Questions about Shows

[SwampPrincessChick]

Curious about raising and showing Seramas. I have recently gotten interested in showing and want more information about it before I dive into it. I will probably have more questions later!

1. What are the basic commands that you need to teach your show bird? If you know how to teach them the basic commands, please tell me!

2. Can you reward the show bird with food after it does a command correctly while being judged? If so, what treats could you give them?

3. Can you use a clicker to make your show bird do commands while it is being judged? If not, what else could you use to make the chicken know it did the command correctly?

4. Are male Seramas only allowed in shows? I haven't seen any female Seramas being showed.

5. Can you put two or more male Seramas in the same pen?

6. Are there certain colors of Serama that are more preferred in shows?

7. Is it best to buy a show bird that is already grown, or is a chick easier to train?

8. Is it possible to know what a Serama chick will look like when grown, without knowing what its parents looked like?

9. Do you have to keep your show bird away from food for a period of time, so during the show it will want treats as a reward for doing commands correctly?

@SwampQueenChick

 

[Reave]

You don't need to teach a bird anything to show them, though acclimating them to their show cage beforehand would be beneficial to their well-being, so they are perhaps a little less stressed when it comes to being plucked from their comfy home and spending a day or few at a random show or faire. At shows, the handling portion done by the judge is relatively brief, and they will be accustomed to chickens that are a bit skeptical of the whole process.

Selecting for calm, collected temperaments in your show lines is probably more useful to their welfare & general well-being than most training you can do for them though, as sometimes you may not even be present when the judge is going down the lines.

That said, you can easily clicker train chickens to do all sorts of tasks for the behavioral enrichment of doing so, they excel at visual-based tasks & can be rewarded with a peck from a measuring cup with scratch or dried mealworms in it. Teaching them to jump from a perch onto your arm can be fun, if a little inconvenient sometimes when they start dive-bombing you expecting treats! They aren't quite the same as training a dog, but it's a fun challenge if you don't stress about the speed they pick up on things. Some of 'em pick up things faster than many dogs, but others seem to struggle a little more figuring out how to bridge the desired behavior with the treat.