We arrived at the fairgrounds to find a situation. I got there at my usual fairly early time, but the building hadn't been opened as it usually was. I saw a couple cars go around to the back, but didn't think anything about it since many park in back. Friends pulled in shortly after I did and we waited to see if anyone was opening the building. No one did. Then some people that we didn't recognize arrived. We asked if they had keys and they looked at us kind of oddly. They said something about holding a "celebration" in there. We said we were there for the rabbit show. That's when we learned it was being held in the barn behind the main building. Ooookay.
Sure enough there was everybody else. It didn't look good. The barn is...well...a barn with stalls and walls separating areas. It could get crowded. Did the best we could to find some floor space. Then we learned what had happened. At first, we were told the building had been double-booked, and the club didn't find out until Friday when they came to set up. Which was odd since the club books every year at the same time and it had been booked for a year. Then we learned the other booking was actually for Sunday, but the people complained about the odor left over from last year's Sat. show and booked the building for Sat too, even though they weren't using it then. The building stayed locked up all day.
It actually turned out better than we thought it would. While still a bit crowded, we managed to figure it out. Kudos to the club for maintaining order and organization on such short notice. A hot day was forcasted, but the barn stayed fairly cool, probably cooler than the building would have been. It did begin to heat up a bit toward the end of the afternoon, but most of us were leaving by then.
One of the main drawbacks, besides having to weave around stalls and walls to get anywhere, was the poor lighting. There were just regular bulbs in ceiling fixtures. Our dwarf judges couldn't examine color very well, so they didn't. For some reason, there were no scales so there were no DQs for weight, either. There were quite a few questionable jrs (in my opinion). So you could say this was a pretty relaxed show, which is kind of nice sometimes.
Here's a few new pix of some birds.
These are either Partridge Wyandottes or Rhode Island Reds. These are the older two, there's another younger one. Still haven't sexed yet. There's not much comb to give a clue.
Spiffy the Spangled Old English. Isn't he handsome! Looking forward to his full rooster tail.
Spiffy and Blue vying for face time (I guess). All the roos are getting along so far. Time will tell if that will continue. The 2 buff Cochins in the cage.
The lone guinea hatchling in the incubator didn't make it, and none of the other eggs hatched. Oh well.
Show season is pretty much over for me. I have no other shows on my calendar until fall. Unless I change my mind about the Dickson show in July. It's so far, probably not. The only other thing I have in the near future is the Southeastern Dwarf Fanciers Rendevous in 2 weeks. There's no show, it's a social day and club meeting.
Keep cool, summer is heating up in the south.
tnt
