By Lee Ann Sides Garrett
news@salisburypost.com
David Hager has a big hobby.
“It’s like playing golf or anything else,” Hager says. “It’s a hobby.”
However, Hager’s hobby is raising and showing some 240 bantam chickens at his home in Mount Ulla. Hager says he’s been raising the birds for about 35 to 40 years now.
Bantams, or “banties” as they’re sometimes called, are miniature-sized chickens. There are more than 350 breeds and varieties of bantams, which are bred more for show and personality than for egg-laying and food.
Hager brought 29 of his best birds to the Rowan County Fairgrounds for the Old English Game Bantam Club of North Carolina’s Jamboree show Saturday. The show featured only the Old English breed of bantams, which come in more than 32 recognized colors. Birds were categorized by color and sex, with a special category for juniors (or children).
Hager served as Show Superintendent and has a busy schedule this time of year. “I’ve been from Canada, Florida and California to Bermuda,” Hager says. “We go about every weekend.”
Club Secretary Neil Mahaffey of Winston-Salem says the Old English Show is the biggest one breed show in the country. The club holds two shows a year and this is their 45th show.
With rows of cages nearly filling the building, Mahaffey estimated that proud owners brought slightly more than a thousand birds to Saturday’s jamboree.
“We have people coming from Texas, Oklahoma and New York to display birds here,” Mahaffey says. “We have entries from 13 states.”
Jake Lail of Shelby says raising bantams is one of three hobbies for him. He also raises and field judges beagles and cows. Lail has raised bantams for 54 years and has had both national and world champion birds.
Raising birds is be rewarding but expensive, he says. “The only drawback to all my hobbies,” Lail says grinning. “They all eat.”
Birds are judged as best in category and best in show according to standards of the American Bantam Association.
“It’s kind of like a beauty pageant,” says Ken Deal of China Grove.
Deal says he normally shows about 100 birds, but recent health concerns have slowed him to just a few.
Deal has been around chickens “all his life” and comes to the shows as much to see friends he hasn’t seen in a year as he does to enter. Deal says the clubs and shows provide an opportunity to amass a network of friends who have much in common.
“They speak the same language,” Deal says. “Chicken language.”