It's Fair Week up in good old Kenosha County, WI.  To commemorate this grand old Kenosha County tradition, I have decided to share with you a story about one of my 4-H projects.

I remember the first time I showed a chicken - she was a Barred Rock Pullet. I didn't know what I was doing - I didn't even know the darned thing needed a bath until someone called and asked if I bathed my chicken? I was like, WTF?? How do you do that???

Oh, you should see how I bathed that chicken. Again, I didn't know what I was doing.  And I was like 13 at at the time and my mom was raised in the city.  And I my club didn't have a poultry leader.  So, I filled up a pickle bucket with Nexxus shampoo and water, grabbed Pellet the Pullet by her feet, and dunked her in and out of the water(while making sure not to submerge her head).  Anyway, I wanted that chicken to be squeaky clean, so I ended up pouring the shampoo on her feathers and rubbing it in REALLY GOOD.  Right down to the skin.  

So, now I had to get all that nasty soap off.  I wanted to take her to the kitchen sink and use the sprayer but my mom said, "ABSOLUTELY NOT."

I went back to the drawing board and took her to the wash rack.  I tried to adjust the sprayer so that the pressure wasn't too high, but  ended up just removing the nozzle and running the water over the chicken.  But the stinking soap would NOT come off!!  I finally had to refill the pickle bucket with clean water and dunk the chicken again!!  Like 10-20 times!!  Poor baby.  No wonder she behaved so well at the fair - she must have been traumatized!  

I do stress that I never dunked her head!  I don't think I ever did get all the soap off.  Next, I took a toothbrush to her legs and brushed them clean with yet more shampoo.  To be fair, she was a very clean chicken by show time!  When I got to the show, a very kind poultry leader from another group helped me prepare the chicken for the class and all went well.  And the darned thing got a 1st place/blue. I was grinning ear to ear and my mother was just nodding her head, "You soooo do not deserve that. You got lucky!" She was right.

Gosh, that was sooo much fun!!