As we mentioned before, the Ekka is really about showing the country way of life. There are vegetable and fruit displays, Girl Guides and Boy Scout booths, and all kinds of different associations, such as the Country Women's Association and Junior Farmers groups that display different animals (like the 4H clubs in Canada).
Little Lamb
One big wooly sheep...the rest of them know what he has coming!
Big goat
They really make a huge effort to show city kids a little bit of farming life and they really do a good job of showing animals. There are dog and cat displays and we watched a cat judge from the US talk about what she looks for in grading certain types of cat, then watched a dog show that was a parade for a certain breed. The cat display was quite small but we saw 10s of different breeds of dogs, including a booth for retired greyhounds that was very well attended. If those dogs were ignored while they were working, they certainly can't complain of that now. There were line-ups more than 10 deep just to pet the dogs!
Little baby goat
The part that we liked was walking through and seeing the sheep and goats. The sheep were being shown in a couple of ways, including as a part of shearing demonstrations. We wondered what kind of discussions were going on between the sheep...all in the pen had been shorn and only one sheep, very nervous looking, still had the long wool. He knew his days of being wooly were numbered!
The part that we liked best was walking through the goat pens and seeing all the different types of goats. They had goats with long ears that hung down, perky eared goats, big goats little goats and just about every goat in between. Who knew goats had so much going on?
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