When I give stuff away (or sell it so cheap that I'm practically giving it away) I don't feel that people are 'sponging' off me. First of all hatching eggs are nothing more than a gamble. I see enough of that at work.... When my incubators are overflowing or I'm done hatching for the year, yes I give eggs to people sometimes. I can't guarantee that that egg will even hatch much less be their next show winner. Chicks aren't much better, but at least I have some quality control then and I know they are getting a live bird. I don't price gouge people like some. I just make a waiting list....
Over the past years I've tried to get alot of kids involved. There should be alot of 4-Her's hopefully at state fair this year with silkies.
At our local fair last year I had a whole lil gang of kids that had never shown before all of a sudden have poultry. I know they weren't all ready for featherlegs. A trip was made to Duane Urch's and they all picked out chicks. We had buckeyes, wyndottes, leghorns, faverolles, phoenix, a few silkies, you name it... Everything was kept out at my friend Deanna's place. I may not have knew about every breed they chose, but I handed over the standard of perfection and we studied together. We bathed birds, went over showmanship. A number of those same kids came back for the open shows in the fall.
Haha lil 12 year old Jenny panicked when she came back on saturday and 1 of her birds wasn't in the cage. I pointed at her Phoenix on champ row and her mouth just dropped. Its that feeling right there that gets you hooked....
I have 1 kid especially get involved with the silkies over the past few years. Oh did I catch hell from Connie that one year and she even made me put 1 bird back in my own name.... Bridgette helped me all summer long. I gave her a bunch of chicks to get started in 4-H and paid for her membership in the ASBC. That fall we were filling out forms for the fall shows. Everything in my growout pens I gave her first pick on showing. Ex... say there were 22 white pullets. She got to go pick out her 11 and I took the rest. This girl and her mom helped non-stop with the show from setup to teardown. Linda Harrison did a profile of her on the ASBC newsletter and sent her a jacket. I'm kinda irked that Ryanne never did anything with those show reports. It makes it look like Bridgette hasn't exhibited even once over the past few years. This same girl now has a whole barn on their farm dedicated to just poultry. She's also branched out into d'uccles and her mom has alot of waterfowl. She puts on 4-H demonstrations all the time now and gets more kids involved too. At the MN Game Breeders sale last spring, they met me up there. I was selling a few extra birds and being 8 months pregnant was a little awkward crawling on the floor trying to get birds out of cages for people. When kids came up that were too scared to even touch a bird, she would take them out and show them how to hold them, why a silkie is unique, etc. I've watched this girl just blossom. She used to be so dang shy and scared of her own shadow. The birds have given her the confidence to reach out to people.
I've also been getting kids from other poultry people into silkies too. Brian Hauger is this huge waterfowl breeder and has this adorable lil red headed 5 year old boy. He's never been into chickens.... Haha I send his lil boy with a bunch of silkie and cochin chicks and boy has that changed. Brian says that kid carries those birds everywhere. I've converted quite a few of my hardcore pigeon advocates over too. Darren is an NPA judge and his daughter Tristan has gotten a ton of chicks from me. Darren is now spending every weekend in the fall going to both pigeon & poultry shows. Marilyn is bigtime into call ducks, pigeons and seramas. I got her lil girl Emily into silkies... You should have seen that kid absolutely beeming at the MN State show last fall.
I also hear back reports from people like Hannah, Montana, etc and you woudn't believe how proud I am of their accomplishments. Can they all afford $100+ birds, probably not a chance.... Call it 'sponging' off me or whatever.... at least those people are getting a start.
