II Campionato Europeo Combattenti

My journey to Koln began on Tuesday evening - travelling overnight on the ferry, down the length of England, then onto the next ferry to France. Luckily my good friend Kevin Dyer, who did all the driving, was used to European roads and easily made the change from left to right for the rest of the long journey - which took until Wednesday evening, when we eventually arrived at the Messe show hall.

As all German shows, the hall itself was laid out beautifully, with displays of birds, plants and flowers, plus interesting stalls - all still being set up.
Here I was informed that judging started promptly at 7am the following morning. So I quickly went to my hotel to try for some much-needed sleep.
Next morning, up while it was still dark and too early for breakfast, I made my way to the show hall.
After waking Kevin, who was on site in his motorhome, we both arrived on time as instructed.
He was my steward, but even between us we could not decipher some of the forms we were supposed to complete, and no-one spoke English - but we pressed on!

Luckily the Asian Gamefowl Society Show was the first for me to judge, and Willem's excellent multi-lingual judging forms made it easy to explain my placings.
Nevertheless I was delighted, and so was Kevin, when Wanda Zwart appeared to help with the translating and stewarding, although it was a difficult job for her too.
She had to translate my English into her own Dutch, then into the show's German. It was not an easy task in the other sections, but she gamely kept assisting me all day - for which I am tremendously grateful.
The AGS section was separate from the main show, and unfortunately some of those entered in this section were actually penned incorrectly in the main show.
I saw some of them later and wished that I had been judging these very nice birds.

Julia Keeling

Mario Robben

However, there were some good birds entered in this section and I enjoyed judging them. There was a good selection of breeds and most were good examples of their breed. Some needed a little more show preparation, but in this section I did not penalise birds for being a little muddy or not in the best of feather, preferring to judge the birds themselves rather than their condition.

In the end, my Best in Show was a fit athletic Shamo male shown by Mario Robben. A close Reserve was a lovely Malgache female shown by Willem van Ballekom.

The strongest class was the Shamo. There were some beautiful fit strong birds of the right type here, although small criticisms of otherwise excellent birds meant that Mario's took the class and the show.
As Shamo are my own breed I was very careful not to allow personal preference to influence my judging choices, but it happened that a Shamo was the best bird on the day.

Wanda's help became even more invaluable when I went on to judge some Junior classes in the main show.
First before me was a class of Old English Game Bantams, Modern Game Bantams and Ko Shamo.
I think the British breeds were allocated to me simply because I was British myself!

Luckily I knew beforehand so was able to study the standards.

There were some nice little birds here.
In the Modern Game Large Fowl I was not impressed with the weak legs in evidence. By this I mean that although the birds were large and well-made with apparently good bone, their legs were knock-kneed and wobbly.
To me it is important that a game bird have strong legs, so I did not give top marks to any of these birds. I scored them 90 (satisfactory) and 91/92 (good), considering that they were otherwise nice looking birds.

Unknown to me at the time, such marks are not interpreted as described by German exhibitors, and they are viewed as very poor marks.
Some other judges were upset by my markings and asked me to change them, which I did not. I could say only that I found some 'satisfactory' and some 'good', which were the scores I awarded.
The fact that the leg problem was apparently common in the breed did not make it acceptable.

Julia Keeling e Wanda Swart: work in progress!