Litchfield Poultry Club members produced a great entry for us to judge on the day with the hall full of around 350 exhibits. Most classes were well supported especially in the True Bantam, Asian and Game sections
After a long period of deliberation, all section winners were in their respective show pens on Championship Row. A huge task was in front of Dave Hackett with the large entry of Oxford game fowl in this section which requires time to be taken on each bird as it’s assessed for balance when judging proving to be very time-consuming.
Nancie’s section of True Bantams had good competition in the Dutch classification with a few birds very close to taking top prize cards. A Belgian female made it a very difficult choice for best bird in this section.
In the Soft Feather classes, there were a great deal of really good birds that lost points on broken feathers and poor preparation of feet and legs which caused them to fail in getting cards.
The Rare section, although smaller in entries proved to have some top quality birds that were very well prepared for the show and of excellent type, conforming to the PCGB standard.
Our final choice went to an outstanding Red Saddled Yokohama put down to perfection by Mick Cotterel & Son Iain, taking the Best In Show award. This bird was faultless and a well worthy example of what time and effort can produce, both in breeding and showmanship.
The same is dittoed in the winning bird owned by Philip Lamb which was an OEG bantam male, taking the honour of Reserve Best In Show. Standing so fine in the pen, showing good shape, feather perfect and did not disappoint once in the hand. Again, show prepared to the high standards required for top honours making it a hard decision between the two.
Congratulations to everyone who won and entered on the day.
Photos
Photos are courtesy of poultry photographer Rupert Stephenson.
Click to see larger images.
Nancie, Dave and myself would like to thank everyone for the huge warm welcome we received and give a great big round of applause for all the hard-working members who contributed to making it a very enjoyable day.
Not forgetting to thank Rupert for his helping hand of judging the eggs. One thing he did mention was, if in doubt before entering take a look on the PCGB web page for the correct weight allowed in a bantam class entry as there were goods eggs shown that were unfortunately too big which had to be disqualified under these rules.
