Question for anyone who has shown at a fair...

[ChicksinFL]

Hanna8 and Sonoran Silkies... Thank you both!! I really do appreciate the supportive replies it helps me calm my nerves so I can be supportive of my daughter through her first poultry show. My daughter is very aware of what happens around her so I'd have to be honest with her upfront that her hen might get DQ'd due to being in the wrong variety but that it won't effect her for showmanship. Now we just have to find out FOR SURE what variety our OEG's are. I posted in the breed/gender section and have one vote for Black Breasted Red so far hoping I can get some more input in the next couple days.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

I looked at your birds. They are blue reds. See how you can see the lacing on the feathers? Cannot see it on black. I posted links for you to look at additional photos.

Blue red is essentially BBR plus a copy of the blue gene, diluting black pigment to blue.

 

[ChicksinFL]

Sonoran Silkies... Thank you for going over to look. I see what you are saying about the lacing in the breast especially on the cock. I took those late afternoon yesterday maybe I need to take some more at noonish today when the sun is right over head so there is better lighting by the chicken coops. I would feel even worse if I threw my daughter into showmanship and she was wrong on her variety but I guess the BBR and BR OEGs are very close it's just the blue gene so at 8 at her first show maybe the showmanship judge wouldn't be too harsh on her. I've already explained this is just our primer for next year and that she can't expect to go in and win. I told her she's the youngest in her age group and she's brand new to chickens that this just primes her for next year she'll know what to do better. Her response was " I don't care HOW I place I just wanna show my chickens I spent TOO MUCH time working on them to keep them in the coops" This kid LOVES her chickens , they watch TV with her, eat at the table with her, etc.. they are more like her lil friends then birds. There is one silkie that when it hears her voice it will stop whatever it's doing and look for her then run to the coop door to be picked up, that silkie would sit in her hand for years if asked to but my daughter has really small hands she's 8 but the size of maybe a 6 yr old the silkie fluff is just too much for her to get around or I'd have her use that chicken for showmanship.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Does she (do you) know how to properly hold a chicken? Spread your fingers out, palm level and facing upwards. Slide it under the chicken's breast, placing its legs between thump and index finger and the other leg between middle and ring finger. Make sure you slide you hand in as far as possible, until the legs are tightly next to the fingers. Cup that hand to grasp the legs and have the chickens belly resting in the palm. Take the other hand, flatten it palm down and place over chicken's back and wings.

Anyways, when you ook at the old english, do the feathers look pure black, or do they look greyish? If there is any amount of grey and not black, they are blue.

 

[ChicksinFL]

Hopefully she has the whole process correct. She does hold her birds like that with the hand under and the breast resting at the palm almost wrist.

This is the link we used to teach her showmanship. http://web.uconn.edu/poultry/4-H Poultry/showmanship.pdf

Let me tell you someone could make a good buck on beginner kids teaching them poultry showmanship and stuff... just like a riding instructor does for horse back riding students. I would of gladly paid someone to teach my kid proper handling and about what to expect at a show.


The feathers look greyish to me on the Old English.... so I think I'm going to lean toward your id of the variety and my oldest daughters first thoughts. This was the only time I didn't use my ABA book to id the birds before we paid for them, I saw them and assumed because they were older the colors were just fading with age. Didn't even look at legs even though in my mind I knew what our Brown/Reds looked like.

Here's another picture of them

back of the hen.



another view of the cock.

 

[Chris09]

The Cock bird is a Blue Red but I would need a good picture of the hen to tell on her.

Blue Red
http://www.bantychicken.com/OEGBCA/vbluered.html

Chris

 

[ChicksinFL]

The Cock bird is a Blue Red but I would need a good picture of the hen to tell on her.

Blue Red
http://www.bantychicken.com/OEGBCA/vbluered.html

Chris

Thank you Chris09... I have them posted in the breed/gender forum too but here are some hen pictures I just took while she played on my craft table while we were practicing showmanship.





and here is the link to the other pictures I posted of her.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/625064/oeg-but-what-variety-brown-red-or-blue-red


Thank you for helping figure this out. As I said they were sold to me as a Brown/Red pair that had won many times and they are about 4 yrs old.

 

[ChicksinFL]

Want to follow up on my thread and thank everyone again for the help.

The OEG's with the color question were indeed Blue/reds as it was stated here. The hen took Best Variety out of several entered.

My daughter got 5th overall in Showmanship with a score of 71 which was only 7 points under the first place. I was able to hear most of her questions and know for sure what she got wrong and we'll work on that before her next showmanship in March. She also when asked to pose her bird in the cage decided she needed to make her feet even like we do horses and goats...LOL.. so there she is trying to make the bird stand with it's feet together.. the bird was VERY GOOD and just stood there after the third attempt.

Thank you again to all who posted in my thread and gave advice and support. My lil one had an amazing time at fair and is so sad that today is the last day down before picking up the birds tomorrow. She also did the ASK ME booth and said it was the funniest thing she has ever done because she LOVES to talk to people. She told me she can't wait to get to do another fair and has informed me she will be doing poultry the next 10 years of 4H!

Oh and her other birds did well too.. she even has a Silkie on Champion row it won Best Variety, Best of BReed and Reserve Featherleg.

She only had one bird place below 2nd and that was a brown/red OEG pullet who got 4th.