Poultry Show Central
The site that everyone needs! Meet Valerie and the story behind the website that the poultry show world uses daily. We love meeting the faces and stories behind it all.
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Carey: 0:00
Looking for information on shows in the state or region is as easy as clicking on www.poultryshowcentral.com from where you are can find whatever you're looking for from contact information to hotel rooms. There are lots of articles to help you get started on your show journey or to just tweak it. Check out www.poultryshowcentral.com Mhm.
Jennifer: 0:34
Welcome back. We are here with Valerie from Poultry Show Central. I always want to say it backwards. Poultry Center show.
Valerie: 0:42
You're not alone. Lots of people do.
Carey: 0:45
Say it three times real fast.
Valerie: 0:48
I didn't try that before I named it. I should have probably.
Jennifer: 0:52
So Valerie, tell us what brought you into the poultry world.
Valerie: 0:57
Yeah When my daughter was probably about six or seven, I'm guessing we had just gotten our first set of backyard chickens and, and enjoyed you raising them and it was around Easter and we thought it'd be really fun to get her some Americanas because, they have the blue eggs and at the time we thought that'd be a novelty. We can get some chicks from somebody. So I'm trying to figure out how to find Breeders, and we ran across the Americana Breeder Club and ended up meeting some people that live fairly close to us that showed their chickens. And they had a son who was also a junior, younger, and they said, Oh, there's a show locally in York that you should just come and see what it's like. It's fun. So we decided we'd go and visit it. And, We were just amazed. We had never seen anything like it. We had no idea that chickens could be so beautiful and we were just hooked. And really, honestly, everyone was just so welcoming. The person who ended up winning the show gave Kara, my daughter Kara, one of his Golden Seabrights. And we were just like, wow, Flower Gas said that we had a show chicken all of a sudden. And, it was, a seven year old and she did showmanship. The friend we went with, she did showmanship and he taught her how to go about doing the showmanship. And it was just, everybody was just so nice. And we just loved the experience and the people and everything. That was our first foray into it and so we got to know that breed a little better and we decided to get some birds from him and do sea brights as her first birds that she could show with and do showmanship and everything. And, So that was the beginning. And when we decided, okay, we're going to go to some shows, we need to find out how to get new birds and where the shows are and how to enter, we went out on the inner webs and thought, okay, this is going to be, this is going to be easy. And we realized it wasn't easy. You could find, the show date for four years ago on backyard chickens, it was a mess. We couldn't find where the shows were, when the shows were, how to enter. We didn't know what we were doing. We had a lot of people who were, we got to know, but we just had no idea how to get anything, get to where anything was. So we thought. My husband's the ideas, man. I'm the one who carries them out. He's the business owner. He's got lots of businesses and doesn't have the time to actually do it. But he was like, you know what we should do? We should create a website that has all of the dates that it's easy to find. And, for people like us who were trying to get started, but just didn't have the information they needed to do it. And I thought, yeah, that sounds like fun. I had no idea what I was actually because it was not a small undertaking. So we started out with this just giant spreadsheet and just started, data collecting everything we could possibly find from every possible resource, finding out what the, who, what shows actually were out there. And like even just the most recent date, even if it was two years ago. And then, slowly, we built this giant. I think there's 400 shows or something like that on the website. Now it took a long time just to get to the point where we could actually have enough information to start the website. I did a lot of work on it before I even told any of my poultry friends, I was doing it cause it was it's like your baby. You have your baby, you're afraid you're going to show them. And they'll say it's a bit ugly baby. And it's how it felt like when I first told them like, Hey, I made a website. Could you maybe just. See what you think of it. I don't know. But to make a long story short, that's how it started. And nature reports a vacuum as soon as people found out it was there and there's nothing else out there like it. So people would search pretty much any of those shows and they would get to my website and the rest is history. So like from there we started out with that and I thought I should have a couple basics of how to get started. How do you groom your chicken and wash them and all the things that we had to learn along the way. We had so many really supportive people that really helped my daughter, like just learn about how to raise show chickens and what to feed them and how to groom them well. And we were just, I cannot say enough good things about the people who supported us really early on when really, we were really nobody in the poultry community, people didn't know us. We were. basically newbies trying to throw out a website like that. And it was very much, it's bold of us to try it, be perfectly honest. But we had enough, like really strong supporters. When we first began that it really was what we needed to get started. We expanded that when we, as we were, Finding shows, we started to find a lot of them had swaps and auctions that went with it. And we thought if you have show birds and you have a lot of extras, you need to have, you need to find places to sell them. So that's where the idea of including the All the swaps and auctions. And so that just expanded and expanded. Cause there's just endless, there's endless numbers. I can add, 10 a week if I really wanted to go into finding all of them, but I just basically, when I run across them or people tell me about them at this point and then the breeder directory, my idea was, we got to the point where we wanted to expand beyond just sea brights. And so we just decided we did all kinds of research and decided we wanted to get into astral warps. And so we were trying to figure out how do you. Find an oscillate breeder. The best way obviously is to go to a show and ask around. No, that's what we did, but not everybody gets to a show and they want to just find some breeders of that breed. So that's where the search by breed breeder directory came around. We wanted to have, make it easy for people to find the more, especially the rare breeds that it's harder to find a breeder. And it's a way also for breeders to get their name out there. If they don't have a breed club specifically like the American Americana Breeders Club. That's the ABC, I think that's what it's called. They have a really nice breeder directory in, on there, but not most breeds don't have that. So if you're not, if you're looking for one, we really benefited from that breeder directory on there. Personally, when we got started, and I just felt like it would be a really good service for the community. So, yeah. As far as the, from there, it just basically ended up being ideas of how could we make it easier for people who are getting started? How could we make it easier for people who are already in the hobby? How can we keep the hobby thriving and alive and moving forward? And anything we could do that could help that's what we tried to do on the website and make it as easy and accessible. So that's where it came from. And from now it's been 12 years since we started it. And at this point it's a little more well oiled than it was at the beginning. People were. Good about notifying me about dates and like catalogs and there's a lot less for me having to seek out I still have to seek out a ton of information every year to update all to all the new year dates, but it's a lot easier every year because people are more responsive and I have more of a relationship with people and They're quicker at getting back with me. So that's been really helpful
Jennifer: 7:46
It's a massive website that you have there It's a little
Valerie: 7:52
over 1, 200 pages, so it's
Carey: 7:56
holy cow. I didn't like, I've looked through the site several times. I've looked through the directory because I've actually used it to try to track some people down, but 1, 200 pages. Yeah,
Valerie: 8:09
I know. It's, that's a lot of work. It's a little crazy. So it, yeah, it's become a lot bigger than I would have ever expected it to be. But. Is it? I just can't say enough about the people that have supported me along the way have really made it happen. So
Jennifer: 8:25
is it just you that does it?
Valerie: 8:28
Yep. Little old me,
Carey: 8:30
my
Valerie: 8:31
family cheering me on. Yeah. I guess I, I should give credit to, um, Roberta Collins. She helps me with the Facebook group. She helps me to, she does really, she's the one who lets, he, she takes care of the Facebook group. She. She was one of my very early supporters way back at the beginning. I met her and she was just so kind and so helpful. And I don't know that I've even seen her again since then, but she just, some, she's on the group a lot more than I am. And so she just does, she just is really helpful at realizing there's issues and making sure it's taken care of quickly. Cause sometimes I just don't even realize it's happening. Cause I don't live in my group. I don't, I'm on Facebook, but not, I'm not on my group all that much, honestly. She's been a huge help, but otherwise yeah, there's no one else other than occasionally I'll have a friend help me, with, just date mine and try to get all the dates like right now to get all the 2025 dates, there's, it ends up being 600 some dates. That's just a lot. It's a lot to every single year. And then actually, once I have all the dates, it takes a long time for me to get it all updated on the website because it's by state, by region, by month. And so every single date has to be updated on three pages and. It's just tedious, but it's good. I really enjoyed, or I wouldn't continue doing it, but I really have enjoyed the process. And
Jennifer: 9:52
Is your background in web design?
Valerie: 9:55
I was, I have a math degree with the computer science minor, but I would not say that is at all why I have a website. Computer science minors, you make a little, this was, I'm, this would have been back in the, the year 1999 or so. Things were very basic.
Carey: 10:14
Do you know what HTML coding is?
Valerie: 10:16
I do. That's what I, when I originally put all of my dates on. Like the, from each of the states and what regions? I actually put it into Excel and then moved it over as HTML. Like I saved the section as an H, TM L code. So I'm actually playing around with HTML code all the time.'cause I like how that looks better than just putting in with the, my web host.
Carey: 10:43
Yeah.
Valerie: 10:43
Like with, just with a dot, it just looks a little neater because it has columns. But I'm still trying to figure out if I don't like how it looks, I don't, I'm not good at, actually understanding the code enough to change it. I fiddle around with it, but it's a lot of copying and pasting and moving it around the HTML code to make it in the right order, least to greatest and all that. But it's not that I, it wouldn't take rocket science. I could train someone to do it in 15 minutes, probably. So it didn't take a degree. I promise.
Jennifer: 11:13
Did your daughter stick with Seabrights or did she move on to something else?
Valerie: 11:17
She had Seabrights for a while and then we got Ostrilorps. That was like, that was the one probably we got Ostrilorps from Jackie Kadadich and they were just gorgeous. I just, they're still my favorite. We had, and we also, when we got those for Jackie, we also got, um, speckled, Sussex Bantams. We've had Dutch Bantams, we've had Americanos. Those were the main ones. There were a couple, whenever we would go to shows a lot and we had a little, I feel like. A lot of the older breeders would just hand my daughter birds and be like, you're so cute. Here's a bird, I ended up with a lot of them that we didn't end up doing a lot with breeding wise. But yeah, she had a lot of success and I don't necessarily feel like it's because she was, She's so amazing. And she just, we started out with some really good birds and we were showing as juniors and she did great with showmanship. That was her big thing. She was like a master showmanship girl, but I just am really thankful for the experience for her sake because it was a great way for her to mature and, have a wide knowledge base on something and have to, do it for the judges. It was a great experience for her, but now she's, she's 21 now. And I have, I do have an eight year old too, and he would like to get into things, but I'm just past that at this point. That's not true. I'm not quite ready. He's not ready to take any responsibility. Maybe someday I think it'll be great for him, but right now is not the
Jennifer: 12:35
season. Boys are different.
Valerie: 12:37
Yeah. Yeah. And he has a lot of ideas, but he's just not quite there yet.
Carey: 12:41
See, I like the shows up in the north and stuff because they You see the showmanship more up north and like I was in Knoxville two weeks ago, three weeks ago, whenever it was. And I like watching that because, some of them, they really get into it. They know all about the birds and to me, that's the future of the hobby. Yep. Absolutely. Is the young one. With your daughter being in that heavily and people just giving her show birds Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Because as, I don't consider myself older, but as somebody that's wanting this to continue Which is part of the reason why I have some of the breeds that I have, is I like seeing the young people get involved. Because the young people, the youth, they're the me of tomorrow. And then, I'm the old guy sitting over on one of the aisles. Grumbling about everything and waiting on them to finish judging my bird so I can go.
Valerie: 13:43
And I think that's, just to go back to the website, that's another reason I wanted to have the website because, it's the future. Yeah. And I love the poach press. I'm not trying to knock them at all. I'll never say anything bad about them. But at the same time, people need information at their fingertips. It's just the way it is. And so I was just, I'm really, I felt like, feel like if there wasn't something that you could get at quick information that would lose the young, younger generation pretty fast if people trying to get into it there would be no way to actually. Find that information quickly,
Carey: 14:16
right?
Valerie: 14:17
So
Jennifer: 14:19
I feel like of all the people that we have met this year on our podcast that you are the queen of taking chicken math to a whole new level.
Carey: 14:32
That Yeah, I could agree with
Jennifer: 14:34
that.
Valerie: 14:35
There you go. Never thought of it that way.
Jennifer: 14:39
Not only did you just gather chickens, it shows. Yep. Okay we're just going to organize the entire hobby right here, right now.
Carey: 14:51
It's oh, my kid likes chickens. Fast forward, I have a 1200 page website. Yeah. And a database with literally every chicken show in America.
Valerie: 15:04
If you need to know anything about anything, I've got it on a big old Excel spreadsheet. I'm afraid to, it's this really old version of Excel because, it was 12 years ago I started making it and I'm afraid to update it because I'm afraid I'm going to lose stuff. stuff.
Jennifer: 15:19
As somebody who works off of Excel every day, I can promise you that you can update it.
Valerie: 15:23
Okay. I also have a thing because one of the things years ago somebody connected me up with backyard the backyard poultry magazine. And so I have been supplying their upcoming events. For them for years, where they just, instead of having, they were just gathering whatever people would send them and they just, their lists sometimes were so short, they just felt I don't even know if we should have this space. So now they ask me to send all of the upcoming events for, February and March to them. right now, I need to be sending them. And then they just post everything and they link to my website, which is a great thing for me. Cause it's a pretty, and they give me a tiny little stipend as a thank you. But nevertheless, my point is I have a nice little macro that one of my brother in law, who's a true computer programmer created for me that I just clicked this little button and it sucks in all the different dates. And I can just copy and paste it to send to them. So that's the kind of stuff I'm afraid I'd lose if I upgraded to different Excel, but
Jennifer: 16:24
gotcha. Yeah,
Valerie: 16:26
maybe it'd be fine.
Carey: 16:28
Sometimes them in depth macros are very time saving, but they do take some time when you update.
Valerie: 16:34
Yeah. So I'm not sure how that would work, but I rely on that very heavily. It makes my job a lot easier.
Jennifer: 16:40
So for somebody who just wanted to Look at your website for the first time because they're getting started and I will tell you that your website's very busy And it probably could be overwhelming to somebody who wasn't prepared. Where would you suggest?
Carey: 16:56
We're talking about chicken people here.
Jennifer: 16:59
Yeah. You should,
Carey: 17:00
you should be able to comprehend that.
Jennifer: 17:03
So where do you suggest that they would start on your website?
Valerie: 17:07
I guess it depends on what they would want to be coming for. If they're coming to find out the basics of how to show chickens, then I would go to the Poultry 101 educational pages, the Beginner's Guide to Showing Poultry if you were getting into showing, if you're looking for poultry show dates, then it's pretty simple to, that's right at the front page. It's pretty, pretty self explanatory to jump through it. However you want to search. I also recommend we would recommend people use the search bar. I use it all the time on my website. Honestly, I don't want to go navigate all the way through. I just want to find the information. I just put it in the search bar and it takes me right there. I would recommend using that. If you'd know what you want to find, um, honestly, it just depends on what it is that you're looking for. You came for what's your interest if you're somebody who's a junior? I do we need to update it more but for a while my daughter was creating new Kind of showmanship review questions every month. She would come up with you know I think it was 15 or 20 every month and there's so there's quite a few I don't know how many probably several hundred review questions for If you're into showmanship if you don't know how to fill out a entry form, there's stuff for that. It is all the way up to if you're someone who's been doing it for a while and want to hear it. I, at this point, I don't write articles myself. I don't feel like I'm world enough to have any expertise that I can claim. So I have a lot of people who reach out to me asking to write articles. I've also had a lot of really good people from in the poultry world who said, anything you see that's written by me, if you want to post it on your website, that's great. Just, Some of them said, don't, you don't even need to say it's from me, but I absolutely would not want anyone to think that I'm the one who came up with that information. So really at this point, if I have new articles, it's because people either reached out to me or I've seen something that's really helpful. And I, I asked them if I can post it. For instance, a couple years ago, Dan Castle, I saw somewhere posted like all the things that he did to prepare for a poultry show. Like it like a schedule of, Three months in advance, you need to do this and too much. And so I had seen that and asked if I could post that just for people who were. Starting a new show and just had no idea where to start. So there's some things like that, that I've reached out, but at this point, I don't try to write anything myself because I don't, I just, I could research something, but I'm not going to ever put myself forth as the expert. Cause I'm not an expert on chickens at this point.
Jennifer: 19:34
You are the expert on organizing this chicken people. I can do what I'm good at.
Valerie: 19:39
I'm going to stick with my wheelhouse.
Carey: 19:42
Organizing chicken people, that's a pretty big thing right there.
Valerie: 19:46
It's called herding chickens, right? Herding chickens,
Jennifer: 19:49
yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's big. I use your website all the time, because I'm an officer and I have to, Pick up the shows, and I don't know what shows are two states over, and so I use your website all the time to find those shows over there and wait for you to update it for 2025 so I can go.
Valerie: 20:07
I'm working on it. Let me tell you, I'm working hard right now.
Jennifer: 20:12
All right thank you so much for coming and telling us about your website. It is. Yeah, it was great
Carey: 20:17
meeting you.
Valerie: 20:18
Yeah, it was nice to meet you as guys as well. I've seen both of your names, but I, because I don't get to show as much I feel like I don't know people's faces very well.
Jennifer: 20:27
You
Valerie: 20:27
have never, I've gotten to know a lot of people's names in the hobby. I am. I know them all. But it's nice to actually meet you even if it wasn't in person. Everybody wants
Jennifer: 20:35
to talk chicken.
Valerie: 20:36
Yeah,
Carey: 20:37
that's right.
Jennifer: 20:37
That's
Valerie: 20:38
right. Thanks for the opportunity.
Jennifer: 20:41
All right. Tell us your website again, because I messed it up.
Valerie: 20:44
Okay. The website is poultry show central. com.
Jennifer: 20:50
There you go. So I'm not even going to check it out. All right. Till next time, guys.
Valerie: 20:56
Yep. Thanks for the opportunity.
Jennifer: 20:59
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Poultry Nerds. Thanks for tuning in and geeking out with us on all things poultry. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast. It helps others discover the show. Also, don't forget to follow us on social media and visit our website for more poultry tips, resources, and upcoming episodes. Until next time, keep those chickens happy and healthy and stay nerdy.
