Santa Clara Valley Canary and Exotic Bird Club
Thanksgiving Week-End Nov. 26-27
Peterson Jr. High Sunnyvale, Ham Street
Set-up: Wednesday Evening, November 23, 1983 7 P.M.
Many hands make light work. Four or five people need the whole
evening for set-up. Fifteen or twenty folks can do the job in an
hour. Everyone who can possible come, get to the school and lend a
hand.
Friday 8 AM to 9 PM = local entrees, that's most of us! I'm in San Mateo but still considered "local."
Don't forget: One of the conditions we all accepted on becoming members was the obligation to donate a bird for the club coffers at LEAST once each year. Bring a bird for the auction. If you raise Hyacinth macaws, we suggest you bring a well-worth-having bird related item instead. Much as we'd love to have one of those donated, we're not that unreasonable!
Saturday, Nov. 26
8 AM - 9 AM = out of town entrees
9:30 aM judging begins
12:30 break for lunch
7:00 PM awards banquet
Banquet: Red Coach Restaurant and Lounge. Get your reservations to Ron Mercer right now, or at least P.D.Q.
Entrance to Hall: SCVC members and non-member exhibitors admitted free. $1.00 entrance fee for all others EXCEPT, an individual who can show a purchased door-prize ticket wil be considered to have paid the entrance fee.
If you haven't sold those books of door-prize tickets you were sent several months ago, GET BUSY! Turn in the stubs and money when you enter your birds. Return any unsold tickets to the club, somebody will be selling them during the show.
The folks who will be minding the door on Saturday are asked to use some discretion, we are "closed to the public" on Saturday because we can't have the neighborhood lady with ten kids with balloons coming in thinking it's a good place to dump the kids. BIRD PEOPLE should be considered to know how to behave at a bird show and courtesy should be extended.
SALE TABLES: $10.00 per selling space. Open to members and exhibitors only.
Follow the rules listed in the catalogue with regard to times and types of cages and cleanliness and proper set-up. Show committee will disallow cages or birds that do not appear clean and healthy.
Check-out time is 3 PM on Sunday. We can and have made exceptions for folds living at a great distance - especially if the weather is bad. Decision wil be made by the show committee. In general, the 3 PM rule applies.
Clean-up: Many hands again, we are ALL anxious to get our birds back to thier home flights after a show, but the hall still has to be cleaned up and the staging taken down and put away each year. Let's see a few more faces this year.
Reservations for the Show Banquet: Must be made by November 22nd, but the sooner the better. The banquet will be held at the Red Coach Inn again this year. Prices are: $13.25 for steak dinner; $10.75 for chicken dinner. Reservations are for space and what you want to eat are guaranteed up to Nov. 22, after that, you take your chances! Dinner will be at 7 P.M. Reservations go to Ron Mercer.
Door Prize Ticket sales are skimpy so far. Hey, get busy out there! Come on, Folks, you can each sell a couple of books at minimum. So far, we haven't even covered the cost of the printing of the tickets.
Oops! Program for NOVEMBER meeting will be on show preparations as presented by the available club experts at the meeting, followed by round table question and answer sessions. Make a note to yourself about anything you've kept forgetting to ask 'cause this is the time to collect the answers.
AD: Sandy Price, 1 proven pair Peachface Lovebirds $50.00
2 adult Peachface unsexed $25.00 each
1 handfed Bluemask Lovebird $35.00
1 handfed Pied Peachface $30.00
1 handfed Peach-split to Pied $25.00
American singer canaries males $40.00, hens $25.00
Gloster males $40.00 each
Pie Siskin, male $25.00
A problem has just come to my attention and normally I would wait to bring it up at the meeting but I intend to be at the G.G.A.S. show that day and this needs attention prior to show time. Several of our members who went to the Fresno showw wewre informed that some feelings were hurt at our show last year. I'm sorry that we didn't hear about it until now 'cause its hard to pin down events a year in the past. But whether or not the exact sequence of the incidents occurred as remembered is really imaterial. The fact is, if you are feeling offended because you perceive yourself to have been insulted then, in fact your ARE offended and it doesn't matter whether insult was intended or even perceived by anyone else. The fact that someone, or several someone's feel offended by us means that our Public Relations skills were slipping badly! And that is NOT what we are about. It is not in keeping with the long tradition of this club and I don't think any of us whant to start such a new tradition! We're busy at show time, everyone knows that, and it's easy to speak hastily or abruptly when you're busy, but it really doesn't take any more time to be courteous than to be rude, and rudeness will certainly be remembered longer. Let's try and shape up better this year, yes? And a related side issue is: we voted several years ago to keep the show hall closed to the public on Saturday during judging. We don't have enough room to ride herd on the public while trying to keep 'em out of the way of the stewards and the judges. But, should we not consider that members of other bird clubs aren't really "The Public?" Shouldn't they be consiered more in the light of "Brothers in the Guild?" Might we possibly decide that a face recognized as a "bird person" or an un-recognized face who can show a membership card in another bird club as sense enough to behave like a bird person at the show and could be granted the right to enter the hall onj Saturday by virtue of being "family?" I'm not talking about the admission fee here, wew said that anyone who is not a club member (of SCVC) or an exhibitor must pay admitance. I'm just talking about not keeping members of the clan standing out in the cold! It seems that, last year, some folks came from a good distance away on Saturday and were barred at the door (and, I'm told, some of 'em were dues paying members of SCVC who can't attend meetings and so their faces were unknown!) There has to be a civil way to handle this. Will you please discuss it at the meeting and come to some conclusion? Thanks.
Now for some of the tips on how Bill & Sheila Pickett raise their birds. Bill says that he only breeds 8 pair each year, but he keeps about four extra hens because he likes to rest his hens a full season whenever possible. He grinds seed and rolled corn and mixes it with bread crumbs and egg yolk as nestling food. He also gives cultivated wild seeds 2 to 3 times per week. During breeding seson he feeds 2/3 plain canary mixed with 1/3 cultivated wild seeds. This is soaked for 24 hours and served. He gives sprouted rape at will every day when there are youngsters. He gives dandelion, chickweed, wwatercress 3 times per week during that time as well. He believes in spraying the hens the night before eggs are due to hatch, thinks her wet feathers are more important than just a bit of water in the nest. He adds Pym (which is mineralized brewers yeast) to the wet soak seed. He does leave his males in to help feed the young. His birds are outdoors and unsheltered all year (winters are COLD in England.) He also says that, when he has removed eggs waiting for the clutch to be complete, he turns the eggs from side to side rather than from end to end as we've all benn taught. Points out, quite accurately, that the hen turns her eggs from side to side and not from end to end so the emphasis on the direction of the turn doesn't make sense. He separates his show bids and his stock birds. And, check with Steve on this because I may be remembering it wrong, he breeds the stock birds but not the show birds? Whentraining birds for the shows, he runs 'em into show cages, hangs the cages on the clothesline and then gives the line a good healthy swing every time he passes by. Says that, by show time, those birds will stand the perch perfectly no matter what kind of up-roar is going on. When I protested the possibility of heart attacks etc. with canaries he shrugged and said, the weak die. Yup, that's what Mother Nature says too. And, when he has a bird that has gotton too fat, he puts it in the dark, closed cage for 2-3 days with no food or water. Says that when he lets it out again it always goes for the food first, not the water. Theory is that the bird isn't burning a heck of a lot of energy in a small dark cage so it gets just the weight loss that he wants. We're out of room again. See you all soon.
Pat