A popular class at the present time is one where an egg is judged firstly on its shape and texture, then when it is broken open, judged for content perfection, with the total of these marks added together to decide which one is the winner.

Selection is the key Exhibitors who specialize in showing their birds spend every year trying to improve the quality of their stock by carefully selected breeding pens, some of the top egg exhibitors are the same; their ambition is to breed a hen that can lay an even better shaped or darker colored egg than their present birds. There is always the challenge to create a different colored egg, such as by crossing a Blue egg layer with a Brown egg bird you can develop Khaki colored egg shells.I have just been discussing about showing the eggs laid by Poultry and Bantams, there are also classes provided for the eggs laid by Ducks and Geese, the format for exhibiting them is the same but the shape of duck eggs are slightly different and judged accordingly with the emphasis again being on presentation and a matching plate of eggs.

Another type of showing eggs is one where all the family can participate; it is for Decorated and Painted eggs. It is usual for these classes to be separated into groups catering for different ages of juvenile competitor as well as their parents.

Eggs that have been elaborately painted can look fantastic and it surprising how creative some of the youngest exhibitors can be, a point that is especially shown in classes where the egg shells have been baked and then carved or molded into a wonderful array of decorative ornaments.

A further choice for the egg exhibitor is to create a small display of eggs in any surrounding that he or she finds appropriate to the theme of poultry living in natural conditions, this can be as simple as them being arranged in a bowl of clean wheat or in an attractively created nest.

The showing of eggs has increased in popularity over the last few decades and I am sure it will continue to expand during the forthcoming years, it is usual for egg showing classes to be incorporated with a show of live exhibits but we may eventually see more shows that are purely for plates of eggs. A great advantage is that they only require a few trestle tables on which to display the plates and at the end of the show there is no sawdust to be cleaned up from the floor.

The idea is for the eggs that are exhibited to be as fresh as possible, but providing that they are stored correctly you should be able to get several shows out of a good plate of eggs, at one period there was a ruling that one egg should be broken from each plate to asses their internal quality as well as their external, this procedure is no longer carried out meaning that as with a good live bird you should be able to enjoy showing them whilst they remain in top showing condition.

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