Let's go to the Colorado State Fair!

mynamesjenelle

Songster
8 Years
Jun 5, 2012
174
5
114
Colorado Springs, CO
Hi everyone! After having a great time at the El Paso county fair last weekend I would love to share the experience with other chicken lovers! The Colorado state fair is happening down in Pueblo on August 24-September 3 this year. Check out their website at http://www.coloradostatefair.com/ for more details. There are two great potential dates for a BYC meetup at the fair:


-The first is Sunday August 26th, which is the second day after the public sale begins. Other events that day include open poultry and pigeon judging and awards, duck quacking and rooster crowing competition, and the youth "dress a bunny" contest. I was originally thinking of Saturday August 25th as it's the first day of the sale, but the open poultry animals won't all be there until around 8:00PM that day.

-The second is Saturday September 1st, which is a public sale day for regular poultry and also has the exotic and wild birds competition and sale as well. From their website descriptions the exotic and wild birds include pheasants, peafowl, partridges, quail, guineafowl, swans, wild turkeys, and non-domestic ducks and geese. This would be the best day to see lots of different types of birds, however the youth and non-sale birds from the previous weekend will no longer be there.


So we've got a few options! There are tons of other non-bird related events going on every day in addition to what I listed here. What do you want to see? What date works best for you? Since we have people strung along the I-25 corridor I am thinking that we can coordinate some carpools to cut down on gas and parking costs. Last year I was able to get a great deal on the fair entry through Groupon so if I see any discounts come up I will let everyone know. If they don't do it again this year, everyone can get $2 off the cost of admission by bringing an empty Orange Crush brand soda to the ticket booth bringing the cost of admission down to $8 per person. There are some other discounts for military/firefighters and 4-H members as well.


The fair website is a bit difficult to navigate so here are some helpful links:
General location and admission information - http://www.coloradostatefair.com/about.aspx
Discount information - http://www.coloradostatefair.com/p/About-The-Fair/155
Poultry and small animal schedule - http://www.coloradostatefair.com/fileserver/files.ashx?t=fg&f=2012 CSF Tentative Schedule041612.pdf
 
I'm planning on going Sat the 25th, but would be glad to meet up with a group on any other day ya'll want to go.

All in all, I have found the fair not to require a lot of time (I grew up where the COUNTY fair was a 3 day affair if you wanted to see everything). I think the state fair takes me 3 or 4 hours.
 
Is it difficult to enter chickens in the State Fair? I have been wanting to do this for awhile....
 
From what I can tell on their website it's a bit more difficult than I would want to do as a backyard flock keeper, but not too difficult if you're into the breeding aspect of it. Unfortunately the deadline for entry this year was yesterday. The biggest obstacle I see is this:

"2012 POULTRY Health Requirements and Examination : All entrants for livestock exhibited in open, breed, or market competitions shall provide either a Premises Registration Number or an NPIP (National Poultry Improvement Plan) Flock Registration number on the entry form."

Which may not be so bad if you already know what that is and have one, but as someone who just picked up my birds as chicks from a feed store I have no idea. My girls are also spoiled rotten and would be quite cranky with me if I put them in a cage for the show.

There is a ton of information here on their website.


I just found out from my SO that he's not going to want to go that first weekend (the 25/26) so I would LOVE to go then. If he's not there to watch me, he's not there to stop me :lol:
 
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I called and they will take them after the deadline, and she gave me the phone number to get the premise id number, and I got it in my email yesterday.. it was THAT easy.. now I just need to mail in the forms.. and I am in
 
That's great! I didn't know it would be so quick but I'm glad they still let you in after the deadline. You'll have to tell me which birds are yours so that I can look at them. Oh who am I kidding, I'll be gawking at all of them. :cd
 
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Hmm, now that I have seen the schedule (thank you for the link!) I am thinking it would be fun to go Sunday the 26th - and maybe the 1st as well. Will have to see how things go - I try to only drive my car one of the two days of each weekend (live 10 miles out of town, saves $ and emissions), so I will tentatively plan to work around home Saturday and go see judging and sale birds Sunday morning before I go to the grocery store. DH will want absolutely nothing to do with it, he tired of the State Fair years ago.
 

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