Judging Exhibition Stock. 
107 
notice. This, as a matter of course, becomes very puzzling and discouraging to the experienced, while to the 
young beginner the riddle is impossible of solution, it being a more than difficult task to learn from the 
awards of Judges which is the correct thing to Show and breed for. There will always be, naturally, a more 
or less divergence of opinion on the merits or otherwise of even the best birds, as the ideal standard of 
perfection has not yet been attained in any one specimen, different judges placing more or less weight to the 
presence or absence of any given merit or defect. It is now time that the tendency to such variation should 
be limited within reasonable bounds, so that in the future the gross injustice to the exhibitor of having an 
absolutely good specimen passed without notice, and the keen disappointment of being beaten by an altogether 
inferior exhibit, should quickly become a thing of the past. As previously remarked, there will always be a 
more or less difference of opinion on the merits of even a class of good birds, more especially if these birds 
are slightly diverse in the good and bad qualities or points. This difference of opinion, when not carried to 
extremes, has to a certain extent a beneficial effect, as, if the actual decisions of Judges could be foretold 
beforehand with absolute certainty, the entries would quickly fall off, as only those who were positively 
certain of winning would send their birds. 
The numerous dodges and countless tricks resorted to by a small section of exhibitors is about the 
meanest method of fraud we know of, and times without number we have noted these devices to attract the 
notice of the Judge, not^ as we are pleased indeed to state, always being successful, such as hempseed being 
scattered in the pen, just a little sawdust sprinkled on the floor, a piece of coloured worsted attached to the 
pen, etc., etc. These trifling things give an unfair advantage over the honest, and more e.specially absent, 
exhibitor. We have a strong objection to the sending of pen numbers to exhibitors. A better method of 
procedure would be, not to allow exhibitors to even know their pen numbers niitil after the Judging had taken 
place. This could easily be arranged by the stewards (electing non-exhibitors to the position) taking 
delivery of the birds at the doors of the building (not allowing exhibitors inside), and penning the whole 
of the exhibits. The task would not be a great one, and would certainly do away with much of the 
opportunity for fraud, and remove at one stroke the doubt existing at times as to the probity of the Judge. 
Under the present system, if an exhibitor has the " pull on a Judge," nothing is to prevent him giving the 
latter his pen numbers, and win right through the Show. 
Moreover, many Judges make awards in the Cockerel and Pullet Classes on the same basis as the adult 
specimens, overlooking the fact that a Cockerel, who will eventually make up into a fine adult specimen, is, 
as a rule, rather more leggy and smart than a fully-developed cock, and a Pullet that will develop into a well- 
proportioned hen should, as a Pullet, look on the neat and fine side, in both cases quality, feather, comb, etc., 
being of far more worth than mere size, with absence of quality. 
To pomt out some of the difficulties the most efficient Judge has to encounter in happily placing his 
awards, one must remember that even the specialist breeder has a difficulty in selecting his birds for 
Exhibition — those that he has noticed daily and hourly from the shell to the Show pen— looking all the 
while for their good points and imperfections, so how can it reasonably be supposed that a Judge should be 
infallible in handling a large class of birds which have been thoroughly studied for months by, perhaps, a 
dozen or more individual exhibitors ; and during our Show career we have found, except in very rare and 
isolated instances, that Judges are most courteous, and always ready to acknowledge any oversight on their 
part to which their attention has afterwards been drawn. Could any man be expected to do more ? 
Again, as the task of judging at any Show of magnitude is no sinecure, we would like to see the 
gentlemen who undertake this responsible and often thankless task given all the consideration possible, so 
that the awards made by them can be carefully and deliberately weighed. This can in a great measure be 
secured by the prevention of exhibitors and others from being present while actual judging is taking place. 
By this means the decisions are not likely to be interfered with or partially upset, the Judge being then able 
to execute the task imposed upon him in a much more efficient manner. 
There should be no difficulty whatever in placing the award cards upon the pens in each class 
throughout the Show as quickly as judged, so that by the time the judging was completed the whole of the 
