Poultry judge takes birds in hand

You can't judge a chicken unless you pick it up.

"You can't tell anything by just standing there. Anyone who tells you that you can is lying," said Paul Seymour of Warrenton, poultry judge for the Prince William County Fair. "You've got to put your hands on them.

"There could be a dozen things hidden under the feathers," he said.

Seymour, 73, who has been raising chickens since he was about 6 years old, knows what he is talking about. He has a farm in Fauquier County where he has cows, horses, goats, pheasants, pigeons and peacocks.

But his passion is and always has been chickens. He's already sold about 1,000 this year at auction and has about 150 left.

He can rattle off the names of breeds and their characteristics, poultry history plus a whole lot more.

"I just picked it up, because I didn't want to get rooked," Seymour said. "If you are going to have something, you have to find out everything you can about it."

He has countless books on poultry, as well as books on the other animals he keeps on his farm.

"I got taken as a kid," he said. "By the time I was a teenager, I got smart and I got a book."

Seymour, with some assistance from Molly Crum of Nokesville who oversees the poultry and rabbit barn at the fair, was getting ready to spend the next couple of hours judging about 120 poultry entries on Monday morning.

He characterized the entries as "good to poor" this year. "We see them all," Crum said.

Seymour has been judging poultry at the fair for about 25 years. Crum has been overseeing the barn for about 15 years but has participated in the fair for 30. She raises chickens as well.

Most of the entries in this year's contest came from Culpeper, Catlin, Summerduck and a few from Nokesville.

"There just aren't that many farms in Prince William County anymore," Crum said.

With a shrinking number of farms comes a lack of

information about the industry.

"The kids come in here and don't realize where eggs come from," Crum said. "They think they come from the store."

Part of Crum's job at the barn is to offer some education.

The birds would be judged by breed, color and faults as outlined in the American Poultry Association's Standards of Perfection.

One breed may have yellow legs, while another white. The hue of color in those chickens, for example, would be taken into consideration during judging.

"It's the color of their legs and it's the color of their eyes," Seymour said.

Another breed is supposed to have red lobes. "See that bird there, it has a white lobe. That's a no-no," Seymour said.

Seymour had three Langshan roosters that were entered as show birds to judge.

"I look at the arch of their backs, how they hold their heads, how they hold their tails, their legs -- the whole nine yards," Seymour said. "I even check the color of the bottom of their feet."

It would be up to Seymour to determine the winners. After, of course, he had picked up each and every one of them.

Staff writer Aileen Streng can be reached at 703-878-8010.