Tales of a chicken show champion (circa 2016)
When I was 14, I was a champion chicken showman. It was a short-lived victory, but a victory no less.
In middle school, my mother and stepfather decided to purchase a big old farmhouse in the country, a statuesque Greek revival home built in 1799 into the side of a hill. It was large and drafty but beautiful, with views of two different mountain chains and surrounding by pastoral fields and woodlands.
It meant transferring from my inner city middle school where fights were frequent and I was far from popular, to a new school where I’d know no one. Although I was bullied and didn’t love my middle school, I had my core group of friends. I wasn’t happy with the decision to move, so my mother let me finish out at my middle school before transferring districts for high school. I’d been in the honors program, which meant that as an eighth-grader, I’d taken mostly freshman-level classes. Transferring to a school without an honors program meant my courses were split between the 9th and 10th grade classes, leading to much confusion amongst my peers over which grade I was actually in. This did nothing for my popularity.
Around this same time, my mother decided we needed to fully embrace our new country living status. For us, this meant getting some farm animals — namely, rabbits and chickens. We fixed up the old coop on our property, building a ramp between the indoor part and the fenced-in outdoor area and we painted the interior a bright sky blue, adorned with the giant, colorful and child-like flowers I’m known for drawing.
We started out with a batch of chicks of different varieties, including a breed called Araucanas, which lay eggs in shades of blue, green and yellow. Also called the Easter Egg chicken, this is the breed favored by Martha Stewart herself (and it has inspired a paint line.) Being novices, we did not realize it would be wise to request all pullets (young females) as opposed to taking a gamble on winding up with too many roosters.
The art of chicken sexing is apparently a rare and difficult one, one that unlike many age-old farm practices has yet to be successfully mechanized. An expert chicken sexer can determine the sex of a day-old chick, but this skill set is one that, perhaps unsurprisingly, is dying out. Chicken sexer isn’t exactly a career to which many young people aspire. In fact, a recent newspaper article from early 2015 focused on the so-called chicken-sexing crisis in Britain. British youngsters really don’t want to be chicken sexers, it turns out. There’s reportedly been no new recruitment since 2012. Go figure.
Not being skilled in chicken sexing ourselves, it should go without saying that we eventually wound up with too many roosters, which upon maturity began to attack not only one another, but also us. Not knowing what to do when confronted with angry, squawking roosters charging toward you, we went for advice at the local feed & supply store, where the kindly clerk put us in touch with a man she called Lenny the Chicken man. Lenny was an older man with gray hair and the kind of withered skin one might expect in an old farmer, wearing a uniform of blue jeans, boots and a white T-shirt. You could tell he was trying not to laugh at the obvious distress of my mother and I as we pointed out the “vicious” beasts that he deftly scooped up by their scaly legs and held upside down. Random fact: Holding a rooster upside down puts it into a trance-like state, although that’s probably because it mitigates their ability to breath properly.
Somewhere around this time, my mother decided to embark on yet another attempt at full-on country living, one that would be executed by her two darling children. We were going to join our local 4-H chapter, a group called the Barnstormers that was led by a woman named Eileen who raised sheep, married an Armenian immigrant and spoke in the tone of voice that typically comes from chain-smoking and late-night whiskey consumption. 4-H originally started as a joint project of the Cooperative Extension organization and the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a way to promote education among rural youth. This could include everything from cattle raising to embroidery, to canning and chicken showing. The organization has changed a lot since its founding in the early 1900s, expanding far beyond its agricultural roots to serve a greater purpose of youth development of all types. In fact, one of the largest 4-H chapters is located in the decidedly not rural New York City.
The Barnstormers, however, were a more traditional kind of 4-H group. At the time, we joined I was 14 and my brother was 7. I’m fairly certain now that my joining had little to do with me actually wanting to do so and much more to do with the fact that my mother had created a distinct vision for herself of what our country life would be like. We do all sorts of things for the ones we love. That said, I didn’t hate 4-H in the slightest. At least half of our 4-H group was part of the same family, a group of blonde sisters with rosy cheeks who were all home-schooled, and two of them were close to my age. They were homesteaders of a sort, and at least one of the girls was seriously into horseback riding.
One sure sign that you’re a so-called gentleman farmer (i.e. the kind of urban transplant farmers that the New York Times dedicates numerous trends-based articles to) is giving all of your animals names. A “real” farmer views pets separate from farm animals, or so I’m told. But we were not real farmers by any stretch of the imagination; never have I owned a Carhart jacket, for instance, and I’ve never owned anything manufactured by John Deere as far as I know. To call us real farmers would be akin to equating a miniature golf aficionado with a PGA Tour member. Or something like that.
Anyways, each season our 4-H club would focus on a different theme and project. With the local fair just months away, this season we would focus on livestock showing. It was decided that my brother and I would focus on chicken showmanship.
However, once the roosters were gone, our small flock spend their days wandering around in the yard eating bugs, worms and on at least one occasion, a mouse stolen from one of the half-dozen stray cats our neighbor had taken in. They grew lean and muscular, and were prolific layers. They were feisty and presumably happy, if one likes to anthropomorphize these things. But they weren’t exactly pageant material, thanks to their free-range lifestyle.
And so the likes of Zelda, Matt, Sunny and the rest were exempt from fair duty and instead, our 4-H leader presented us with two shiny black Bantam hens with feather-covered feet. Bantam is not a breed, but rather a term for a number of varieties of chickens that are basically miniature versions that lay miniature eggs to match. This particular breed, Cochin, had feather-covered feet and an overall fluffy appearance. The breed name and their appearance led my 7-year-old brother to name his “Koosh” after those brightly colored, rubber balls popular in the 1990s. (They resembled sea anemones, sort of.)
There are a number of things that go into chicken showmanship. Your animal has to be healthy, with no mites or too much scaliness on their legs. They should have clean, well cared for beaks and combs, and few broken feathers. To accomplish this, our chickens would be bathed before being shown, and our 4-H leader showed us a trick of using a little baby oil to rub their feet and beak to optimize shininess. Aside from the health and appearance of your chicken, the showmanship competition involves being able to show off your knowledge of the chicken parts. For weeks we’d practice identifying the gullet, comb and other body parts. We’d practice introducing ourselves, introducing our animal and then showing off the wings by carefully fanning them out. We’d flip the animal over carefully to show the under color and its width, all with the goal of conveying to the judges our understanding of the animal’s anatomy and the proper handling of it. The judges would then ask us general questions having to do with chickens and their care.
With each year of participation, the questions would get increasingly difficult, moving beyond basic anatomy and nomenclature to breed-specific queries and more detailed inquiries pertaining to breeding, laying and physiology. This meant that the level/category at which you’d compete wasn’t based on your age or grade, as so many competitions for children are, but rather, your experience level. As this was my first year, this meant I had to compete at the novice level. When we arrived at the fair with our chickens, dressed in black jeans and crisp white shirts, I discovered that as a “novice,” that meant I’d be competing almost solely against small children, many of whom were half my age or less. It is extremely embarrassing to be a 14 going on15-year-old girl and have to compete against kids who don’t even come up to your shoulder. I towered over my fellow contestants as we stood in line for judging, my palms sweating as I silently cursed my mother’s need for the country living dream.
Still, I nailed it when it was my turn to show off my chicken to the judges. However, so did several other kids, meaning we’d have to participate in a Jeopardy-style lightning round of questions about chickens. Yes, I might have been participating with a bunch of elementary school kids, but you bet I kicked their ass. And that’s how I became a chicken showmanship champion, and an undefeated one to boot — I never showed chickens again.
