Is the head nice and round? Are the feathers smoothed? The colors are beautiful and the beaks nice and short? All important if you want your zebra finch to become the champion of Drenthe.
About 175 small birds in all kinds of colors are competing for the win today during the zebra finch exhibition in the village hall of Wachtum. Jan Pastoor from Steenwijksmoer is also there. He brought no fewer than 33 of his zebra finches with him.
“Look, this cup is nice and round, in all directions,” he points out. “And I put a little Vaseline on the beak and legs, then it looks nice and orange. That earns you points.” And Pastoor knows it. He has already become Drenthe champion several times and the Dutch title has also gone to one of his birds.
You don’t just become the most beautiful. “I start six weeks in advance. I remove tail feathers that are broken, for example, so that they can grow again. And on the day itself I trim the beaks, making sure the feathers are in the right place.”