chicken surprise

My apologies for the lack of posts, but with getting ready for the fair and going to the fair this week, there wasn't much time to blog.

As a matter of fact, there wasn't much time to do anything else but those two activities.

We set up a sheep beauty parlor in the barn, and washed and trimmed and clipped and cut until our arms and backs ached. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures. I was the chief sheep hiney washer, and it took up a lot of time. (Sheep don't use a lot of toilet paper.) Plus I didn't want to touch the camera or pretty much anything while I was carrying out my assigned duties.

But everyone was ready to go on fair day, and so we loaded the trailer bright and early.




There was lots and lots of sheep showing.








And helping out with the fleece show.

(A huge thank you to Laurie and Val, who ran the fleece show while I raced back and forth to the show ring.)

And just having fun in the children's ag display section.


But the biggest surprise of the day was the chicken show. We had been asked to bring along some chickens for the display, so we tossed a couple into a pen and took them over. (Read: mom went out and caught the chickens and put them into a pen. The boys were a little afraid of them and didn't want to touch them.)

The chicken show organizers persuaded Primo that he wanted to show his chickens. A few days before the show, a very attractive college-age 4H girl showed him how to hold the chicken, and various parts of a chicken, and the proper way to show a chicken. Needless to say, he was pretty attentive.

But we were all shocked when he won the best showmanship award for chicken showing.


Which meant, at this particular show, that he was automatically entered into the Showmanship Round Robin. The best showmanship winner from each species show brought their animals to the ring, and they switched from animal to animal as the judge quizzed them on that particular species.

He had to show a meat goat:


And a dairy goat:


And a sheep (not a big stretch for him, though he got the question about sheep gestation wrong):


But he was really nervous about the cow. He knew this particular cow. He had seen her at her farm just two weeks ago climbing the walls of her pen when we simply walked into the barn. But she had calmed down a bit, and was on her best behavior.


Plus she was tied up to the ring, and he didn't have to hold her.

We came home, unloaded the animals and fleeces and food, and pretty much collapsed. This picture pretty much sums it up: