RICHMOND – Roosters crow loudly, seemingly already in competition, unaware crowing is not a criterion as Jasmine Gates, this year’s Ray County Fair poultry judge, arrives.

Hailing from Cairo, Missouri, Gates removes from their pens various chickens, bantams and full-sized roosters while running her fingers over their feathers and testing their weight, and examining their body structure – combs, beaks, breasts, wings, legs and feet.

Gates judges a bird presented by Natalie Mynatt, 10, noting favorable characteristics, but also flaws – in this case, a feather in disrepair – so that at future shows Mynatt will know how to present a great bird.

“This one right here, you can see it’s been broken,” Gates says, nudging the feather. “I would pluck that, if I were you, and let a new feather grow in.”

As the cocks continue to crow, Gates in a self-assured voice inspects other birds, telling contestants…

• “If she was bigger, older, more filled out, if there was a lot more weight to her, she’d probabl…