The Seward County Fair’s annual poultry show requires a lot of uniformity.
A 4-H shirt or emblem, jeans with a belt, and tennis shoes or boots are required, leaving very little room for personalization.
Ayla Salistean decided to pair her uniform with a pair of bright yellow duck earrings that served as a good luck charm for her during the show.
“I always like to personalize my outfits. My duck earrings I wear for my archery, too, and they’re my good luck charm,” Salistean said.
Fifteen-year-old Salistean has been showing birds with 4-H for five years now, mainly because of the bird that her family has raised.
“We’ve always had chickens on our farm, so I've always had the love and the acknowledgement of poultry,” Salistean said.
While Salistean showed a variety of different birds and many different types of chickens, she has a special affinity for a strange looking kind of duck she discovered later on in her life.
“I was exploring into ducks and I found out about these Indian Runner ducks, and they look so funky, they look so weird, and I just loved it,” Salistean said.
Salistean also shoots archery in Milford, and debuted her good luck charms her eighth grade year.
“My eighth grade year at state for archery, I got overall girl and I was wearing my duck earrings that day, and so I just decided after that they were my lucky earrings,” Salistean said.
Bringing back those earrings the day of the show carried on the pattern of good luck as her birds, especially her Indian Runner Ducks, scored very well.
“We want to see how they run because I always classify it as like walking wine bottles, a nice tall slender bird and then the shoulders need to be a rounded edge,” said judge Brett Kreifels. “Hers matched up pretty well with most of what I was looking for.”
Salistean went on to win a variety of awards, including duck champion, reserve senior showman champ and reserve breeding trio champ, but none more coveted than winning reserve best of show champion.
With her Indian Runner Duck.
“I feel really excited,” Salistean said. “I’ve never won an overall award.”
Showing birds takes a ton of time, effort, and hard work to achieve the top prizes, but sometimes, a ducky charm will give a slight push to victory.
