WHAT SHOULD THE JUDGES DO?

WHAT SHOULD THE JUDGES DO?
UPLOADED  BY MASTER LOFT

 

Each year the Budgerigar Society club show throws up a few comments re-judging, last year was no exception. Conversations ranged from the condition of some exhibits, to Flecking, also Variety content, along with many other issues. As a Budgerigar Society (BS) full panel judge I can sympathies with some of the points raised by the exhibitors, but I can also see it from the judges point of view as well.

FLECKING

One area that always seems to cause contention is the flecking rule, the BS instruction to judges is to penalise flecking severely, as there are degrees of this fault, commonly known as ticking, which is not as severe but still detracts from the overall beauty of the bird. This often leads to less experienced fanciers asking why do flecked birds still win? The reason is that the judge having taken into account these faults, may still consider the flecked exhibit to be superior to those opposing it in the class, and consequently it will be given a first place.

Potentially there is a problem for the judge, if all the better quality birds he gets to judge on the day are flecked, using this criteria it could lead to a situation where all the birds put forward for a higher award may also be flecked. So what should he do? Only award clean maybe far lesser exhibits or the better quality flecked ones? I can hear some of you saying put up the clean one, but on the other hand there will be as many wanting to see the quality birds put forward. Obviously it is desirable that a bird that is very black on the head should not win, sometimes they do, ticked birds very often win.

How can we overcome this problem for the judges? Should the BS ban flecked birds? Should the judges not put up flecking? . This issue has been discussed at length in the past and I don't intend to open it again in this article, but exhibitors can help, maybe we should not show them, this would alleviate the problem overnight, but there is no instruction to do so, they are not banned from the show bench! I personally prefer to judge only clean exhibits, but I can also appreciate the qualities of a very good-budgerigar carrying flecking. So as you can see they do and will continue to cause problems for the judges. I can see this being a cause of contention for many years to come.

CONDITION

This is another area that nearly always seems to cause concern to some exhibitors. As both an exhibitor and a judge I agree that condition is essential, as the BS instruction states, but how do we define condition? Should we only consider a bird that is full in feather, with fine or yellow feathering, as being in condition, I hope not. Most of the condition issues arise with buff/intermediate feathering, comments like "That bird should not win, it is out of condition" are often heard around the shows. This when the type of bird mentioned is in my opinion IN condition, it is just carrying a different type of feather, giving the bird a rougher look. Should judges discount a bird from taking a first place if it has a flight feather missing, or a spot missing, or maybe only showing one tail? These are temporary faults, and if missing when judged need to be considered, but do these exhibits need to be thrown out? Again there is no B.S. instruction to do so.

A common sense approach needs to be taken, let's look at it again from the judge's view. Our buff feathered bird is a super exhibit and a wonderful example of a top class budgerigar, but with a spot missing, or has one short tail feather, it is otherwise in condition. Up against it in the class are a number of poorer specimens in perfect condition, complete in feather, what would you do? What should the judge do? 

I personally would consider the faults carried by the good exhibition bird and if I considered this exhibit to be superior to the others in the class, it would be awarded a first place, I would hazard a guess so would most other judge's, so now we can see how some birds with faults can win. 

It is my opinion that we should try to continue to move the budgerigar forward, striving for even better specimens than we have today. I have heard all the arguments about birds becoming too big etc, but if the late Harry Bryan and Ken Farmer had rested on their laurels all those years ago we would not have the type of budgerigar we have today, and there are some wonderful specimens around. It is my opinion that size is not a problem, lack of style can be, but size and style can be brought together, it is down to the breeders to achieve it.

VARIETY CONTENT

Variety bird breeders seem have an on going problem, do the judges, select on the actual variety content of the exhibit as layed down by the BS scale of points or do they assess them as a budgerigar first? Both are important. Size shape and deportment is asked for by the BS, so should we be looking for a budgerigar that equals the more mainstream colours from a size issue? Or a good example of the variety? Is it possible to combine the two? I think it is, but not easy when breeding recessive varieties.

Thinking back to Miss Kirby Masons lutinos from years gone by, these carried wonderful hot body colour, probably not so common on today's lutino's, is this because breeders are trying to breed for size to the detriment of body colour? Should we place a hot body coloured lutino in front of a paler coloured, superior example of a budgerigar?

I can certainly see the frustrations facing the breeders who are trying to retain the beauty of some of the variety birds, and I can sympathies with then. I feel the biggest problem is consistency, some judges will select for a budgerigar, and others will go for the variety content first, resulting in different placeings each week. It can be very infuriating for the exhibitors of these varieties.

The above situation can apply to Albino's, clearwings, recessive pied, spangles, and many more varieties, and I know for a fact many exhibitors get quite annoyed when one of their birds has not done as well as they feel it should have done.

I would like to point out to them though that it is not only the breeders of variety birds who suffer these frustrations. The breeders of Normal varieties as they are known, light green, blues, greys, cinnamons, etc, can have similar frustrations. Lets look at the old chestnut the spangle as an example. For years a bone of contention with breeders of normals, yes spangles are a variety bird, and subsequently will face the problems already considered above, i.e., variety content etc, but there is one area that really is a cause for concern, the spots!

For some unknown reason these seem to be ignored in a lot of cases. What I am alluding to here is many a time a spangle has won without a full compliment of spots, in some instances no spots at all, so how can this be?

Again If the judge is faced with a class of very poor small spangle exhibits carrying spots, but up against a good example of a spangle budgerigar without spots, he will assess this fault of no spots (and it is a fault) but may still consider the overall quality to be far better than the poorer birds and place it first, I would think that most judges who have judged spangles in recent years will have been faced with this type of situation. How we have got to this state of affairs with the spangle variety I'm not sure, if we as judges continue to put them first the situation will perpetuate. Why can't we consistently breed spots on the spangle variety?

The point I am trying to make here is it is not always the variety breeders who are penalised, the normal carrying a full compliment of spots can be beaten by a spangle carrying no spots, so as you can see it happens both ways.

I have been guilty of the above on many occasions; it is difficult to place a pet above a quality exhibit.

CONCLUSION

How can we overcome the issues raised above, this is a difficult one. I believe flecking will always be with us, we can argue exhibitors could help here by not showing flecked birds, but unless they are banned from the show bench (I am not advocating banning flecking) we will continue to see them.

Variety breeders have to try and get the size into their birds without loosing the beautiful variety content if they are to compete for major awards.

Condition will continue to be an issue; again exhibitors can help the judges by trying to show birds that are only in condition, judges can help by not awarding them first if they are too far out of condition. I accept it is sometimes a numbers thing, showing as many birds as possible at your own show to keep the numbers up.

I would ask all exhibitors who criticise judges to try and put themselves in the judges position, take into account some of my comments mentioned, and believe me there are many more issues faced by judges before the final decisions are made.

I hope this article will have provoked some thought, and I would welcome any comments on the issues raised, please make them to the BS secretary in either letter or article form, this may help us all to understand better some of the issues raised, and hopefully make interesting reading in our magazine. Don't leave it to others, do it now.

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