Any 4H poultry/rabbit judges out there?

[FeatheredFriends&Horses2]

Hey all!
I am judging my first 4H show this year (poultry/rabbit). It will include production birds, fancy breeds, and showmanship on the poultry side. I’ve judged poultry before in school, but not had to place with ribbons. If anyone else judges 4H poultry, how do you handle the Danish ribbon system? Are there certain scores you use to denote ribbon placement?

 

[Bertram]

In my county, each bird is judged against the APA standard and awarded blue, red, or white based on how well they measure up to the book. They are not judged against each other, just themselves.
Then they will be judged against all other birds in groups of LF or B cock, hen, pullet, and cockerel, but only the top three will get a second ribbon. Last is the Champion and Reserve LF and B.
I don't know anything about rabbits, but I hope this helps with chickens.

 

[Amer]

I judge county fairs!
Typically, I award decent birds a blue and less decent birds a red. If there are four of the breed/age/sex I can only award so many firsts so half will get blues and half reds based on how good they are. If there are six I will award the rare third place. If they have a disqualification they will automatically be given a fourth place. If they are misclassed (ie: a male entered as a female) they will get dropped one place.
Only birds with firsts can compete for best of breed and etc.

 

[Bertram]

That's a good point. If the class is pretty small I wouldn't give a third place.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

In my fair, you had to have at least 5 to have any placing including grands and reserves. If there were less, then they just got the red and blue non-place ribbons. Very rarely were there whites, typically only if the animal was clearly not show condition (ratty and missing feathers or mid molt for rabbits).

They were judged against each other as well as the standards.

Only grands and reserves could go back for best of show/best reserve of show

 

[FeatheredFriends&Horses2]

Thank you for all of your responses!

 

[Susan Skylark]

I think we had 14 birds total at our county fair (very rural!), everything pretty much got blue (if it looked decent and the kids knew their stuff) and most got purple too (no competition!) but they didn’t necessarily hand out purple if the project didn’t deserve it, I’ve only judged static (non livestock) but I don’t necessarily have to give a purple ribbon in a certain class if there isn’t a project that deserves it. Then we had the lady who was handing out white ribbons (basically participation in 4H) like it was open class, as a kid I only got one white ribbon over 100 projects over 7 years and that was a dog that didn’t stay in obedience, then she tried to bite the judge during showmanship and got reserve, go figure! My son got a couple white ribbons on stuff he had put a ton of time into, knew a ton about, and they were nice projects, it discouraged him enough he gave up those projects but now he’s doing poultry instead so I guess it worked out! I also have to laugh that we get some weird stuff thrown into the same ‘class’ because we have so few entries: duck eggs, field peas, a horse disease poster, rocks, bugs, and some other science/outdoors/ag type stuff. My son did geology a couple years back and he was nervous and I told him it wasn’t like the judge took it in college, except he had, oops! You never know what will happen until you try, I love 4H!