Royal Hobart Show

We went to the Royal Hobart Show yesterday. I was surprised that both of my daughters wanted to come. Our eldest daughter is at that age where everything that her parents do is “boring”, nevertheless, we went as a family and had a good day together.

The Royal Hobart Show is the annual show of the Royal Agricultural Society in Hobart and there are loads of domesticated animals there to be seen along with arts and crafts and the inevitable carnies, show-bags, junk food and crowds. I’m not a big fan of the last four.

We started with the cattle and moved on to sheep, pigs and goats. The cattle were lovely, although there weren’t many different varieties of cow. The Jerseys were looking very good. Some of the sheep were very impressive, I took a fancy to a black faced dorper ram. He was a very good shape with a lovely open face and good meat quality.

We went and had a look at the angora goats in the next pavilion. They were nice looking goats and of good quality. The pigs were in  the same pavilion with the angora goats. There wasn’t much variety in the pig stalls, mostly bacon pairs. Still, I like pigs and they were all sleeping soundly.

The dairy goat pavilion was our next destination. On the previous Saturday, my youngest daughter and I did some work at the pavilion helping to set the pavilion up for Show week, so we had a particular interest in this display. Many of the other dairy goat breeders that we know were there at the pavilion and the goats were lovely. The display of British Alpine kids was fantastic. The breeders had set up a platform and a couple of planks so that the goat kids had some play equipment. The goats loved their play-things.

Of course the Royal wouldn’t be worth going to for our youngest daughter without going to the “Farm Nursery” pavilion. All of those chicks, and ducklings are always an instant hit with children. In the petting display, there were goat kids and lambs along with a piglet that seemed to be taking it’s cue from the older pigs and slept the whole time … maybe it was tired from being adored by children. There was a very nervous Turkey in the petting display too.

We then went on and had a look in the Handcraft pavilion where we had ice-cream and a walk around the cakes. There were some very creative and imaginative decorated cakes among the display. Some of our friends were in the Handcraft pavilion representing the Society for Creative Anachronists (SCA) showing off some of their medieval craft work. They did a fighting display on the green for the entertainment of the show goers.

After that, we walked around to the rides and shoved our daughters into a “Haunted House”. After some screaming and laughing, the girls came out the other end with big smiles on their faces.

Lunch was next … not bad … pretty much what was expected.

Our next destination was the Poultry Pavilion. We had to traipse all the way through the rides and carnies to get to the poultry. The chickens and ducks were very good. We saw some very nice roosters indeed. The first chickens that we saw were Andalusian, these animals were lovely examples of their breed. We also saw some red and white Leghorns, Plymouth Rock, Silkie and loads of Old English Game birds. Among the ducks, there were Muscovy, Indian Runner and of course Pekin. There was a large brooder in the middle of the display with loads of chicks under a heat lamp. Overall, the poultry display was very good. It’s a pity that there weren’t any fowl for sale (although my wife would probably think that that was a good thing).

Finally, we went to the show-bag pavilion so that the girls could buy show-bags. I think that it is a great pity that the show-bag has gone from what it was when I was a kid (a sample bag of products from manufacturers) to an overpriced bag with a few “themed” products that you really don’t want and wouldn’t pay good money for if you were to find them in a shop. Ah well, how times change.

It was a good day and I enjoyed spending that time with my family.