There's two big ones I like to go to - The British Waterfowl Association National Show in November and the Poultry Club of GB National poultry show - the first has 800 or so entries and is purely waterfowl.
There are others around the country although I'm not sure when they are. The BWA website usually lists them though.
BWA national waterfowl exhabition - soilihul
DWC championship show - baslall commomn
Devon and cornwalll waterfowl exhabition - wadebridge
these 3 usually have the highest waterfowl enteries , there are a few more good ones , but im bias to all waterfowl shows as they have a higher standard and considerably more enteries duck/goose wise .
There is also the BWA Devon and Cornwall Waterfowl show - 30th Anniversary National Championship Exhibition and sale on Sunday 29th November. I haven't been to this one but have a schedule of classes and I hear it is pretty big.
Yes, the National is 28th 29th November - but my guess is they are far enough apart in distance terms that it doesn't effect them too much.
I will be going to Solihull and The National but first it's Hanover this weekend where I hope to take a closer look at their Streicher ducks or Abacot Rangers as we call them here. The Germans have loads of them and have some great birds so I'm really looking forward to it.
I visited the Devon & Cornwall show last year & would recommend it. It has different breeders showing than Solihull so you see some different birds.The lighting was good and the natives cheerful & keen to help.
I've just got back from the Hannover Poultry Show and wow - there were loads of waterfowl to see...
There were over 600 Indian Runners alone! The judges also have longer to judge - up to 150 birds each but they are specialists in their category. The birds are there for 5 days - by the time you go in, they have been judged and the marks are shown in the catalogues.
It's interesting to see the differences in their birds - the shapes of the Indian Runners heads for example. The Abacot Ranger or Streicher as they call them are much smaller (as they haven't been out crossed as many have been here) and some of their geese are different too.
I would like to get down to Devon one year - but this year it will just be Solihull and the National for me.
sounds ace , would love to go one day.
were the heads on the runners more dish billed not as straight as ours and were they longer in leg, bigger gap from tail to floor.
have you any pics?
Yes, some of the runners had more dished bills and the heads looked different - eyes further back.
I'm no Indian Runner expert but they certainly looked different to what I have seen in the UK.
I took lots of photos - as most birds had wide bars on their cages, you could just about squeeze a camera lens up to the bars and take a photo without flash if they were calm enough. The runners however were much more difficult, being more nervous, they had a barrier 3 feet away from the cage front to stop you from getting too close and startling them so I could take a limited number of photos that were any good.
Sorry to hi-jack your post Rooster! I will post photos under a separate post in the Showing Waterfowl section once I have had a chance to go through them...
I'm looking forward to the photos too. Abacot Rangers would be my next choice of duck if I do not control myself (oh after a couple of muscovy ducks for broodies) and it looks like I'll be breeding the Chick pea (Blau-gelb?) Runners next year that are standard in europe but not here yet.
Yes you're right I should have said Chick Pea yellow = Erbsgelb it has the addition of the sex linked brown gene so the ducks are deeper yellow and the speculum brownish. The drakes look v similar. www.runnerduck.net/new_colours
I think I'll go to the British Waterfowl Association Devon and Cornwall show in a few weeks, that seems to be the best bet at the moment. I was going to go to the BWA solihull show but I had to work. :roll: