Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal 
By Matt Reese
The Ohio National poultry show is coming this weekend to the Ohio Expo Center in the Voinovich and O’Neill buildings in Columbus. This year of the show commemorates the 150th anniversary of the American Poultry Association and there are well over 10,000 birds entered into what is annually among the largest poultry shows in the country.
“These are fancy breeding birds — you’ll be able to see any color, any size of bird there this year. I think that the biggest thing that we hear all the time is that most people never knew there were this many different chickens. At the Ohio National you’ll see just about anything — different colors, different sizes and different combs on their head. People just don’t believe there are that many chicken varieties out there,” said Jeff Wolfe, a director for the Ohio Poultry Breeders Association. “And this is the largest youth show for breeding poultry there is in the United States. We have entries from many states in the United States and all over Canada — people come from all over to show their birds. We’ll have almost 1,000 exhibitors and over 10,700 birds. There is a showmanship competition for various age groups. And, this year’s show is so large we actually are starting judging Friday morning at 9 a.m. In our normal years, we only judge on Saturday, but with this number of birds it is going to be two days of judging.”
For visitors, the show opens at 7 a.m. on Friday and ends at 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning.
“To get on champion row at the Ohio National, that is saying something for your breeding program,” Wolfe said. “It is a pretty prestigious position to be in in our poultry world and it’s a pretty good feeling to get there.”
Visit ohionational.org for more details.
