In Which We Fancy Poultry

Shottery Memorial Hall sounded a surprisingly modest venue for The National Poultry Show, and the signage was similarly low key. It comprised a home-made A4 poster on the gatepost, and an open fire exit door. The only signs of life were a handful of cars and a lady smoking a cigarette outside the fire exit.

I walked once round the building in search of an entrance, them gave up and consulted the lady at the fire exit.

‘You just go in’ she said nodding at the passageway behind her.

At the end of the passageway was a largish hall, its entrance more or less guarded by a seedy looking character with a book of raffle tickets. He seemed faintly surprised when I asked the entrance fee, and we settled on a modest 50p. He didn’t try to sell me a raffle ticket, and I helped myself to a photocopied list of exhibits.

The hall was stuffed with small square metal cages, stacked 3 high back to back in rows, all full of chickens. There must have been a good 400 of them, and as at any moment in time around 10 per cent were actively squawking or crowing, the noise was impressive.

Most of the serious business had clearly already taken place. Prize certificates were threaded into the fronts of many cages, and on the stage in the end of the hall sat a sad looking man behind a bottle of sherry and some gift-wrapped parcels (presumably the prizes) and five much larger cages containing the overall winners, the big-name stars of the show.

You know, I don’t think this could have been the actual National Poultry Show. I think it must have been a regional, or even local, offshoot of the main event. Apart from anything else, Prince Charles is the patron of the Poultry Club of Great Britain, and there was no sign of him at all.

And I would have spotted him easily – there were only a couple of dozen people in the hall, out of all proportion to the number of chickens, even allowing for multiple ownership. Presumably the vast majority had sneaked off to the nearby town for a spot of lunch and sightseeing, leaving their poultry to fend for itself. There was a ruddy cheeked man in a white coat and flat cap and a clipboard walking about, presumably the invigilator. Flat caps, ruddy cheeks, knobbly walking sticks and loden green jackets were indeed much in evidence, reflecting the healthy outdoor life of the chicken breeder. Also straining paunches, reflecting its comparatively sedentary nature and proximity to the local pub, and a curious range of frayed shorts and track suit bottoms, reflecting a sad want of fashion sense all round. The women were generally better dressed, and most had the air of being there out of necessity rather than passion, perhaps to help with the teas.

I had been hoping for something a little more commercial and upbeat, I must admit. I had been looking forward to stall selling poultry shampoo and grooming kits for show birds, and other things I could snigger at. But, in all fairness, there was no shortage of chickens.

In fact I was dazzled and confused, hardly knowing where to turn. For a happy hour I stalked the corridors of cages, consulting my exhibitor list and getting my eye in. I tried to convince myself that I could tell the difference between the first prize winner and the unplaced. I couldn’t. They were all beautiful. My favorites were the Wyandottes with their wonderful black or gold deckle-edged feathers, like Huguenot lace, and the Sussex. As a light Light Sussex farmer myself (well I own one) I felt more in my depth here; the striking difference in the award winners and my own specimen was they were sparking white and clean (tip – never get a white hen – unlike cats, they’re not into washing) and the ruffs around their necks were very deep and black, each feather delineated as though with Indian ink. There were a handful of fascinating rare breeds too, including this wonderful character, a split comb Cruella De Ville with black and white spotted feathers and a deep white collar.

The Bantams, which I had imagined merely toy birds for dilettantes, also fascinated me. The Modern Game bantams (category Hard Feather – don’t ask me why), tiny wiry brown creatures like pumped up starlings on steroids, with spindly legs and disproportionally broad pectorals, were deliciously feisty – just like their boxing namesakes. There was also a bantam category risquély named ‘A cock and two hens’ comprising a small huffy-looking family unit trying to get on with it’s life and ignore the audience.

Bantam fanciers seemed to be a class on their own. Clusters of shaven headed youths bigged up their birds to one another, a procedure which seemed to involve turning the birds upside down and peering up their rear ends. A pretty unhealthy activity, I felt, for young men who could be spending their Saturdays in the healthy outdoors, swigging cider in the doorway of Primark.

There was also an exhibition of eggs, chiefly of interest because almost all the ‘single bantam eggs’, already judged, had been removed, leaving only an indentation in the sawdust on each paper plate. What sort of person, I wondered, takes his bantam egg home early before it gets over-tired, but not his birds?

My bet for Best in Show was a massive, opulently feathered Sussex Cock with lusty red wattles and a rich baritone crow of toe-curling sexiness – I would have loved to have taken him home to my two. He came second, however, to an undistinguished-looking (to me) little brown bantam with a chest almost as wide as she was tall. Maybe you have to look up her fundament to appreciate her winning qualities.

If you can’t wait a whole year to attend the next National Poulty Show yourself, check out Stephen Armytage’s superb and amazing ‘Extraordinary Chickens’ – no guest cloakroom should be without it.