 2 young ones, we don't know the genders of them yet. We started with 4 turkey babies but along the way 2 have died. The experts say that turkeys are difficult to raise to maturity, we're learning.

Winston-Salem, NC is 1 1/2hrs away, off the mountain. They always have two Poultry Shows a year, a Spring and a Fall. The Fall Show is always the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year was big again with 1, 483 birds entered.

While the birds are being judged, most people tailgate - talk birds and sell a few birds. Chicken people love to talk about chickens.

Here's my Mike tailgating. We sold 11 chickens and brought 2 back home, a good day. To sell, we took 8 Standard Ameraucana's and 5 bantam Brahma's. Don't get Mike started talking about chickens, he's like Bubba talking about shrimp.

One of the judges checking out a bird.

1,483 birds entered - BIG SHOW! FYI - we don't do Fairs, because they don't have the regulations the APA Shows do. In breeding birds, you have to be VERY careful about your birds being around untested birds. A NC State Inspector comes to my house, draws blood and swabs all my birds and they wear STATE leg bracelets. All birds in a APA Show have to be wearing the bracelets. I don't buy and bring home any birds except on rare occasions and I know the breeder. Best to get hatching eggs and hatch at home rather than bring in mature birds, too risky.

Guinea's

Standard Dark Brahma Hen - a beauty

a Standard Partridge Cochin Rooster - awesome

White-Face Blue Spanish Rooster - not my type.

We have in the past, but Mike and I didn't have any birds entered in the show, we just went down to sell a few because we needed to get down on the number of our birds. If you have birds in the show, then you have to wait until the end to leave and I'm always ready to come home. We ate lunch at the cafeteria, stopped by Sears and bought Mike some work pants, $15 apiece was a good price. In Boone, we don't have many places to shop, we don't even have a SuperWalMart, EGADS! :-) I had a good time, but don't like to stay away from home too long, I'm a nester. And I sure don't want to be mistaken as a desperate Christmas-shopping cardholder. Anyway, we took our bird-selling money and turned around and spent it on lunch and 4 pairs of work pants for Mike but he needed them so we enjoyed our outing and tickled to be home again.