Good morning, my Jersey Giant friends! I'm proud to share some exciting news with you all - I took a juvenile pair to the Michigan Poultry Fanciers' fall show this past weekend, and placed
Reserve Champion American under judge Overton with my black Jersey pullet! WOOT! There were 58 American category birds, and some gorgeous (and HUGE) white Rocks and Silver Penciled Wyandottes that we showed against, and I'm so proud that my gal beat all but one! The Champion American was a silver laced Wyandotte pullet that was gorgeous and super nice (although a bit nasty to her cage mates beside her - she got uppity with her win! HA!).
A huge "thank you!" to Walt Leonard, who steered me to the breeder I got the hatching eggs from.
Thanks, Walt!!
My blue cockerel placed Best of Variety (though there were only two blues there....
) but they both showed well, and in speaking with the judge after the show, he said both were VERY nice and he was very pleased to see some really good Jersey Giants, as he hadn't seen many good ones in the last few years. He said probably 4 or 5 times how nice they were, and that it was a pleasure to judge them. Nice man! To say I'm walking on clouds today is a huge understatement!
Here are a few pics from the show:
My gal was upset & open mouth breathing almost the entire time. I worked & worked with her on cage training, but I think all those birds (there were around 980) were just a bit too much for her to handle:
Judge Overton said he'd like to see a bit longer tail on them, but the shape & angle were perfect:
My boy - this is my back-up cockerel; the one I'll be using for breeding was in a very late last juvie molt (they are 27 weeks), so I took the back-up boy. I wonder what the judge would have thought of my molty boy?
I got a nice plaque for the win:
Anyway, just wanted to share - I'm super proud of my birds, and will continue to work hard on them! I encourage going to a show once in awhile to see where you are and what else it out there! It's an inexpensive few days of entertainment, and I have to say that most poultry folks are much less....um....snooty than other critters I've shown in the past!
........ keep us posted !
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