Cheep Thrills

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Cheep Thrills
There's no profit in it, but the ornamental poultry circuit draws flocks of devotees.

One chicken in particular, Asia, became more of a pet than a project. "I'd have to go out and do the chores, and I'd sit down and say, 'Oh, Asia, I don't feel like doing the milking.' And she'd sit down on my lap and go to sleep," says St. Amour. "She was probably just looking for a nice place to sit and didn't care that she kept me from doing my chores. But I just think that was so nice."

Asia followed St. Amour everywhere, inside and out. She lived for 10 years. After her came Pucker. Of course, when St. Amour started dating Sachs, things changed a bit. "If Carl was coming over, I'd have to real quick put [Pucker] back in his cage. Carl doesn't think chickens should be roaming the house," she says. "We have a different set of values." When Pucker died in March, she says, "I spent half a day crying."

At 7 a.m. Saturday, the exhibition building is buzzing with activity. St. Amour is pouring water into her birds' cups from an old orange juice container. She'll scoop new wood shavings into their cages and straighten their feathers one last time, then let them be. When she first started showing chickens, St. Amour would spend hours getting every feather in place, every comb polished. But after 35 years in the game, she has largely abandoned the more intense prettifying efforts.

Not everyone is that blase. Near St. Amour, Shannon Fiedler and Melissa Sobolewski set up folding chairs and break out two large tackle boxes. "I've got Ivory soap, baby oil and lice combs, two for seven bucks," says Melissa, waving a hand across the bottles, tubes and toothbrushes tidily tucked in neat compartments. "The aspirin is for me, and the Tylenol PM because I can never sleep at these shows."

Judging time nears, and there is a flurry of activity as feathers are smoothed one last time and birds are returned to their cages. The judges work systematically, and by 5:30 p.m., they have assessed all the birds.

St. Amour has had minor success. Her black hen wins best of variety and best of breed -- not too surprising, since her only two competitors "weren't that spectacular-looking." The blue, with her missing lacing, was second in a class of two. Despite his bath, Stomper hasn't wowed the judges, either, also coming in second place behind the only other competitor in his group. "He was a little nutty acting. He was all uptight, standing too tall and not posing well," says St. Amour. "He's just not ready." One nice surprise: Among the larger birds, she's beaten out one of Roebuck's for best white Cochin. "I didn't expect that," she says, clearly pleased.

The class winners and reserves -- 26 birds in all -- are moved to Champion's Row, where they'll spend the night. Tomorrow, Delmarva show chairman Richard Barczewski, an agriculture professor at Delaware State University, will announce the grand champion.

ON SUNDAY MORNING, with the competition basically over, many exhibitors go shopping. St. Amour takes a moment to inspect a rooster she's thinking of buying from Roebuck. He's nicely feathered, though his legs are a tad paler than the Standard calls for and his chest has yet to fill out. She takes him, anyway.

She will also take home a second new rooster, this one offered to her for free by a fellow fancier and, not surprisingly, a little questionable in the genetics department. Imperfect birds are usually culled from flocks to be sold as pets or killed (they're rarely eaten). But St. Amour is admittedly a bit of a softy. When a friend once threatened to consign one of his birds to the stew pot, St. Amour offered to take him in. "He had greenish legs," she remembers. She showed him, anyway.

"When you don't have a rooster, anything is better than nothing," she says, leaning in toward the freebie's cage. "Sort of."

At 9:30, Barczewski grabs a microphone and stakes out a corner of the room to announce the show winners. A single-comb white leghorn bantam cockerel raised by the Delmarva club treasurer wins grand champion; second place goes to a black Old English cockerel from South Carolina. Amidst friendly clapping, Barczewski announces "coop out," unleashing an explosion of activity as exhibitors race to pack up their birds and get home. For a while, the ambient bird noise is at its cacophonous peak. By 11, the hall is empty.

In a few weeks, many of those who attended Delmarva will do it all again, this time at a show in New Jersey. After that, it's a 10-plus hour drive to Greenville, Ohio, and then two back-to-back shows in Virginia. In the fall, many will hit the national shows: Either Harrington, for the American Bantam Association show, which likely will draw 2,000 or more birds; or Lucasville, Ohio, for the APA. (Every few years these two double up; last year's blowout, in Indianapolis, drew nearly 12,000 birds.)

For now, St. Amour returns to Darlington with her poultry.

In her flock, a cockerel named Whiskers -- for the feathers that puff out around his face -- is starting to emerge as a potential replacement for Pucker. He's a diffident competitor, but a good companion. "Maybe a little less sweet than Pucker," St Amour says, "but with time . . ."

Christina Breda Antoniades, a frequent Date Lab contributor, is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. She can be reached at 20071@washpost.com.