Birds get beauty treatment ahead of show

EVEN if Kaye Sangster fails to win any prizes at this weekend’s Dunedin Poultry, Pigeon and Cage Bird Club annual show, none of her chickens will come home to roast.

At the very worst, they may not be entered in a show again.

That is because her chickens are like family to her — so much so, they are housed in warm sheds with glass sliding doors.

And to say she puts many hours of time into preparing them for shows, is just scratching the surface.

‘‘As far as getting them ready for a show, it really starts when they’re about 6 weeks old.

‘‘They’ve got to be quite tame.’’

Ms Sangster spent much of yesterday giving her silver spangled Hamburgs, white Leghorns and differentcoloured Pekin bantams a relaxing bubble bath in her laundry tub.

‘‘First of all, I clean their legs — I scrub them with a toothbrush and some [special] shampoo.

‘‘And then we start on their feathers. I wet them with a shower attachment.

‘‘When they’re young, the first time they get washed, they try and fly out, and of course you get water all up the walls.

‘‘But the second time, they just relax in your hands. They get used to it.’’

The birds are then wrapped in a ‘‘bathrobe’’ (towel) to get rid of excess water and then they are blowdried with a hairdryer.

‘‘They quite like that. It’s nice and warm.’’

As part of the beauty treatment, the birds also have their nails and beaks trimmed and shaped, and ‘‘makeup’’ (baby oil) is applied to their combs (the red crests on their heads) to make them red and shiny.

‘‘We do everything but their eye lashes,’’ she said.

Unfortunately, looking good was not the only attribute judges were looking for.

Ms Sangster said the birds had also been trained to perform certain moves to show their form for the judges. The secret training tool was walnuts.

She said they loved walnuts — they would cross a busy road to eat them — and they had the bonus effect of making their feathers shiny.

Ms Sangster’s birds will be among more than 700 at this weekend’s show and birds have come from as far as Blenheim and Invercargill.

The show is on at Forrester Park today (1pm6pm) and tomorrow (10.30am3pm).

PHOTO: STEPHEN JAQUIERY Bubble bath . . . Kaye Sangster prepares her silver laced Pekin bantam — the only one of its kind in New Zealand — for the Dunedin Poultry, Pigeon and Cage Bird Club’s 42nd annual show at Forrester Park today.