APA "Pigeon Judges"?

[Marmoset]

Do any of you know of any APA Judges who also judge Pigeons??? Our local Show has Poultry & Pigeons... & we are always looking for someone who can do some of both.

[Patrick]

Don Roscoe of MN is very well respected as a pigeon judge, one of the few knowledgeable all breed pigeon judges. Jerry Yeaw and Warren Carlow, both of RI also know pigeons. I'm sure there are others. True pigeon "judges" are kind of non-existant, at least as far as we in poultry know judges. The way you become a pigeon judge is to just breed and show pigeons for long enough, until one day someone thinks you know what you're doing and asks you to judge. I'm really not kidding, that's actually the way it happens. They have no formal licensing program for pigeon judges such as the APA and ABA have. At some small shows, they often even advertise for anyone who wants to judge to speak out, and step on up! You think people complain about how some of our shows are judged, you should see some of these pigeon judges. There is no procedure for grievances. Some judge makes a mistake which goes completely against the standard, and he just shrugs it off and says "Oh well"! Some of the individual breed clubs do have licensing programs for judges for their breed only, but very few people know enough about most breeds, like Don, to be able to claim accurately that they're an all breed judge.
And then you have the standards. Each one is submitted by the breed club, in their own format. Few are consistent, using different terminology for the same thing. Like in purebred cats, the same variety can have many different names depending on what the breed club wants to call it. I know that we have some of this in poultry, but overall it's much more consistent, and at least our standards are mostly all formatted consistently. You also get the breed clubs which change their standards every 10 years or so. Just when you think you're getting somewhere, they up and change the rules on you, and like in poultry, often a very small number of people run the national breed clubs. They change standards to fit their birds.
So don't worry too much about getting someone who knows pigeons. Novices won't know the difference, and experienced guys know that it's all going to be a crap shoot, unless they have a judge who is licensed specifically for their breed.

[kenmisk]

Hello, Let me add to this, we went to a show in October, and the judge who did pigeons picked the best and the reserve, That is all he picked, He did not place any of the birds on the coop tags, and there were several breed/varieties. He stated that all he was required to pick was best and reserve. This was a little disheartening to my 8 year old, as he did not know how his bird did. Make sure your judge at least understands that he/she needs to place them , at least up to 4th place if not further.

Kenmisk

[Patrick]

Hello, Let me add to this, we went to a show in October, and the judge who did pigeons picked the best and the reserve, That is all he picked, He did not place any of the birds on the coop tags, and there were several breed/varieties. He stated that all he was required to pick was best and reserve. This was a little disheartening to my 8 year old, as he did not know how his bird did. Make sure your judge at least understands that he/she needs to place them , at least up to 4th place if not further.

Kenmisk

He doesn't NEED to do anything. That's part of the point, that they do things very differently in the pigeon world. I don't agree with a lot of it either, but that's the way it is. Tell your son that the world works the way it works. Get involved and try to work to change it if he likes, but don't expect it to work the way he wants just because he wants it, or he'll continue to be disappointed.