- Jan 14, 2008
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This is gonna be a very unpopular post-I know it in advance and I'm ready to take the resultant abuse.
First let me get the least"offensive" part out of the way. The biggest flaw with the concept of an on-line poultry show is that it's impossible to really evaluate a bird you don't handle. Any judge will confirm this. You learn at least as much about a bird by handling it as you do by looking at it.
OK-here comes the rough part and this is a thing I find particularly frustrating about boards like this one. Apparently the only acceptable answer to the "what do you think of my chicken" question is "HE/SHE'S BEAUTIFUL". Unfortunately sometimes people really are looking for an objective critique and they seldom if ever get one. I see situations regularly at shows where I'm either judging or showing-people enter birds they've bought from a hatchery or an internet dealer [who to be fair may not know better]. The birds don't do well &/or are disqualified and the people are either upset or angry. They bought the birds as "show quality" or someone told them they were really nice birds. These folks who might have had a positive show experience instead are soured on the fancy and give up.
As to this particular on-line show-here we go. There were a few birds that superficially appeared to be pretty good-the W C Black Polish that was best bantam was one example. However, the vast majority of the birds were barely recognizable as the breeds they were supposed to be. In fact, in some cases, they were not at all recognizable as the breeds they were supposed to be.
This in part is probably why in the "what breed is this" catagory you see so many wildly divergent "guesses" as to the identity of a particular bird. Either the bird is such a poor breed example it's hard to tell or the persons guessing really don't know breed identifications and guess based on very little information.
Now, is there any real harm in any of this? No, there's very little at stake and if your chickens fulfill what ever function they serve in your life then that's cool. [ At the same time I do have to admit I'm mildly annoyed when someone tells me I'm wrong about a breed ID and their reason is absolutely wrong ie: Redcap hens are solid brown"]
So here's my question. Is it possible to set up some way for people who are looking for more than "they're beautiful" to get some honest feedback on the appearance of their birds? I've been tempted to respond to a few of these post where the birds appeared to be somewhat competitive but I haven't because I'm not really interested in offending anyone & there's always room for improvement. That's why I kept 12 out of 186 I hatched last year.
First let me get the least"offensive" part out of the way. The biggest flaw with the concept of an on-line poultry show is that it's impossible to really evaluate a bird you don't handle. Any judge will confirm this. You learn at least as much about a bird by handling it as you do by looking at it.
OK-here comes the rough part and this is a thing I find particularly frustrating about boards like this one. Apparently the only acceptable answer to the "what do you think of my chicken" question is "HE/SHE'S BEAUTIFUL". Unfortunately sometimes people really are looking for an objective critique and they seldom if ever get one. I see situations regularly at shows where I'm either judging or showing-people enter birds they've bought from a hatchery or an internet dealer [who to be fair may not know better]. The birds don't do well &/or are disqualified and the people are either upset or angry. They bought the birds as "show quality" or someone told them they were really nice birds. These folks who might have had a positive show experience instead are soured on the fancy and give up.
As to this particular on-line show-here we go. There were a few birds that superficially appeared to be pretty good-the W C Black Polish that was best bantam was one example. However, the vast majority of the birds were barely recognizable as the breeds they were supposed to be. In fact, in some cases, they were not at all recognizable as the breeds they were supposed to be.
This in part is probably why in the "what breed is this" catagory you see so many wildly divergent "guesses" as to the identity of a particular bird. Either the bird is such a poor breed example it's hard to tell or the persons guessing really don't know breed identifications and guess based on very little information.
Now, is there any real harm in any of this? No, there's very little at stake and if your chickens fulfill what ever function they serve in your life then that's cool. [ At the same time I do have to admit I'm mildly annoyed when someone tells me I'm wrong about a breed ID and their reason is absolutely wrong ie: Redcap hens are solid brown"]
So here's my question. Is it possible to set up some way for people who are looking for more than "they're beautiful" to get some honest feedback on the appearance of their birds? I've been tempted to respond to a few of these post where the birds appeared to be somewhat competitive but I haven't because I'm not really interested in offending anyone & there's always room for improvement. That's why I kept 12 out of 186 I hatched last year.
