It has been a learning experience this summer, my son took his quail to the country fair for 4-h and ended up having to show pigs and a steer too! But then it was also a surprise for the kids with said steer and pigs to have to take their turn at showing a quail, something none of them knew existed before that day! It was pretty funny watching them ask him questions about his birds, some were a little intimidated but then so was he when he asked them for tips in handling a pig, whoever thought quail could be threatening! The birds did great, thankfully it wasn’t excessively hot and they’ve been handled a bit. This year all I wanted to do was get the local people exposed to and hopefully enchanted with quail, so maybe in a couple years they can have their own class and be eligible for market as well as breeding classes (not sure how that works, I’ll have to talk to our extension agent, but it has to change at the state level, open class has a category but not 4h). It would be a fun option for town kids to participate in livestock with something other than a rabbit or a rental goat! They were a hit! His score in showmanship landed him in the round robin contest, where everybody shows every species and is supposed to know anatomy, diseases, nutrition, breeds…and you have only a couple hours to do a crash course in horses, goats, and swine! That was fun and now he wants a pig…except we live in town but that’s a whole other argument! The birds themselves were carefully selected upon the principle that they hadn’t lost feathers to the masked rump pecker or any of her minions, which ruled out the breeding flock, so we were left with the chicks, including a 5 week old male, but I needed 2 males and that was all I had! Now before you think this was a huge and competitive event, let me say there were 13 poultry exhibits (single birds or trios) total excluding showmanship, including our 4 quail, everything else was a chicken. But I think the judge fell in love (though she had never judged quail before) and was pretty impressed with their production abilities, they only competed against themselves in the hobby class, but his best hen and roo went on to the overall breeding poultry champion class and his hen took purple! Overall it was a pretty cool experience, both in introducing people to quail and in getting a crash course in livestock handling! And yes, we have our fair birds isolated from the breeding flock just in case they were exposed to something, but he has a hard enough time eating his quail, what will he do with a pig!
