“It’s a hobby.” However, Hager’s hobby is raising and showing some 240 bantam chickens at his home in Mount Ulla. Hager says he’s been raising the birds for about 35 to 40 years now.

My five new bantams are now more than 6 months old, yet I still have not named them. I am not sure why. It might be a question to be explored by my therapist, if I had a therapist.

Lane pointed out his other fowl fair entry, an Old English Bantam quail hen. "And she's nice," he said, suggesting his Barred Rocks sometimes might have been a little, well, peckish.